# IPA and phonetic respelling of non English words



## peter0095

Hello.

Please recommend a resource where an English speaker can see pronunciation of words in other than English language both in the 1) International Phonetic Alphabet and also in 2) phonetic respelling.

By phonetic respelling I mean this: computer [kuhm-pyoo-ter]

For example:

hora [?] (Spanish) - hour
poisson [?] (French) - fish

Thank you.


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## Yendred

For the IPA, Wiktionary is a good resource:
hora - Wiktionary
poisson - Wiktionary


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## Penyafort

I've only seen it in printed conversational guides.

For your examples, I'd say

hora [aw-rah]
poisson [pwah-sawn]

But these will always be poor in comparison to IPA because they're subjective and fail at proper indications. For instance, in the ones I wrote, I can't represent the Spanish r with a proper symbol (maybe a -t- would be better here if it was for American English speakers) and I couldn't represent the nasalized French o either, because that final n isn't really pronounced in French. So it will always be imperfect and very approximate.


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## merquiades

Penyafort said:


> I've only seen it in printed conversational guides.
> 
> For your examples, I'd say
> 
> hora [aw-rah]
> poisson [pwah-sawn]
> 
> But these will always be poor in comparison to IPA because they're subjective and fail at proper indications. For instance, in the ones I wrote, I can't represent the Spanish r with a proper symbol (maybe a -t- would be better here if it was for American English speakers) and I couldn't represent the nasalized French o either, because that final n isn't really pronounced in French. So it will always be imperfect and very approximate.


Berlitz conversation guides try to describe sounds.  They say awrah (r trilled as in Scottish dialect), pwahssong (ong should be pronounced in the nose like in local twang).


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## Delvo

Those non-IPA attempts at "phonetic" spellings would be no use. They use spelling conventions that are meant for Englishers so non-Englishers wouldn't already be familiar with them, they don't necessarily make the intended impressions even on some Englishers (for example, when I see a vowel followed by H, I tend to get a different vowel sound from that in my mind from the one the writer apparently intended), and they have some holes in the system that there just isn't any good solution for (like the lack of a way to spell the short "ŏ" as in "dog" without a consonant after it, resulting in trying to use "aw" for that instead, which is a different sound, not the one they're trying for).

IPA renditions tend to be based on the British RP/posh accent, which means making some false assertions for other accents, but at least it's not fundamentally unusable.


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## elroy

peter0095 said:


> both in the 1) International Phonetic Alphabet and also in 2) phonetic respelling


If you have 1), 2) is totally pointless. 
If you’ve read the original book, the abridged version is pointless.


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## Uncreative Name

I've never been a big fan of English phonetic respellings - for foreign words or English words.  English has so many dialect differences that it's impossible to give an accurate pronounciation in a "phonetic spelling" - should "short O" (like in "cot") be the same thing as the "AU" sound (like in "caught")?

For non-English words, the most obvious problem is that non-English sounds can't be represented.  English pronounciation guides for Mandarin words, for example, can't properly distinguish between Q [t͡ɕʰ] and CH [ʈ͡ʂʰ] (both are approximated as CH in phonetic respellings).  Respellings can be helpful, but IPA is much better overall.


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## Welsh_Sion

So-called 'imitated pronunciation' - one of my favourite bugbears:

https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p014h3j6.webp


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## dojibear

Uncreative Name said:


> I've never been a big fan of English phonetic respellings - for foreign words or English words. English has so many dialect differences that it's impossible to give an accurate pronounciation in a "phonetic spelling" - should "short O" (like in "cot") be the same thing as the "AU" sound (like in "caught")?


I agree, but the same problem exists (for English words) with IPA notation. IPA notation represents sounds, not phonemes. So it can only represent the sound of that word in one dialect of English.


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## merquiades

dojibear said:


> I agree, but the same problem exists (for English words) with IPA notation. IPA notation represents sounds, not phonemes. So it can only represent the sound of that word in one dialect of English.


That's why I like Webster's system. It's always clear. For short and long vowels you apply the sound you normally use.  Otherwise there is no reason why you cannot use sh, ch, and y etc. in English transcriptions


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