Hail Oskar!
Thank you for your excellent review of pronounciation!
Just a few questions:
I have never had a need for the phonetic alphabet, because
I have always lived in the countries whose languages I speak.
In case of English, may father gave me a good and well used
copy of "Webster's Collegiate Dictionary" while I was still in
high school, and I have used it ever since, though I now use
the American Heritage, which is pretty much the same idea.
There, you will find a pronounciation guide at the bottom
of each page, something which is a very good idea, especially
for English, since the difference between pronounciation and
spelling is so large there.
Since our language of reference on this list is English, I'd like
to quote the American Heritage pronounciation guide below. In that
way, I feel we can make questions of pronounciation a lot easier for
everybody, since we shall be able to dispense with the phonetic
alphabet altogether. (Why introduce an entirely new alphabet when
plain English will do?)
So here goes:
a1: pAt
a2: pAY
a3: cARe
a4: fAther
b1: BiB
c1: CHurCH
d1: DeeD
e1: pEt
e2: bE
f1: FiFe
g1: GaG
h1: Hat
h2: WHich
i1: pIt
i2: pIE
i3: pIEr
j1: JuDGe
k1: KiCK
l1: Lid, needLe
m1: MuM
n1: No, suddeN
n2: thiNG
o1: pOt
o2: tOE
o3: pAW, fOR
o4: nOIse
o5: OUt
o6: tOOk
07: bOOt
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The table ought to be self-explanatory to users of English.
(at least no-one ever explained it to me, and there wasn't
any run-in-time before I was able to use it)
Example of use (arbitrarily chosen):
Chá-vez (ch a4' v a2 s) Carlos. Born 1899. Mexican composer,
conductor and educator.
If you go to the table you will see that a4 = <the a of fAther>
and a2 = <the a of pAY>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The above list now provides us with a complete set of sounds
for the pronounciation of English words. When referring to
the pronounciation of Old Norse words, we can simply pick
the right sound from the above table of English words
(a bit like ALPHA BRAVO CHARLIE etc)
That sounds like a much easier way to communicate about
pronounciation to me, because you can always refer to a standardized set
of English words.
Here an example:
Old Norse "H@..." (=PN, name of king)
In some of the transcriptions I have it is written with o-tail (here @).
For the ON pronounciation, we may give it as <h1 o3 k1 o1 n1>, which,
since there is only one h and only one k, may be simplified to
<h o3 k o1 n1> (=H@...)
If we then want to add an accent for the emphasis, (emphasis on 1st syllable
in Old Norse) we may refine it to:
<h o3' k o1 n1>, or maybe even compress it to <ho3'ko1n1>.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Conversely, let us say that you are given the string of tokens <ho3'ko1n1>.
How do you pronounce it? Well, it is a normal h and k. The n is normal too
(n2 is nasal), thus all we need to look up is o3 and o1.
The table gives o3 = o as in pAW, fOR and o1 = o as in pOt.
Thus we have the result.
<ho3'ko1n1> = hAW'kOn (for example)
It is of course much simpler if you have the tables in front of you,
because you'll never actually need to write anything to find out
the pronounciation of a word. And if you actually have a copy of
American Heritage Dictionary (or Webster's that has a similar system)
it will be really extremely simple. Here I have done everything by means
of ASCII - a big advantage on the net. But the dictionaries actually
use different accents OVER the letters, such as ô, ö, õ. But that is difficult
for the different kinds of computers. I therefore used numbers after the
letters instead of numbers over them.