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The International Phonetic Alphabet isn't just "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie"—in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with the NATO "Phonetic Alphabet", and anywhere
by danaris 5y ago
The International Phonetic Alphabet isn't just "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie"—in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with the NATO "Phonetic Alphabet", and anywhere you heard that referred to as the International Phonetic Alphabet was just simply wrong. It's an actual alphabet, designed to represent all the phonemes humans actually use in speech—not just in English.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...
- celticninja 5y agoEither way the acronym is ambiguous at best.
- jhgb 5y agoHow is IPA ambiguous when talking about pronunciations of words?
- celticninja 5y agoWell I googled IPA and the first Wikipedia hit (2nd result) was India Pale Ale, which is the acronym I am familiar with. The first link was to https://ipa.co.uk https://ipa.co.uk Web results The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising: IPA So I think calling it ambiguous is ok, you are if course free to disagree, but what I said wasn't fundamentally incorrect. But it seems like HN has a bee in its bonnet.
- patmorgan23 5y agoIf someone has no idea what IPA is, how are they supposed to figure it out when there's a bunch of other things that have the same acronym?
- patmorgan23 5y agoAlso, ALL acronyms are ambiguous. That's why it's best practice to say the actual thing you're talking about then put the acronym next to it the first time it's used.