Phonetic Alphabet?

[gothwalk]

What's the best way to go about learning the phonetic alphabet? I've just realised, trying to explain in text to a Canadian colleague, that trying to render a Northern Irish accent in the mundane alphabet is wholly impossible. The greeting that you'd write as "How's you?" gets mangled into "Hyee's yi-e?", and still doesn't convey either the sound or the fact that it sounds pleasant.

Comments

[silme.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know the best way to teach it. I learned some of the international phonetic alphabet back in high school when we were being taught some linguistics in Spanish. Did you know that are about six ways to say the letter 'm' in Spanish? Add an additional one for n, since it can have the tilde over it. I didn't know it either, and I think I've forgotten most of it since it was back in the '70s when I learned it, but it was a very useful way to learn how to say things correctly.