I like it precisely because it is so autistic. Also learning the IPA is helpful, since now I can pronounce words without having to hear them, when for example reading Wikipedia articles or looking up stuff in dictionaries.
My main interests are phonetics, since that's the most "rigorous" part, but I also like etymology quite a lot, and I've got a decent interest in the other parts of linguistics as well. One fun fact that I now can express is that /k/ sometimes becomes /q/ for certain words, in the dialect spoken in my northern home region.
It is worth noting that the IPA chart is not complete. For example, the Swedish /y/ sounds lacks an IPA symbol, despite its importance to the language. It is distinct from both /i/ (which exists in Swedish) and /y/ (which doesn't), being a sound somewhere in between the two:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel#Close_front_protruded_vowelAnother fun fact about Swedish, which as far as I'm aware in unique among European languages, is that it has tonal meaning, in the same way that e.g. Mandarin does. So two words with the exact same IPA pronunciation, and stress, can mean different things depending on tone. It is of course much less prevalent than in Mandarin, but it is what gives Swedish its distinct sound, and is the single most difficult thing for learners of Swedish to get right. It also features heavily in compound words.
