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IPA probably doesn’t work like you think it does. I also had this misconception that it was a “universal alphabet,” but apparently even linguists have to learn
by faitswulff 4y ago
IPA probably doesn’t work like you think it does. I also had this misconception that it was a “universal alphabet,” but apparently even linguists have to learn subsets of IPA in order to properly pronounce phonemes in different languages.
- samatman 4y agoThe person you're replying to said phoneme, suggesting awareness of the phonetic/phonemic distinction. > apparently even linguists have to learn subsets of IPA in order to properly pronounce phonemes in different languages I don't actually understand what you mean by this clause, but if we strip some words, "linguists learn subsets of IPA in order to properly pronounce phonemes in different languages" is in fact exactly what IPA is for.
- faitswulff 4y agoThe point is you can’t just learn IPA and know how to pronounce everything with it. No one knows “all” of IPA.
- coldtea 4y ago>I also had this misconception that it was a “universal alphabet,” but apparently even linguists have to learn subsets of IPA in order to properly pronounce phonemes in different languages. What exactly do you mean above? If "subsets of IPA" are enough to "properly pronounce phonemes in different languages" then IPA is indeed a "universal alphabet". More or less, the same way different subsets of Unicode cover most/all languages, which makes it a universal encoding. Did you meant to imply that IPA would be a universal alphabet only if all of it was needed to cover each language - and e.g. no IPA-letters were redundant for covering this or that language?