Fun fact: the "o" [in "lover"] sounding the same as the "u" in "cut" is actually an "a" in spanish.

As fun as that, also in italian. Though of course the British pronounciation of vowels is far from being as "clear cut" as in spanish or italian.

Not in my accent! I think you'll have to be more specific.

(both accents fairly neutral, English from England, Spanish from Spain)

That's curious. I have never heard the word "cut" being pronounced without the "a" sound (in the vecinity of how "cat" sounds in "category") by someone who had a neutral English accent. Where is it from?

...and this is why IPA was invented.

Indian pale ale?

Seems like this has upset some people.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ipa&oq=ipa&aqs=chrome.0.69i5...

First hit on Google is for India Pale Ales.

I always heard the phonetic alphabet referred to as the NATO phonetic alphabet. It doesn't seem very international given that it is entirely in English.

Also Russia has its own version https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_spelling_alphabet#:~....

So IPA is a bit of a misnomer I feel.

The International Phonetic Alphabet isn't just "Alpha, Bravo, Charlie"—in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with the NATO "Phonetic Alphabet", and anywhere you heard that referred to as the International Phonetic Alphabet was just simply wrong. It's an actual alphabet, designed to represent all the phonemes humans actually use in speech—not just in English.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabe...

Either way the acronym is ambiguous at best.

How is IPA ambiguous when talking about pronunciations of words?

If someone has no idea what IPA is, how are they supposed to figure it out when there's a bunch of other things that have the same acronym?

Also, ALL acronyms are ambiguous. That's why it's best practice to say the actual thing you're talking about then put the acronym next to it the first time it's used.

Well I googled IPA and the first Wikipedia hit (2nd result) was India Pale Ale, which is the acronym I am familiar with.

The first link was to https://ipa.co.uk Web results The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising: IPA

So I think calling it ambiguous is ok, you are if course free to disagree, but what I said wasn't fundamentally incorrect. But it seems like HN has a bee in its bonnet.