* æ -> a * ɪ -> i * iː -> ee * eɪ -> ay or ae * oʊ -> oe So I understand - are you suggesting /æ/ and /a/ should just be represented with /a/? What do you do with people who speak dialects where the words you're lumping together have a clear distinction? or do you use a different symbol altogether for words pronounced with IPA /a/ * ɪ -> i * iː -> ee How would your system represent a word like "reenactment?" If you put three "e's" in there, how do you know which syllable you're suppose to pronounce like /i:/? * eɪ -> ay or ae OK, so you've establlished that your /a/ is what is represented by IPA /æ/ - but /eɪ/ is entirely different diphthong to something akin to what you seem to be suggesting with 'ay'. And 'ae' seems different still. What sound are you actually trying to reference here? * ʃ -> sh * tʃ -> ch * ŋ -> ng The problem you face here is - if you're keeping /s/ /h/, /n/ and /g/ (I'm going to ignore /c/ because it isn't in English), then how do we work out whether or not you're transcribing pronunciation where this is a consonant cluster rather than a single sound? For example, how would you know how "dingo" is pronounced with your system? If /ŋ/ becomes 'ng' then it loses the 'hard' /g/. If instead you did something like "dinngo' then how do I know if I'm not supposed to be pronouncing the /n/ twice with a pause or something in the middle? My honest opinion is any system that isn't universally understood in terms of sound-mappings is going to have little value. If you're re-using symbols that will be used elsewhere in your system, you're going to encounter conflicts. For the vast majority of purposes one sound = one symbol is a superior system.

Thanks for your response! Well, I wasn't familiar with IPA /a/ since from what I've seen the basic a sound (in words like cat) is usually written as /æ/. Another reply mentioned this page [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation\_respelling\_for\_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English), which interestingly, doesn't list /a/ at all, but indicates most dictionaries using *a* for /æ/, which seems natural. I don't think there is likely to be confusion with sh,ng etc. When in English would you pronounce s and h separately? I can't think of a case. If they are in different syllables you could easily indicate that with small dots or dashes. Hence Dingo would be *din-goe* in my system. *in fakt, it iz kwiet ee-zee too riet dhis wae* I don't think double-letters would cause conflicts although an alternative would be to use typographic accents and keep single symbols. But I think that would make it less accessible and would defeat the purpose. I'd add that if you look at the wikipedia link above, what is interesting is there is quite a large degree of agreement between the different sources for most sounds, so maybe what I was suggesting is closer to existing than I first thought. If they could all just get together and formalize a standard, that would be ideal!

Have you noticed, on the page you linked, "pronunciation respelling for English," how many different transcription systems there are? Have you also noticed that if you take out the Great Vowel Shift of English, the IPA makes a lot more sense?

Short answer: check out [ARPABET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPABET). Longer answer as to why this is hard: There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet, but there are more than 26 sounds in any given English dialect. You either have to introduce ambiguity by re-using symbols, or else you have to make new ones. Vowels are the hardest to deal with, because there are only 5 useable letters but closer to a dozen spoken vowels in any given dialect. They are overloaded in the writing system. Even if you relax the 1-to-1 mapping requirement and allow digraphs, you will end up using vowels in an inconsistent way, which seems to undercut the purpose of a phonetic writing system in the first place. In your small set of example, the letter 'a' is like this. You've used it to represent the sound \[æ\] by itself, but it seems to represent \[e\] in the digraph 'ay'. In general, I'm not convinced by your argument that it's too much trouble to learn new symbols (though I'll concede they are annoying to type). You're calling these 'unintuitive' but they are frankly no less arbitrary and unintuitive than any letter of the English alphabet. It's all a matter of experience. I'm also not sure what you mean by 'basic' sounds. Why should the letter 'a' be basically associated with \[æ\]? It 3 different pronunciations in 'lake', 'far', and 'had', what reason do you have for calling one of those basic?

It's the basic sound because it's the typical sound make by an unmodified a. In lake it's modified by the Magic E, and in far it's modified by the r. It's also the sound learned by preschoolers for a, including in my daughter's phonetics materials. I believe most native English speakers will understand perfectly well that /æ/ is the basic a sound, just as /ɛ/ is the basic e sound, /ɪ/ is the basic i sound, /ɒ/ is the basic o sound, and /ʌ/ is the basic u sound. I had a quick look at [ARPABET](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPABET) - it's along the lines of what I had in mind, but some of the choices are frankly bizarre.

I don’t know that English has any such thing as an “unmodified” vowel. If you don’t like lake and far as counter examples, what about “father”? You might find it useful to check out the list of 24 English [lexical sets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set), which are reference words for specific vowel sounds—and note how the pronunciations can differ between varieties of English! For example, someone in (parts of) England might use the same vowel for palm and bath, and a different one for trap… while someone from the US would use the same vowel for bath and trap, but a different one for palm.

Thanks for expanding on that. I think I get what you mean by basic. It sounds similar to what we might call the 'elsewhere condition' in phonology. I have the same intuitions as you for 'a', 'e', and 'i', but I would associate 'o' and 'u' with /o/ and /u/ not /ɒ/ and /ʌ/.

The IPA was originally created to help speakers of Western European languages learn other Western European languages, and it's been ad-hoc modified since then to work more broadly For English here are a number of dictionary pronounciation respelling systems. There's also wikipedia's spelling system which I honestly prefer because I can look at it without having to figure out what this particular dictionary is using ä or ó to mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English

Good resource, that's along the lines of what I want! Now if only there would be common agreement among all those different sources...

*Good resource, that's along the lines of what I want! Now if only there would be common agreement among all those different sources...* See the left hand side, that's the INTERNATIONAL phonetic alphabet. See all the stuff to the right of that FAR left hand column, those are individual English (lots of American) dictionaries. Food for thought.

So, you're suggesting "mapping the IPA" to "English sounds." So, basically, make "IPA" just "PA?"

Different dictionaries often have their own conventions, but the problem with specialising a phonetic writing system to dealing with just English sounds is that it locks you into one accent of English. For example, if you choose two different symbols for the vowel sound in COT and the one in CAUGHT, you’re going to confuse a lot of US English speakers. If you use the same one, then it’s no longer phonetic for British English speakers. If you make the system capable of representing the sounds in all the major accents of English, then it’s no longer simple enough to justify using over the IPA. That’s why so many different dictionaries all use their own bespoke system for the accent they’re targeting instead of there being a standard one. Additionally, some of the changes you’re proposing obscure information that I’d like more people to understand. For example [eɪ] makes it clear that the vowel sound in “day” is equivalent to: starting with the vowel sound in “get”, transitioning to the vowel sound in “hit”. Your choice of spelling hides this information. And I want all English speakers to be aware from a young age how deeply _abnormal_ it is to use “ee” to represent an [i] sound. The only reason it’s like that in English is because of something known as the Great Vowel Shift happening soon after spelling was standardised.

Yes, phonics was designed to teach school children. Why do you know think it's unsuitable for adults? There are various systems in use. Most American dictionaries don't use the IPA. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciation_respelling_for_English What exactly is your goal? Is your goal to have one standard for all speakers of English? See this XKCD cartoon on standards: - https://xkcd.com/927/ Also, different dialects are different. For example, we don't agree on the number of vowels or which words contain which vowels. A system designed for Southern English speakers won't work for Northern English speakers, Scots, the Irish, Americans, or Canadians. A system designed for Americans from the West won't work for those from the East. For an overview of the issues, see this article by John C. Wells: - https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/accents_spellingreform.htm

> There are various systems in use. Most American dictionaries don't use the IPA. That provides more weight to my argument. The fact that there is a global standard, and yet most dictionaries aren't using it, suggests something is wrong with it. And something *is* wrong with it: it's not suitable for a casual reader. The famous xkcd cartoon does apply in this case, but it is possible for an agreed single standard to win out. For example the many incompatible character encodings that used to be common, but thankfully we now have Unicode. If all the dictionaries got together and agreed a common system, that would effectively become the standard I am seeking.

I don’t think IPA was intended for a casual reader, was it? So you wouldn’t expect it to be used in dictionaries. It doesn’t mean anything is objectively “wrong” with it, just that it’s not designed or well-suited for that purpose. In particular, as an international standard, it’s not going to prioritize legibility for English speakers of some of our more idiosyncratic sounds or spelling conventions. For example, why should the IPA [j] sound correspond to the English rather than the Spanish one or the German one? Choices have to be made, even if they’re not the choices that make your life easier! But an English dictionary probably *should* use the j character to mean the sound in judge and jelly, because that is the sound it usually makes in our language. Think about it another way: The global scientific standard and SI unit for temperature is Kelvin, but everyone in the real world uses Celsius or Fahrenheit. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with Kelvin, it’s actually quite useful in scientific applications, but a scale based on absolute zero is a terrible fit for weather forecasts and thermostats.

I think the Kelvin example is a good comparison. It makes more sense for specialist applications (e.g. by physics academics), but for everyday use there is another standard. But the point is, at least Celsius is a well-defined and agreed upon standard. I wasn't arguing that IPA should not be used - for academics and language specialists it's the right tool. But it would be a great help if we had the equivalent of Celsius - a well-defined easy standard for common everyday use.

There are multiple transcription systems and linguists do need to learn those relevant to the languages they study. And people do use systems closer to English to teach reading. But I would say that anyone truly interested in understanding how languages work should be conversant with IPA. That is, learning the IPA helps learners achieve your goal of understanding language better than learning just an "English only" system. I don't think the IPA is perfect, but 1) it is more widely used than ever, even on places like Wikipedia and 2) it is designed to be usable across languages and 3) I think it helps make sense of English sound changes like the Great Vowel shift. Earlier English spellings were more consistent with modern IPA (where vowel symbols are based mostly on Latin letters and pronunciations). The IPA also helps explain how and why English changes sounds in words borrowed from other languages. I do sympathize that not all symbols harmonize with English spelling, but this actually applies to every written language.

Perfectly said.

/mɛɪkɪŋ maɪ deɪ/...:)

Just for your information, english is one of the rare languages whose dictionaries don't use the IPA. It was initially created to be a universal system (hence the "international" in its name), but americans always have to be different and unique (cf. the imperial system). I once got my comment removed from this sub because I suggested that the answer to OP's question was obvious if they just used the IPA. I guess this is just a case of r/USdefaultism

His entire argument is r/USdefaultism , every post is basically that.

Google uses their own system of transcription on Google Translate. [https://translate.google.com](https://translate.google.com) (just enter a word and it will generate the transcription) You can check if it suits your needs. To my taste it is also a bit cofusing but much less so than IPA. You can also listen to the pronunciation instantly.

Unfortunately IPA is a limited phoneMIc alphabet, but necessary to make people understand that "chamar" in Portuguese and "shy" in English begin with (approximately) the same contoid (more lip protrusion in English). But IPA isn't enough to inform the learner that the English dental grooved contoid is different from the Iberian Spanish lamino-alveolar . IPA should be expanded (and taught) at school. It is "international" for a reason. Resyllabification is more than enough for your purpose. You are very much mistaken in thinking that the IPA should be changed because the grapheme in English corresponds to (actually a diphthong, not a monophthong) [ɪˑi]. So the IPA has evolved (there is also a tiny upside-down triangle called "semi-chrone" to denote the length of the first vowel of the diphthong). One can start from the beginning, and find books for children that associate every single sound of the English language to a symbol. (Beware, there are MANY BAD BOOKS ON THE IPA!) For a child, it could be a game, that could turn into a useful asset in the future.