Help talk:IPA/Dutch/Archive 1

Pre-split Afrikaans-only discussions were moved to Help talk:IPA for Afrikaans.

Untitled

Thanks for creating this! I assume it's ok that Afrikaans links here as well?

Dutch [p], [t], [k] are never aspirated (or so I have read), so maybe non-aspirated English examples would be better too? Lfh (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I assembled this from what information I could cobble together from the rest of WP, which is sorely lacking in info on Afrikaans. I think Afrikaans has a very similar phonological system (though the particular phonetic values may differ), but I wasn't confident enough in what I could gather to explicitly include Afrikaans. Eventually we might need to do a two- or three-column setup to show how certain phonemes differ in the northern, southern (Flemish?), and Afrikaans standard languages (along the lines of IPA chart for English dialects, but much simpler).

Regarding your comment on my talk page: I'm actually quite terrible at doing example words. I tend to only think of cognates, and for the life of me I don't know what English sound best approximates a voiced velar fricative—and that's only the beginning of it. But if you're right and Dutch doesn't aspirate the plosives, examples from consonant clusters would probably be better. Cheers! — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, it says at Aspiration that "French, Dutch and Latvian are examples of languages that do not have aspirated consonants." This was also recently a topic at John C. Wells's blog, and there are sound files at Dutch phonology (though your ear may be better than mine for that).

As for approximations, I don't think one would be expected (or possible) for voiced velar fricative, but there are other sounds that are much closer to English despite having exotic symbols, e.g. ʃ. But you're right, examples are hard (and often controversial).

Anyway, keep up the good work. Lfh (talk) 19:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Presentation of diaphones

Are we doing a pan-dialectal representation like we do with English? Either way, it seems kind of confusing right now to list ɣ and ʝ separately for what is, essentially, the same phoneme. The same goes for w and ʋ, as well as ç and x. We could do something like this:

ɣ ~ ʝ	gaan
ç ~ x	acht	hue

Or we could do this

North	South	Examples	English approximation
b		biet	beet
x	ç	acht	hue

I'm just sort of thinking off the top of my head. What do you guys think? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I had a vague notion of figuring out how to do something like that, especially the last one (it looks so clean), until I got lazy and just submitted the thing. I was especially skittish about many of the Afrikaans phones (especially the vowels). I really wish there was a dedicated page for Afrikaans phonology, but the best we've got is this. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's see, according to Boersma (1997), Low German /ɣ/ stayed the same in most Low Franconian dialects though it is /ɦ/ in West Flemish, /x/ in most Low Saxon dialects, /χ/ in Holland Dutch and Afrikaans. Lass (1984) says that Dutch [ɑ] and [aː] correspond to Afrikaans [ɐ] and [ɑː], respectively (p76). He also lists the vowels of Afrikaans to be [i u ə ɛ œ ɔ ɐ yː ɛː ɔː ɑː] (p 93) as well as a diphthong [ɵu] (as in hout, 'wood') though the list of diphthongs may not be exhaustive. Afrikaans shares Dutch's checked and free vowel system (that is, only long vowels and diphthongs can occur in stressed syllables with zero coda).

There's also this gem.

Is that helpful?— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: could you post the full name of Boersma (1997) and Lass (1984)? I want to improve Afrikaans phonology (and later, of course, Dutch phonology.) — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 19:40, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Boersma (1997) is "Sound change in functional phonology" which can be found here. Lass (1984) is "Vowel system universals and typology" which can be accessed here or, if you don't have access Phonology articles in any database, I can email a pdf to you. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:58, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the first link. You can e-mail me the second pdf as indeed, I can't access it. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 21:15, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Might be helpful

Happy to see you guys working on this! At some point in the past I tried to create this [1]. I'm not sure if it's all correct but maybe it could be helpful for you. --Hooiwind (talk) 19:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

zone

"zone" is given as an example for [ɪː], [ʏː] AND [ɔː] - presumably needs to be fixed? Lfh (talk) 11:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I see they've been removed. So, would heer, deur and voor, respectively, work for these vowels? Lfh (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Suriname

I added a separate column for Suriname since Dutch is the official language and a first language for about two thirds of its inhabitants. Pronunciation differs considerably from European Dutch, both for <g> and <ch>, <r>, <w>, etc, and for the vowels, which are pronounced way more sharply. --Hooiwind (talk) 17:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

What we're trying to do is have as few different systems as we need. When you added a separate column, the only difference between Flemish indicated for the consonants was the merger of <ch> and <g>, which doesn't seem different enough to call for a separate transcription. What are the other different pronunciations? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Jean-Luc Dehaene

I don't know Dutch, but when I listen to the recording of his name, I hear [lYk] and not [lyk], which is what's transcribed. Which is correct? 86.205.30.114 (talk) 01:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If the orthography is any indicator, it should be as I've corrected it. Is his first name really pronounced with a nasal a as in French? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 05:00, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

His name is pronounced a couple of times in this video: [2]. It sounds like a nasal vowel. 86.205.30.114 (talk) 19:03, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

It does indeed. Perhaps we should put nasal a in the marginal vowels table. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

I added nasal vowels from genre and hautain to the table (stealing the IPA symbols from the French pronunciation on wiktionary, adding a colon because I think they are pronounced long in Dutch (I do anyway...)). I think the nasal "on" should be added as well, but I could only think of Flemish dialectical words as examples (like "chignon" (dotje) and "cornichon" (augurk)), so I'm not sure if there is any Standard Dutch word containing that vowel. The IPAlink template didn't seem to work, so I left it off... 94.224.49.243 (talk) 09:33, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Confusing examples

I think the English examples are rather confusing because they do not indicate which of the three possibile pronunciations they represent. For example the w in the Dutch/Afrikaans word wang is given the English approximation wing but that must be one of the Dutch dialects, because in Afrikaans it is like v in English violet. It's especially bad when it comes to the vowels, as they are mostly different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.72.129 (talk) 22:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

There's a problem with the fiets, ver, hawe examples because it is contradictory. The Dutch IPA sounds v and f are only sometimes merged together as f in Afrikaans. This is the case with words that are spelt with a /v/ or /f/ in Afrikaans, eg the fiets and ver examples. However in other cases there isn't a merging and the IPA v is preserved. In that case the word is spelt with a /w/ in Afrikaans, for example hawe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.72.129 (talk) 10:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Another confusing example is that of the English equivalent for the vowel in môre, which is given as ɔː. The English equivalent given is "God (but longer)", which in my dialect would yield the father vowel. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to give "caught" as the example? 76.168.105.6 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC).

To add to what I wrote above, if the vowel in diep does not have the length of the one in deep, then wouldn't the vowel on the end of treaty be more appropriate? Also, for the Afrikaans pronunciation of the vowel in beet, why is "fear" given? For speakers who have the feet-feat merger but lack the chair-cheer merger, wouldn't this be confusing? It seems to me that "bear" would be better.76.168.105.6 (talk) 03:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what dialect that is but I've never heard an English dialect that pronounces "bear" with a sound like the ee vowel of Afrikaans. To me, the vowel in "bear" sounds like the vowel in the Afrikaans word "hê" (to have), which sounds like the English word "hair".

I'm not a Dutch speaker, but as far as I know, the vowel ɛi is not pronounced as in the English "May". It's much closer to "my", I think. Kbk (talk) 23:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

In Afrikaans this sound is pronounced pretty much exactly as in the English "May": the Afrikaans words "my" (me/my) and "Mei" (the month of May) sound the same as they English words May (the month) and may.

Diep - Deep

The dutch Diep isn't pronounced the same as the english Deep. The dutch ie is shorter than the english ee. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.163.197.169 (talk) 11:17, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

It's the closest approximation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 12:21, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

How about the `ie' in `series' for a slightly better approximation, or even better, the second `i' in `critique'? More serious is the approximations of `eu', `ij' (and `ei' (same sound)), and `ui'. These don't sound like `boy', `more' or `May' at all (in Dutch, don't know about Afrikaans), or like anything I know of in English. Also, the `oe' in `hoed' is similarly short, so I'll at least fix `boot' to `good'. MarSch (talk) 12:33, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Deep, series, and critique all have the same vowel for me.

I think nurse would be better than more, but otherwise I can't think of better examples. Got any ideas? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 12:41, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Dutch-Flemish-Afrikaans

Hi, could this article be called IPA for Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans? :) In Belgium Dutch is commonly called Vlaams (Flemish) instead of Southern Dutch :) Jaume87 (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

No rather not, as Dutch is the official language of Belgium. "Flemish" is not used in any official nor linguistic context, especially within Belgium itself. (You cannot compare it to the situation of "Valencian", which is Catalan in all but its name.) --Hooiwind (talk) 17:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd say no, but for the opposite reason that Hooiwind states. Flemish is often considered a form of Dutch (whether it's more or less similar to other varieties than Valencian and Catalan isn't that important). Thus, even though we encode for it, it's encapsulated in the "Dutch" part of the title. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

R and pre-R vowels

The R is not pronounced rolling everywhere. In Belgium, a more French-like R somewhere in the throat is very common as well, and in Holland a more English-like R seems to be used when the R is followed by another consonant. And I've heard Dutchmen use a throat-R as well. I think the vowel modification in 'deur', 'heer' en 'voor' due to the R, is solely a Northern Dutch feature (probably caused by the English-like R they use). There may be some dialects in Belgium where an R influences a preceding vowel, but certainly not in the way described in the table. As far as I know, we (Flemings) normally just pronounce those vowels the same way as in 'deuk', 'heel' en 'voogd'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.190.253.146 (talk) 11:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Since no one reacted to this issue for over a year, I figured nobody disagrees, so I added a Flemish column for these words. I didn't know what to do with the "found in loanwords" footnote at "voor". I'm guessing that it's about words like "roze", which is pronounced exactly the same way as "roos" by most Flemings, so it could go with the same Dutch/Flemish distinction. I moved the rhotic footnotes from the example words to the Northern Dutch column, because they are only applicable for Northern Dutch. 94.224.49.243 (talk) 09:29, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Why is it that the English approximation of R highlighted the letter 't' in 'water' instead of the 'r'? Keffertje08 (talk) 12:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:54, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Alright, strictly speaking, it's the approximation of r rather than R which highlights the English 't'. I came here to learn pronunciation of "Rijndael" but the table seems to mislead me: it would have me pronounce an English 't' at the beginning of that word, but I'm unable to find any other reference that has this word beginning with 't' instead of 'r'. Someone changed the table to 'r' on 21 December 2102 and you (Aeusoes1) immediately swatted that down; would you explain? Based on the one word that drew me here, 't' appears to be incorrect and I'd like to understand the apparent discrepancy/conflict. 50.73.45.97 (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

The table is using an intervocalic /t/ to approximate Dutch /r/, because in North American (and Australasian) accents this is usually [ɾ]—see intervocalic alveolar flapping for more background. Not an ideal approximation, for several reasons, but I don't know how to improve it. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 01:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I've got it now. I usually pronounce water with a crisp/sharp t as in tom or tickle, but I do know many who make more of a d sound in the middle of water. Apparently the latter is the one that's intended for this example. 50.73.45.97 (talk) 16:58, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Unnecessary notes

I am taking attention to reducing the number of footnotes in some of these IPA for X pages. These pronunciation keys are designed primarily for readers wanting to understand the language-specific IPA transcriptions they encounter in Wikipedia articles. We shouldn't swamp them with irrelevant details. Because this information may still be pertinent to the project, I have duplicated the notes below rather than try to find a place for them. This is irrespective of whether I think these claims are true or whether they are sourced. I will leave it to other editors to move the information to the appropriate article space or check that it already is. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 01:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• The lateral /l/ is velarized to [ɫ] postvocalically (and may even be vocalized by certain speakers).
• /eː/, /oː/, and /øː/ are pronounced as long monophthongs in Belgium, and as narrow closing diphthongs [eɪ], [oʊ], [øʏ] in the Netherlands.

Raf Simons

Can someone check whether the vowel is i or ɪ. There is a pronunciation of Forvo.

It is /i/. In Dutch, the letter i is always pronounced /i/ in an open syllable. And as the name Simons can be broken down into the two syllables si and mons, the former is an open syllable and therefore pronounced /si/. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 10:03, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Reversion

I undid quite a few of these changes, because:
- according to both the OED and Merriam-Webster, the u in curriculum is pronounced [jʊ]. This is not an approximation of Dutch [ʏ] or Afrikaans [œ];
- the pronunciation of Eng feud does not quite approximate Dutch fuut. The former is pronounced [fjuːd] and the latter [fyt];
- the vowel in Eng foot is not the same as the vowel in Dutch voet. The former is a near-close near-back vowel while the latter is a close back rounded vowel. The previous example boot (pronounced [buːt]) was therefore much better. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 13:07, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

These "Between vowel x and vowel y" attempts aren't helpful to readers, since people aren't normally able to approximate vowel space like that. The approximations aren't equivalents, so they're not going to be perfect. If those aren't close enough, we could simply say "no English equivalent" but if we can do it for German and French, we can do it for Dutch.

I'm somewhat neutral to the boot/foot issue, since there isn't a perfect equivalent for the Dutch vowel. It's short, like the vowel of foot but it's closer to the quality of boot. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that descriptions such as "between feed and food" will not be of much use to many readers, but I think attempting to 'solve' this by adding examples like "feud" is the wrong way to go at it. The eu sound in feud is quite unlike the u sound in fuut; saying that the approximation is "not perfect" is quite the understatement. The sound in "feud" is much more like the sound in the Dutch word "sjoelen" than the sound in "fuut". I'd rather go with your suggestion of saying that there's no English equivalent. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 09:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

What if we said "roughly like"? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 12:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Dutch transcriptions on Wikipedia are messed up

Hello. We want to do something with the pronunciations in here. The recordings on articles are often far from "standard Dutch", and yet any additional transcriptions are being DELETED as non-standard. Wait a second, if the transcription of the audio file is non-standard, then the file should be deleted as well. Re-record the standard Dutch version of it or don't complain about two transcriptions.

For instance, we've got an article Nijmegen. There's a standard Dutch transcription there [ˈnɛi̯.ˌmeː.ɣə(n)] ^ⓘ. And then, we've got a recording on the right, which CLEARLY is non-standard. It has IJ with a lowered onset, a clear diphthong in ME, and a voiceless uvular fricative in G [ˈnæi̯.ˌmeɪ̯.χə(n)].

We've got also this guy constantly deleting anything that doesn't look standard Dutch, but doesn't bother at all about checking whether the recording matches the transcription. In most cases (not many, most) it does not.

Is it really what we want here? Confusion? I thought this was all about clarity.

We need to add Polder Dutch diphthongs to this article. We've already got these for EE [eɪ] EU [øʏ] and OO [oʊ], but we also need the ones for AU/OU [au], EI/IJ [æi] and UI [ɐy] or perhaps [ɶy] to show that the onset is rounded. We also should allow to transcribe both /ɣ/ and /x/ as [χ].

The best would be to have it like this: Standard Dutch | Belgian Dutch | Polder Dutch | Afrikaans. Since Standard Dutch and Belgian Dutch are very similar, in many places they would share the same vowels. We'd also add monophthongal pronunciations of AU/OU [ɔː], EI/IJ [ɛː] and UI [œː]. Last but not least, we need people to stop deleting the regional pronunciations from the articles. ESPECIALLY if they match the recordings! It's insane. They're linked anyway to IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans, and people confused by regional pronunciations can match the vowels with the standard ones. Or we can transcribe both standard and regional forms. By saying regional I mean the most common (but non-standard) Polder and Belgian realisations, the ones above.

Not to mention that if that guy were editing Portuguese articles with his philosophy, he'd be kicked out from Wikipedia within seconds. I think "Neither Dutch variant is preferred over the other at Wikipedia except in cases where a local pronunciation is clearly more relevant, such as a place in Netherlands or a Belgian artist." must be added here. And transcribing both standard and polder pronunciations, especially if there's a recording of the second one, but the best would be "always", must be possible. Otherwise we're massively missing the point, and causing a lot of confusion.

Let's finally bring clarity to Dutch pronunciation and recordings here. It's a bloody mess now. Thanks for reading.

--89.79.88.109 (talk) 20:21, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about adding Polder Dutch. We've got three varieties based more-or-less on three separate nations with their own standards. This seems like an adequate criteria for inclusion, not whether a dialect exists.

For the time being, the best idea is to have these "non standard" transcriptions of Dutch placed beside the standard ones. For example, [ˈnɛiˌmeːɣə(n)] local pronunciation: [ˈnæiˌmeɪχə(n)] ^ⓘ. Note that I've corrected the transcriptions to remove unnecessary diacritics that aren't explained here and shouldn't be in our Dutch transcriptions. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 20:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but we've already got a half-polder Netherlandic collumn. There used to be a note, something along the lines of "Transcription [eɪ] [oʊ] [øʏ] is non-standard and is used here for the sake of clarity" Well, [au] [æi] [ɶy] is non-standard also, and could as well be used for the sake of clarity, since it's "South" collumn which is at the moment closer to the standard pronunciation. Maybe excluding [ɔu], but this (or perhaps it's better to transcribe it as [ɒu]) is also used in the Netherlandic "Posh" Dutch. And the thing is, in Nijmegen noone would pronounce it like I transcribed it. That's the thing. They would produce something like [ˈnɛːˌmeːxən], if I remember correctly. The vowels and the "g" are for sure like this, but I'm not sure how they go about pronouncing final /ən/. But it's the recording that pronounces a Polder variant [ˈnæiˌmeɪχə(n)]. It would be the best to have a native standard Dutch speaker, who has dialect-neutral (non-regional, standard, whatever you want to call it) [eː] [oː] [øː] [ɛi] [ʌu] [œy] in his vowel inventory to pronounce Dutch names here. But that guy who pronounces Nijmegen has done a massive work on pronouncing Dutch on Wikipedia. It would suck big time to replace all of this. Yes, I know it's irrelevant here. But I'm saying it anyway. Not to mention how much work it would cost to do it. One thing's for sure - what's present now causes one hell of a confusion for many Dutch learners.--89.79.88.109 (talk) 21:25, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I think adding a separate column for 'Polder Dutch' would be a very bad idea indeed. It assumes that 'Polder Dutch' has a certain notability amongst Dutch accents, which it doesn't have. The fact that recordings of word pronunciations often have a nonstandard pronunciation may be unfortunate, but it's not a reason to introduce nonstandard pronunciations into this table. Neither is the argument that it's confusing for learners of the Dutch language: Wikipedia is not a language learning website. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 22:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Then the pronunciations need to be re-recorded by standard Dutch speakers. It's not only often, it's very often. Whenever a word contains a stressed EE EU OO EI/IJ AU/OU UI you can be almost sure it won't be pronounced standard way in here. You say that it would be a bad idea to introduce a new column. Ok, but there are already Polder Dutch diphthongs for EE EU OO. Do you know any speaker that diphthongizes EE EU OO, but leaves AU/OU EI/IJ UI untouched (meaning: pronounces it exactly as in standard Dutch)? That would be a very strange accent, because these diphthongs would simply be too close to each other. What's presented now is confusing. Not to mention those recordings. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 22:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a serious problem to have recordings that grossly mismatch the transcriptions in ways that are both perceivable by readers and salient in regards to dialectal or sociolectal differences. I'm in favor of removing such recordings from the template that links here, possibly even entirely from articles. However, something like that can be pretty contentious so we would need to get a broader consensus than is available here. Perhaps one of the Wikiprojects related to the Netherlands? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 23:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah if we can get more people to discuss this it would be perfect. However I don't know which project exactly would that be. You're a lot longer on Wikipedia than me, so feel free to post the most important parts of my message(s) whenever you feel is the best.

Still - what should we do about [eɪ] [oʊ] [øʏ] [ɛi] [ʌu] [œy] in this article? It's only partially right. If one diphthongizes /eː/ /oː/ /øː/ one also MUST change the quality of /ɛi/ /ʌu/ /œy/. Whether it's changing by lowering the onset, removing the second vowel (monophthongization), or both. There's no dialect that has [eɪ] [oʊ] [øʏ] [ɛi] [ʌu] [œy] - it's plain impossible. Those are too close to each other.--89.79.88.109 (talk) 23:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Dutch phonology says that /eː/ /oː/ /øː/ "behave phonologically like the other simple vowels." That leads me to believe that the monophthongal pronunciations are the way to go. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Now that the guide is changed, the hard work comes in checking all the transcriptions to make sure they conform. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 15:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Should we use /ɫ/ and /./ or not? And I don't know what to do about assimilations. V and Z are "weak", which means they themselves are always devoiced (both in standard language and (almost?) all dialects) when preceeded by a voiceless consonant. For example Hoek van Holland is pronounced Hoek fan Holland, but when it's pronounced Hoek (pause) van (pause) Holland, the "v" is voiced again. It's just like lenition in Spanish. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 16:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Since we only have /l/, we should turn any instance of [ɫ] to [l]. It's non-contrastive, right?

Other style guides only use the period (.) to mark a vowel hiatus. This means we don't need to mark diphthongs with any awkward diacritics. I say that's how we should do it here.

I trust your judgment with voicing assimilation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for the help. I'll try to fix at least some of the pronunciations. But what about those recordings? We need to sort them out soon too, but of course not without agreement with more users than us two. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 17:13, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

This guy, who calls himself an admin, has obvious problems to convert letters and symbols into any meaning in his head, nevermind check them where he should. He was reverting my IPA fix on this page (check the revision history since 15 August 2012) about 2 weeks ago, and now he uses my argument - IPA must match WP:IPA for Dutch, when I have fixed it to be so! Because now it does not match. There's /ən/ while it should be /ə(n)/ (pronouncing both [ə] and [ən] for /ən/ is perfectly acceptable in standard Dutch, it's just that most dialects don't pronounce the /n/ and some do), */h/ while it should be /ɦ/ (it does exist in Dutch, but in the standard variant just as allophone of /ɦ/ after voiceless consonants, and both /ə/ and /n/ are voiced), and */uː/ which doesn't exist anywhere in Dutch, but before /r/, as an allophone of /u/ (in which case it can be a centering diphthong [uə̯] instead). Not to mention him removing my transcription of "Antonie van". I've never seen such an abuse of admin power. This guy should be deprived from his rights, he's ruining this site. This is plain insane. He was also telling me before to "source the IPA", but the current IPA is not sourced either. It's plain wrong and DOESN'T match the bloody WP:IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans, as he started to claim yesterday. I've already reported him (click here), if anyone wants to help, I'd be grateful. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 11:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Shame on you both for edit warring instead of bringing the issue up here sooner. I can get behind the ə(n) format, though I want to be clear about something: if any final /n/ is optionally/dialectally deleted or if the deletion is otherwise the result of an easy-to-apply phonological rule, then I'd say keep out the parentheses with an explanatory note here. That's how we deal with final r in English. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:09, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

English approximations

I think it's somewhat weird to have 3 columns for different pronunciations in Holland/Flanders/SA, and then approximating all these pronunciations with 1 English word. It would make more sense to split up the approximation column as well, although of course that would clutter the page... 94.224.49.243 (talk) 09:36, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Stress footnote

"When the penultimate syllable is open, stress may fall on any of the last three syllables. When the penultimate syllable is closed, stress falls on either of the last two syllables." This seems to be plain nonsense to me. E.g. in "avonden", the penultimate syllable is closed, but the stress falls on the first. Also, I think it's unclear what is meant by "minimal pairs" and "secondary stress", and whether these concepts are relevant there. 94.224.49.243 (talk) 09:44, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

W in Belgium

I think it's curious that the IPA symbol for the Flemish pronunciation of 'w' is 'w', since this is also the symbol for the French pronunciation, but one of the characteristics of a French accent in Dutch is the funny pronunciation of the letter 'w', so I guess there must be a better symbol to denote the Flemish pronunciation. I think the Flemish w is something like a very short /y/, whereas the French w is more of a short /u/. Perhaps β̞ (the bilabial approximant) might be closer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.164.106.200 (talk) 19:42, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

I see this is also the symbol used in Wikipedia (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp). I think I'm going to change this right away on the page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.164.106.200 (talk) 19:44, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

The use of β̞ in Flanders is also confirmed by the already-present footnote for w. 81.164.106.200 (talk) 19:47, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Dutch phonology seems to back you up, though there's a certain amount of phonetic imprecision in these Help:IPA for X pages. More importantly, because these are designed for readers in mind, we shouldn't change the transcription guide without also changing the transcriptions themselves. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 21:43, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Well the thing is, while I'm not 100% sure that /β̞/ is the right symbol, I'm pretty sure /w/ is wrong. So I guess a replacement for /w/ needs to be found and indeed needs to replace it here and in article pages. I'm sure there's some automatic way to do this. Also, while I think it's wise to find out first what is the right symbol (and I wouldn't know where to find that out), I think the arguments you bring up to leave it as is, are a bit surprising. It seems that you see an overall imprecision in IPA help pages as a reason to maintain (and restore?) existent errors, and that you take the erratic transcriptions in the articles as a reason to maintain the same error here as well. This page serves as a guide for new transcriptions, so I guess this page should be as accurate as possible any time, regardless of what transcriptions are floating around on Wikipedia? 81.164.106.200 (talk) 22:14, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

β̞ or β would be more phonetically correct. That doesn't necessarily make w "wrong" but I'm not really that passionate either way. AFAIK, there's no automated way to change it, but if a meat-user sets their mind to it, they can slog through the ~1500 articles pretty quickly (since it would only be the pages with a w in the article name that even need to be looked at). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:02, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Free vowels: double e

I disagree with this line as it stands: "eː eə beet, ezel mate; fair (Af.)". The Dutch and Afrikaans double e are not pronounced the same way. I think the Dutch sounds more like the "a" in "mate" while the Afrikaans is more like a long "e" plus a short "a", e.g. like the "ee" in "beer". Please can someone more knowledge than me in IPA correct this? Thanks in advance. Helen (talk) 12:20, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

The vowel of beer, in the non-rhotic dialects you're probably familiar with, would be [ɪə], in my own dialect of American English, it's more like [iər]. Meanwhile, the vowel of fair in Received Pronunciation is [ɛə]. So you can see that it's a tricky issue, with no English vowel perfectly lining up with the Afrikaans one. Different speakers, depending on dialect, are likely to pick different vowels as approximating the Afrikaans one. IMHO, the current example is more accurate for more people. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 14:11, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't know Afrikaans, but maybe layer (/leɪə/) is a good approximation for eə? 12:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks but it does not sound similar (there is no a sound in it at all). Helen (talk) 16:17, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

The only problem with layer is that it is often pronounced as two syllables /leɪ.ər/. Still, it might be closer to the Afrikaans vowel than either beer or bear. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 17:59, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I imagine this doesn't have a direct equivalent in American English, although British (and presumably non-rhotic American) "beer" comes very close. That seems like the best version to me, as at least it's reasonably accurate. 195.171.114.69 (talk) 17:10, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

Got it (I hope). How about "rhea"? That should work in most versions of English. I have been bold and changed it... 195.171.114.69 (talk) 17:13, 6 November 2014 (UTC)

pronunciation of Netherlandish single "u"

In the language of the (Northern and Southern) Netherlands, which I prefer to call Netherlandish, the single "u" (like in hut) is practically pronounced as a schwa. Originally the single "u" was pronounced more like a German ö: the Netherlandish verb kunnen (can) sounded like the German verb können. Amand Keultjes (talk) 01:08, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

common misconceptions on differences in pronunciation of the letter a in both Netherlandish and English

Due to the global sound quality (Northern and Southern) Netherlandish people tend to think that the English a in man sounds like their e in "men" (meaning one (pronoun)). In fact the English single a in man is more similar to the Netherlandish double aa in "maan" (meaning moon), but it is not perceived this way, because the English single a is a short vowel, whereas the Netherlandish double aa is a long vowel. NB Netherlandish double aa changes often to a single a for spelling reasons: the plural of "maan" is "manen", both with the same double aa vowel sound. Similarly Netherlandish people also tend to think that their double aa vowel sound like in "aar" (ear (part of cereal plant)) sounds like the English are, because they both are long vowels, but actually "aar" is pronounced like the a in the English man, albeit long instead of short. Amand Keultjes (talk) 01:09, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Ayuda?

For the example of ɣ, it is given:

roughly like Spanish rasgo ~ ayuda

In my Spanish they are very different. I don't know Dutch pronunciation but I can believe the rasgo example. However ayuda seems wrong, unless you are talking about a very specific dialect (Rioplatense Spanish?) --Error (talk) 21:12, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Pronounciation of ɛi

The English approximation of ɛi is lister as may. To me as a Dutch person that seems like a bad approximation. A better one would be bite, hide, cypher einstein or ride — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.81.221.47 (talk) 20:35, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

"aCHt" and "Gaan"

The section about these pronunciations in Dutch is utterly wrong and overly complicated.

First of all, there are absolutely no such phonemes in any of the Dutch variants as ç or ʝ (except maybe in the Northern Dutch pronunciation of the letter t in "een beeTje", but that's a whole other matter). Quite striking that this "guide for pronouncing Dutch" has been this far off from reality for all this time, and I wonder how these very foreign sounding phonemes (to native Dutch speakers' ears) have ended up in this list.

The reality is that Northern Dutch just like Afrikaans does not distinguish between aCHt/daG on the one side and Gaan on the other. Even more, they use the exact same pronunciation for both: the phoneme χ. Southern Dutch speakers do make the distinction though, and pronounce aCHT/daG as x, and Gaan as ɣ.

Could anyone please implement these crucial corrections in the table? The comparisons with "rasgo" and "ayuda" are pure nonsense as well, this can simply be deleted. Additionally, someone could create a robot to ban ç and ʝ from all Dutch transcriptions on Wikipedia.

Still no reaction ... why do other entries get reactions and this one does not? This is supposed to be a guideline for many pages and it is completely incorrect. Why not implementing these corrections in the table? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.174.2.157 (talk) 22:46, 27 October 2014 (UTC)

Current state of this guide is unacceptable

Hello. If we're going to keep Northern and Southern Dutch columns separate, we have to implement the following changes:

• We shouldn't pretend that Northern Dutch distinguishes /ɣ/ from /x/ when majority of speakers realize both as [χ]. We need to transcribe these two with one symbol - /χ/.
• We shouldn't transcribe Southern Dutch /ɣ/ and /x/ as if they were palatal - they are either velar or post-palatal. The latter pronunciation is least common in the south-west, where [ɦ] and [h] are used.
• We shouldn't transcribe Northern /eː, oː, øː/ as such, because most speakers of Northern Standard Dutch pronounce those as diphthongs [eɪ, oʊ, øʏ]. I propose that we transcribe these as /eɪ, oʊ, øʏ/.
• /ɛi/ and /œy/ (especially the last one) are not accurate transcriptions of the Northern pronunciations. We need to change them to /æi/ and /ɐy/.
• The only available texts to choose from in the IPA-nl template should be "Northern Dutch( pronunciation):", "Belgian Dutch( pronunciation):" (or: "Southern Dutch( pronunciation):") and "Afrikaans( pronunciation):". We should remove "Dutch( pronunciation:)" in order not to confuse readers. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 11:16, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Bibliography

• Collins, Beverley; Mees, Inger M. (2003), The Phonetics of English and Dutch, Fifth Revised Edition (PDF), ISBN 9004103406
• Gussenhoven, Carlos (1999), "Dutch", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 74–77, ISBN 0-521-65236-7
• Gussenhoven, Carlos; Aarts, Flor (1999), "The dialect of Maastricht" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 29 (02): 155–166, doi:10.1017/S0025100300006526
• Heijmans, Linda; Gussenhoven, Carlos (1998), "The Dutch dialect of Weert" (PDF), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 28: 107–112, doi:10.1017/S0025100300006307
• Peters, Jörg (2010), "The Flemish–Brabant dialect of Orsmaal–Gussenhoven", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 40 (2): 239–246, doi:10.1017/S0025100310000083
• Rietveld, A.C.M.; Van Heuven, V.J. (2009), Algemene Fonetiek, Uitgeverij Coutinho
• Sweet, Henry (1877), A Handbook of Phonetics, pp. 139–140
• Verhoeven, Jo (2005), "Belgian Standard Dutch", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35 (2): 243–247, doi:10.1017/S0025100305002173
• Verhoeven, Jo (2007), "The Belgian Limburg dialect of Hamont", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (2): 219–225, doi:10.1017/S0025100307002940

Discussion

Because there are distinct differences between northern and southern Dutch, it makes sense to separate them. An then, we should, of course, be accurate, and so make those changes to this guide. I'm not sure that changing Template:IPA-nl like that will necessarily be helpful. As for the flags used in this guide, it is important to note that the general southern Dutch phonetics is also used in the south of the Netherlands, not only in Belgium. --JorisvS (talk) 11:35, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the input - flags removed. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 11:51, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

I disagree with this change. Dutch dialects are a lot more complicated than a simple "north" versus "south" split. We should use the phonemes presented on Dutch phonology, which are abstracted from all dialects. This page should not have separate northern and southern columns. If we do want to separate out dialectal pronunciations, at least we should be consistent and include all of them. CodeCat (talk) 13:54, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

That's a good proposition. The problem with including all dialectal pronunciations (you probably weren't really serious about this) is not only a great variety of vowel realizations, but also free variation. But I agree that we should either remove the north/south split or, if we keep it, adjust the symbols to make them match the actual pronunciation more closely. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 14:06, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Here at Peter's invitation. For most languages (Spanish, French, Mandarin, etc.), we use generic (pan-dialectal) pronunciations, optionally adding local pronunciations as well, though there is often a tug-of-war over e.g. encoding Spanish yeismo. I'd advocate the same for Dutch, making all the phonemic distinctions that we are able to source, as we do for English.

If we change the conventions in the key, someone needs to go through and update all the transclusions of the template to match. I used to do that, but no longer have the time. — kwami (talk) 19:51, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

One thing to keep in mind is the balance between phonetic precision and conventions in the literature. If we're going diaphonemic, we may need to simply pick a standard that other varieties are derivable from (as we do with Spanish). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:33, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

The phonemes on the phonology page should suffice for that. There are some dialectal differences, in particular when it comes to the descendants of Middle Dutch ē/ō and ê/ô. But this distinction was never taught in any schools that I'm aware of, and it's not really considered part of standard Dutch. Dutch dialects are in a kind of limbo that way. They're not really acknowledged as being "Dutch" nor are they spoken to anyone except another local, but they're not considered full languages either. In the media and in non-local/city conversations, it's always the more "standard" variety. This standard variety may have some slightly different realisations of the phonemes depending on the speaker, but the phonemes themselves (that is, which ones there are and which are used in each word) are more or less standardised. CodeCat (talk) 02:26, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

A diaphonemic presentation could work. The difference in phonemic inventory between northern and southern varieties (barring possible exceptions) is that in northern varieties the voiced and voiceless fricatives have merged. By presenting a distinction and only noting that these have merged in (most?) northern varieties (as voiceless fricatives) would be sufficient. Moreover, we could then also note that the (voiceless) velar fricative is usually uvular. As for the vowels, we could just use one symbol for each of the phonemes and note the most important differences in actual realization. This way, we could do away with separate columns for northern and southern without deleting information. As for markedly non-standard varieties, we could simply note their existence and possibly refer an article about it. --JorisvS (talk) 10:57, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

It's not as simple. Yes, labiodental and velar fricatives are mostly voiceless in the north (giving [f] and [χ]), but the /s/ - /z/ contrast seems to be maintained by many speakers. I'm also not sure how widespread is the /ɦ/-devoicing. I think that non-standard local dialects, unless they have the same amount of phonemes as Standard Dutch (like Haags, which is essentially Standard Dutch spoken with a strong regional accent), are not worth mentioning here. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 11:38, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

For those who devoice the fricatives, /z/ is also devoiced, but in a good number of varieties the contrast is indeed maintained. Maybe it becomes a distinction of apical vs. laminal? --JorisvS (talk) 12:33, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Still, I'm not so sure. Complete neutralisation of voicing in fricatives is typical in Amsterdam and Nijmegen. It's not an either-or issue. Here's what Gussenhoven (1999:74) says: "More generally, the southern varieties tend to have a full set of voiced fricatives /v, z, ɣ/ by the side of /f, s, x/ - which system of voiced fricatives is reduced to just /v, z/ or just /z/ as one gets closer to the prestigious western part of the Netherlands ('Randstad'). (There is great variability in the voicing of fricatives. Low-prestige urban varieties in the west may also lack /z/.)" And here's what Collins & Mees (2003:48) say: "The oppositions in Dutch are less clear in the fricative series. In the Netherlands, hardly any [Standard Dutch] speakers appear to maintain a consistent contrast between /x – ɣ/ in pairs such as lachen and vlaggen. Many Netherlands speakers (including [Standard Dutch]) also lack a true /f – v/ contrast (except perhaps in their formal speech). In some accents, e.g. Amsterdam, /s/ and /z/ are not distinguished. In Belgium, the situation is different and all these contrasts are far more stable." According to both Gussenhoven (1999:75) and Collins & Mees (2003:189–202), only /r/ can be apical in Dutch. The rest of the coronals are laminal. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 13:14, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

The changes we agreed upon have been implemented. I also removed the pre-r allophones, since not everyone uses them, and they are just a phonetic detail. I will also remove "Belgian Dutch( pronunciation):" from the IPA-nl template - it's no more useful. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 16:17, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Can we put c and ɲ in the regular consonant part? To me, marginal consonants are those that don't appear for a lot of speakers or are only from loanwords. Allophones don't strike me as marginal. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 22:44, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Done, but it's very annoying to change the numbers every edit. Is there a way the notes could have a number assigned automatically? — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 23:03, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

If you use the reference function, it changes it automatically. Check out how Help:IPA for Spanish does it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:33, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

But they're not phonemes either. I think trying to show allophony while also being dialect-neutral is kind of a contradiction. Adding c and ɲ just opens the door again to lots more additional/nonstandard details to creep back in. CodeCat (talk) 01:39, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but the reference function is already used to source some of the notes. Any idea for a workaround? — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 01:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

At IPA for Spanish, I just put the references inline with the notes. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:06, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Should these be represented by ⟨tj⟩ and ⟨nj⟩ then? Both Gussenhoven (1999) and Verhoeven (2005) use [c] and [ɲ] — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 01:43, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

[ ] indicates subphonemic transcription. So I guess we should be clear if we are using phonemes or not. If we're not then anything goes, and there isn't much point to this discussion, as a phonetic transcription can hardly be regarded as lect-agnostic. CodeCat (talk) 02:23, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Of course, we can change ⟨[⟩ and ⟨]⟩ to ⟨/⟩ in the IPA-nl template. Right now, only [c] and [ɲ] are not phonemes on the list, the rest of the sound are phonemes. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that there's not much point to this discussion - there is. Transcriptions that link to this guide must follow the system presented by the guide. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 02:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

We aren't using phonemes, but that doesn't mean that anything goes. There are degrees of phonetic precision we may wish to convey, depending on how characteristic allophones may be of the language in question and how apparent they would be to speakers of English. Heck, look at how we transcribe Russian vowels. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 04:45, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The blind leading the blind

For the life of me I cannot understand why are people who admit (on this page) that they know next to nothing about the subject contributing to such an article. Starting with the bright spark who renamed the article from "Wikipedia:IPA for Dutch and Flemish" to "Wikipedia:IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans", claiming that "Flemish is Dutch and Afrikaans is included anyway". Go figure! ... Did it ever occur to the editors to actually ask for help from Dutch and Afrikaans editors?

Why would you want to include Flemish/ Afrikaans here anyway? Dutch and Afrikaans are world apart, a very small percentage of people can actually understand the other language, unless they have have been exposed to it. The IPA page for French is Help:IPA for French not "French and Canadian French" or "French and Swiss French"; for German it is Help:IPA for German not "German and Swiss German" or "German and Hochdeutsch"; for Spanish ... etc, etc., so why not work on page that deals only with Dutch, and, if you must, a page that deals with only Afrikaans?

It is preferable to NOT have an article about somethening rather than an article that does not correspond to reality as is the case with this one.

Regards, Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 16:50, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

- Flemish is not a language, it's a misleading name for Belgian Standard Dutch. If you're talking about West and East Flemish, they are dialects of Dutch, and are not covered here.

- "Dutch and Afrikaans are world apart, a very small percentage of people can actually understand the other language, unless they have have been exposed to it." This is actually contrary to what I heard, and that is in writing, they are about 95% intelligible, and that in speech, native speakers of Dutch understand most of what is said in Afrikaans (and that it doesn't work that well the other way around). But "world apart"? Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch, and was considered a dialect thereof 50 or 60 years ago.

- "It is preferable to NOT have an article about somethening rather than an article that does not correspond to reality as is the case with this one." I don't understand what you're talking about. Phoneme inventories of Dutch and Afrikaans are very similar.

- All in all, I don't get your point. You seem not to understand the purpose of Help:IPA for X pages. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 18:08, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Transcription of [IJ/EI] and [UI]

Hi, I agree with transcribing /ɛi/ as /æi/, however I don't agree with the transcription of /œy/ as /ɐy/. 'in most northern areas' is not a reason to consider them as being standard language in the Netherlands.The last source states some dialects (Leiden, Rotterdam), again this isn't proof that most Dutch speakers in Netherlands pronounce them as /ɐy/. Simply saying that northern areas pronounce them as such doesn't mean most people from the Netherlands do so. For example that many London speakers of English pronounce red as /ʋed/ doesn't mean it is considered to be standard in England. Gati123 (talk) 19:16, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Collins & Mees (2003:136) use the phrase "many speakers", not "some dialects". Rietveld & Van Heuven (2009:70) do state that 'in most northern areas, /œy/ is pronounced [ʌ̈y]' - it's already in the article. And yes, if most speakers realize a certain phoneme in a certain way, that is - factually - the standard pronunciation. Most Dutch newscasters I've heard realize /œy/ as [ʌ̈y], [ɐy], or something similar, and that doesn't seem to be the case in case of Standard Belgian Dutch. By the way, note the very important difference between forward slashes and brackets. The former denote phonemes, the latter allophones, so your last two transcriptions ought to be [ɐy] and [ʋed] (the latter can be found as north as Newcastle Upon Tyne (see Watt & Allen (2003:268)) - it is by no means confined to London. This by the way is likely to become the standard pronunciation of English English /r/ in the next hundred years or so.) — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 20:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

I think there's a difference between between transcribing /OU/AU/ as [ɑu] and transcribing /UI/ as [ʌ̈y]/[ɐy]. Collins and Mees state that /OU/AU/ as [ɑu], while still saying /OU/AU/ can be rounded as [ʌu], when noting this, they state this to only be used in the Netherlands among older generation but standard in Belgium. However they state /UI/ as [œy] while noting many speakers realise them as [ɐy] but not most. While in the note in the article it looks as if most Netherlandic Dutch speakers realise them as [ɐy]. Maybe it is better to state in the text that they CAN tend to be open instead of saying they tend to be more open. Gati123 (talk) 19:51, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

You're confusing roundedness with height. Rounded [ɑ] is transcribed [ɒ], so that "rounded [ɑu]" is transcribed [ɒu] (or [ɔu], if the onset is really open-mid). [ʌ] differs from [ɑ] in nothing but height, as they are both unrounded. Collins & Mees (2003:135) themselves state explicitly that "The starting-points of the essential glides are closer in (B) AN than in (NL) ABN." Also, as I already said: "Rietveld & Van Heuven (2009:70) do state that 'in most northern areas, /œy/ is pronounced [ʌ̈y]' - it's already in the article." So, it is "many speakers" according to Collins & Mees (2003:136) and "most of northern areas" according to Rietveld & Van Heuven (2009:70). This looks like a rather minor disagreement between sources. Anyway: the most important factor in successfully distinguishing the two diphthongal variants of /œy/, namely [œy] and [ɐy] is the first vowel and its rounding (in case of [œ]) or lack thereof (in case of [ɐ].) The [œy] variant tends to have a starting point that is pretty close to being central (perhaps (sometimes) better transcribed as [ɞ] rather than [œ]); this is even more true in case of [ɐy]. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 20:27, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the edit, it reflects the sources betterGati123 (talk) 21:05, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Assimilation

Hi, I was just wondering how do we transcribe N before TJ as when I speak n clearly gets assimilated to [ɲ] i.e. I would pronounce /Wijntje/ as [ʋæiɲcə]. But I have seen articles where they use n instead? Which do we useGati123 (talk) 22:32, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

@Gati123: We should probably transcribe it as [ɲ]. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 19:00, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Treat languages separately

This needs to be split into Help:IPA for Dutch and Help:IPA for Afrikaans. Having the two together will only cause a lot of pointless complexity and confusion. There are more than enough variations within the separate languages to merit separate treatment and it will make it so much easier for readers to understand. I'm thinking of Dutch in particular which has two national standards.

There's precedent in the recent split of Help:IPA for Swedish and Norwegian. I don't mind making the split myself.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:09, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Support: Due to the number of differences in the vowel table, I think a split would be useful. — Eru·tuon 23:49, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Indifferent: Make the split if you really want. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 14:28, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Comment: The de facto assumption inherent in these guides, that a language needs to have a significant enough number of transcriptions to qualify for its own guide, is the primary unspoken rationale for these combination guides. However, a more explicit consensus has been articulated at a recent MfD that this is not the case. The consensus was pretty clear that a guide could exist even if there are no transcriptions. The remaining rationale is that the languages may be similar enough to warrant a single guide. These two languages are similar enough that we can present the information in separate columns, but they are still separate conventions and there's nothing that necessitates they remain together. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 02:11, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

There are a couple reasons we might want to keep them together: It's easier to maintain a single article, and readers might want to see Afrikaans and Dutch side-by-side. (That's why I oppose splitting the Latin key.) But the main reason that I created multi-language keys in the first place was to avoid having the conventions for similar languages diverge to the point that readers would have a hard time switching between them. But with the multiple columns we now have, we might be diverging anyway. — kwami (talk) 17:45, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the problem you're referring to with "hard time switching between" conventions. Can you maybe give an example where that might be a problem? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:34, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

kwami, this is a supposed to be a pronunciation guide. Comparisons are clearly there to satisfy the curiosity of linguistics nerds like ourselves. And it's very obvious that the table is mostly focused on Dutch anyway. The common Afrikaans pronunciation of -tje as /ki/ isn't even mentioned.

Peter ^Isotalo 15:19, 22 March 2015 (UTC)