Quote Originally Posted by Caelestion View Post
You think that offal and awful sound the same?
That is one of the accepted pronunciations, yeah:

/ˈôfəl,ˈäfəl/

It's the second of those two, and as it happens it's the default pronunciation that Google uses here in the US.

Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
For me:

Offal is "oh-full", awful is "awe-full".

Golf is "Gawlf".

Opera is "ah-perr-uh" (ah-purr-uh?).

Octopus is "ahk-toe-puss", or "ahk-tuh-puss" if I'm very tired.

Octavian would be "ahk-tave-ian".


Don't ask me to use IPA, the vowel system in that thing is a wretched mess missing half the vowel sounds I actually use (evidently they're "between sounds" / diphthongs, so use double-symbols... which seems very arbitrary given some of the sounds that they do give distinct symbols to... and every audio guide to IPA makes all the vowels sound like a stereotypical French guy from a Money Python sketch choking on a mouth full of marbles while trying to pronounce the sounds.
That's now 2 people objecting to one of the most useful linguistic tools in existence based on, as Xuc Xac explained, not understanding what it is for or how it works.

It's basically like walking up to a microscope, looking through the lens, and calling it worthless because you can't see anything. (Meanwhile you didn't add a slide and didn't turn on the light.)


---

On the IPA and weird mouth sounds:

Burps are not in the IPA. They aren't a speech sound. They aren't used to make words as part of legitimate communication. (Schoolyard antics aside, there is no language that requires speakers to be able to burp on command.)

The IPA is used to identify Phonemes. The building blocks that make up words. If you want to make a language consisting of strange sounds, be my guest.

I spent time amongst a group called the Nivakle while I was in Paraguay, and the Nivakle word for "yes" is just a sharp, audible inhale. It took me a while to normalize to myself that people weren't surprised, they just agreed with me. But that sound, if I recall correctly, is in the IPA, even though it is a rare sound, linguistically.

And the sputtering lips sound I am 100% certain is in the IPA due to a conlang video that discussed that sound and had its IPA symbol included.


In short:
Jeezum jones, there's a lot of armchair linguists trying to disprove or dismiss a major portion of linguistic science for... no apparent reason.