> ---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <grzegorj2000@...> wrote :>
It is not tradition, it is a pragmatic approach, for a number of
reasons.
>
I'd rather say a biased or idiosyncratic one.
> First: IPA is NOT perfect, especially for languages (like Polish)
which contain affricates contrasting with consonantal clusters (like
c : ts, č : tš, ʒ : dz, ǯ : dž etc.).
>
Actually, IPA uses the ͡͡ diacritic to convey that meaning, so e.g. ͡͡ts is a single phoneme.
> IPA is clearly an
English-biased standard, uncomfortable when analysing e.g. Slavic
languages (this is the main reason for which IPA has NOT a wide
application in Slavistics). Or Nostratic, where affricates are
single sounds, not clusters as IPA suggests. Tell Altaicists,
Uralicists etc. to use IPA...
Idiosyncratic linguistic theories using idosyncratic symbols. Too bad.
> Even worse, IPA has not a symbol for central [a]!
>
Really? I don't think so.
> Writing [a] we suggest it was front, and writing [e] we suggest it
was mid-close (and not mid-open). There are no reasons for such a
suggestion. So, there is also no reason for writing IPA symbols
instead of the ones widely spread in literature.
>
Literature = tradition.
> Also writing þ instead of the
stylized Greek letter theta (used for IPA) is more comfortable: I
have thorn on my keyboard layouts (it is used in Icelandic) while I
have not the Greek alphabet, and the more I do not have IPA symbols!
>
This can hardly be a valid excuse about modern computers and software. I'd recommened you try a nice program called
BabelMap> BTW, sometimes IPA is very far from being accurate: English c/k
(like in "cat") is often aspirated and should not be spelt with just
[k] (in fact, in most cases it is pronounced like Greek khei and not
like kappa).
>
Most of the time, we content ourselves with *phonemic* transcriptions, not phonetic ones, so in the context mentioned, phonemic /
k/ is phonetically realized as a voiceless aspirated [
kʰ].
> Then, the Indo-Europeanists convention is as good and as bad as IPA
is (and sometimes it is even more accurate). But wide spreading in
the literature works in favour of it, and against using IPA.
>
But science advocates for standarization, and this why e.g. the metric system is almost universally preferred to English units.