On Spanish dictionary with International Phonetic Alphabet
Dear all,
I am taking formal Spanish lessons in school and I am looking for an online Spanish dictionary with IPA transcriptions. As I have prior training in IPA, I believe that learning Spanish with IPA would be a great aid in acquiring new language. If you have any good and reliable dictionary like dictionary.com to recommend, I would be more than glad to know.
Thank you
2 Answers
If you mean Spanish/English, you'll probably have problems. Most English speakers are monolingual and, of the few that aren't, most lack any formal training in linguistics/phonetics. Thus, although the use of IPA would be vastly preferable/simpler (and is widespread in Europe), English speakers seem (for the most part) to prefer bastardized, "pseudo English spellings" to indicate the pronunciation of foreign words. Perhaps they can't/don't want to accept the notion that the sounds of English are "inadequate" (when dealing with other languages) or perhaps they really feel that all those foreigners should "get their act together" and pronounce things the way we (English speakers) do.
On the other hand there are sites that do employ IPA (at least for individual sounds, if not for words, in general) e.g. phonetics. Given the regularity/consistency of Spanish pronunciation/orthography, this should be enough.
HI takash, welcome to the forum
I don't know what IPA is but have you had a look at our dictionary? If you double click on any word, it takes you directly to it
