Universal International
Why doesn’t the International Phonetic Alphabet become the universal alphabet?
Wouldn’t this make it easier for us to learn languages that have different alphabets? I’m sure that it would be easier to learn Chinese using the phonetic alphabet than it is to learn Chinese using their writing system.
I realize that spelling is going to be different depending on the dialect you speak. Is that really a big issue though? I understand British people perfectly even though they pronounce words differently than I do.
No way! There are hundreds of homophones in Chinese that can only be distinguished by the fact that they are written with different characters. Writing Japanese with IPA would be difficult as well, kanji is an essential part of the language.
And then there’s the issue of how to spell the word with IPA, since each region of a given country has different ways of pronouncing things. Latin american Spanish loses some of the sounds in Spanish Spanish, and vice versa. Would we spell every single word differently depending on who the speaker is?
You would have to come up with a standardized spelling system, and then the point of IPA, being able to represent everything phonetically, is lost.
Above all, writing systems are a huge part of languages. If you were to make them the same, you will have gotten rid of a huge amount of culture and history. Though it may be “easier” for foreign students to learn new languages without learning new alphabets, it’s definitely not as rewarding.
The best thing (IMO) about the Chinese languages is the writing system. 汉子(chinese characters) are efficient, aesthetically pleasing, and just all around interesting.
Compare:
Characters: 大家好！ 我是一个美国人。
pinyin: Dà jiā hǎo. wǒ shì yī gè měiguórén.
Latin characters, when used with Chinese, look cumbersome and boring. So would IPA.
Edit: Even though you may understand a British person speaking, it would be harder to understand a text written with a different spelling system than you use. This is because a major part of word recognition is the way the shape of the word looks as a whole. The “shape” would differ depending on the speaker, and you would have to double or triple your vocabulary recognition in order to be able to fluently read any text written in any dialect of English.
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