Sandbox/IPA Guide

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Of late, my attention has been drawn to people (Mostly over streams) butchering certain kanmusu names and foreign terms, which is completely understandable given the community's dominantly English-speaking/reading/writing background. However, this is even further enforced by the silly pronunciation used by many foreign ships. On account of this, I want to follow suit to many other English-based communities centered around foreign products/services/media by including IPA where possible.

The first issue with this, however, is that most users aren't immediately familiar with how to interpret IPA. For this reason, I am drafting a reference page that will be as concise as possible to help the average user.

Reasoning:

  • To sate users' curiosity regarding a certain name, term or phrase; I don't expect people to understand it everywhere possible, but with this reference most users should be able to tackle a a single bit of text without consuming too much time and without having to use multiple external resources.
  • To help prevent the mis-pronunciation of German lines in particular from being entrenched in users' minds.
  • Even if it isn't used extensively, as a wiki, accuracy is paramount.
  • The next time someone pronounces "Eugen" as /juːˈdʒiːn/ (ew-JEEN), I'm going to shatter a nearby window and scold a litter of new-born kittens.

A primary concern of mine is the IPA symbols being too conspicuous on pages; my desire is to have it appear only as scroll-over text for foreign terms (Other than those in JP...) under kanmusu quote sections. IPA could possibly be extended to kanmusu names as well inside their card templates, being displayed in a smaller font underneath their rōmaji names.

For these reasons, rather than a comprehensive IPA guide that extends beyond the scope of this wiki's needs, this will be directed exclusively at reproducing sounds in the context of the English language, in a similar manner to this.