Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects/Archive 3

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Move out of article space

This really isn't an article, but a help page. As such I suggest it be moved to Wikipedia:IPA chart for English.

Peter ^Isotalo 13:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I could get behind moving it out of article space. But if it's a help page, shouldn't it be at Help:IPA chart for English? —Angr 06:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right. Forgot we had help space. :-)

Peter ^Isotalo 19:29, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Those namespaces are specific to Wikipedia and Wikipedia help respectively, this doesn't qualify for either. Richard001 05:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

How does it not qualify? It's a pronunciation guide intended to help people know how transcriptions should be read, not an encyclopedic article. The actual article can be found at English phonology.

Peter ^Isotalo 22:57, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I would think Help:IPA would be the page where tech support issues regarding IPA fonts would belong. --Kjoonlee 17:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I just created Help:Pronunciation with a link to this page, among others. Most readers do not know of IPA and so are less likely to find a Help:IPA page. The page I created is a stub, mostly based on the MOS page; MOS is not ideal for casual readers. If people want to move the content of this page to Help:Pronunciation, I have no objection. --agr 14:17, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Article deletion

I'm sorry, Ijust wanted to ask a question. I noticed that this article seems to be in conflict with Wikipedia concerning "guides" (WP:NOT#GUIDE), in that it's only purpose appears to be as a guide to reading the International Phoenetic Alphabet. Now, I'm just wondering what the opinion of the article's editors is about this. I'd nominate the page for deletion, but I have a strong feeling that there's something here I'm missing. So if you could just clarify that for me, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. Calgary 04:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd be against deleting it outright, of course, but see #Move out of article space above for a half-assed discussion of moving it to Wikipedia: or Help: space. —Angr 05:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but the discussion you mentioned, although brief and involving only a few people, essentially ended in favor of a move, didn't it? I mean, I agree, the information should be on Wikipedia, as it is a guide to understanding a system that is standard in Wikipedia articles. But it definitely has no place in the main namespace, and cmes in direct vilation of Wikipedia policy. So is there a way we can actually do something about moving it? Calgary 05:34, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

WP:RM? —Angr 05:38, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Does it really need to be requested? I mean, as far as I see it there isn't really any significant opposition (technically this has been under discussion for the past 5 months, simply with no one continuing the discussion). Do you think there's need for a request? Or could it just be moved using the little tab at the top? Also, does the tab allow you to change namespaces? Calgary 09:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I do not agree with deletion or move out of article space. It is encyclopedic content. The IPA handbook has an introduction on the generic properties of IPA, followed by individual chapters how IPA is applied to several languages. This is public scientific information, useful for anyone using the IPA for English. The table is used in Wikipedia as well, but that is by no means exclusive. −Woodstone 11:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

If you actually look at WP:NOT#GUIDE, it mentions that Wikibooks, Wikisource, and Wikitravel are better places for some kinds of info. The charts in this article belongs best at Wikipedia IMHO. And I agree with Woodstone that it is encyclopedic. --Kjoonlee 17:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the information is scientific, and is indeed very useful. I don't see how that makes it encyclopedic. This article, as it stands, is a pronunciation guide. It's a table that has literally no purpose other than to teach the reader how to interpret the IPA when it is applied to English. I agree that this is very interesting and informative, but it is supplementary information, not encyclopedic content. I'd suggest either a move in namespace, as this is in a way a guide to using Wikipedia (IPA is standard for pronunciation). I don't see this content as being at all encyclopedic. Calgary 20:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Expand this chart to include all IPA characters

Would someone consider expanding this article to cover all IPA symbols? Occasionally, where articles use IPA symbols that are not intelligible to readers, I've added a respelled pronunciation. But some editors have objected because such a respelling does not reproduce the pronunciation accurately enough.

In my view, the problem is that most people (myself included) don't know how to read a large number of IPA symbols. Unfortunately, the article "IPA chart for English" doesn't explain how IPA symbols not used in English are pronounced, and the "International Phonetic Alphabet" article is too technical and unhelpful for this purpose. What is really needed is a simple, clear chart along the lines of "IPA chart for English" but comprehensively explaining and providing examples for every IPA symbol (or combination of symbols, such as "[øː]"), either by reference to a known word (e.g., "like the 'ur' in 'burden'") or by description (e.g, "like 'er' with pursed lips"). Print dictionaries usually have a page like this to help readers – Wikipedia should have one too. See the discussion that is taking place at "Talk:Ötzi the Iceman#ur'-tsee". Cheers, Jacklee 12:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, I find most of the IPA pronounciations provided in articles to be unintelliagable because I dont know how to read IPA and this chart seems to be missing symbols. every article seems to rely on IPA to provide pronounciation but wikipedia doesnt appear to provide a clear guide to reading these symbols. Mloren 09:09, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't think why anyone would have any problem with a seperate but more comprehensive IPA chart... Wikipedia, even following notability guidelines as it does, is a haven for the obscure. And this would be one of the more useful types. The question is; who is comfortable enough with the non-English-use IPA symbols to start it? --Talionis ^{(Shout me · Stalk me)} 09:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

This is a bad idea. The table was specifically created to supply information on the application of the IPA to English only. Expanding it to full IPA would defeat this purpose. It would be better to work on a separate more general page explaining how to pronounce the IPA symbols. −Woodstone 11:37, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all the comments made so far. I would support a separate article explaining all IPA symbols. Now, would some knowledgable editors get cracking on it? :-) Cheers, Jacklee 21:59, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

diphthongs

Is there are reason for all of the diphthongs being written without ̯ ? Would it not be nicer to have them with ̯ ? And does anyone know who to contact for the inclusion of ̯ in the IPA lines below the editing window? Currently, there is only

t̪ d̪ ʈ ɖ ɟ ɡ ɢ ʡ ʔ ɸ ʃ ʒ ɕ ʑ ʂ ʐ ʝ ɣ ʁ ʕ ʜ ʢ ɦ ɱ ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ ʋ ɹ ɻ ɰ ʙ ʀ ɾ ɽ ɫ ɬ ɮ ɺ ɭ ʎ ʟ ɥ ʍ ɧ ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ ɨ ʉ ɯ ɪ ʏ ʊ ɘ ɵ ɤ ə ɚ ɛ ɜ ɝ ɞ ʌ ɔ ɐ ɶ ɑ ɒ ʰ ʷ ʲ ˠ ˤ ⁿ ˡ ˈ ˌ ː ˑ ̪ • {{IPA|}}

Jasy jatere 09:49, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

The reason is that most published sources don't use the nonsyllabicity mark under the nonsyllabic portion of a diphthong. I don't think I've ever seen an English-language dictionary or pronunciation dictionary that did use it, in fact. (German-language ones often do.) —Angr 10:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

first off to do what you are suggesting we must use ̮ and yes it ccan a probably should be used i yused it on the diacritics page for the pronunciation of diacritic the i sound was the dipthong aɪ so i used a ̮ɪ go too http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ipa/index.html [1] for help on IPA sounds ect --Antiedman 21:40, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

AuE

In Australian English 'winner' wouldn't end with a schwa but an a, 'win-ah', same with words like 'here'/'near' ('he-ah'/'knee-ah'). +Hexagon1 ^(t) 06:22, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

New Zealand English

I added New Zealand English using Illustrations of the IPA: New Zealand English as my source. This document references the following:

• BAUER, L. & WARREN, P. (2004a). New Zealand English: phonology. In Kortmann, B., Schneider, E. W., Burridge, K., Mesthrie, R. & Upton, C. (eds.), A Handbook of Varieties of English, 580–602. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
• BAUER, L. & WARREN, P. (2004b). Curing the Goat’s Mouth. In Cassidy, S., Cox, F., Mannell, R. & Palethorpe, S. (eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 215–220. Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
• WELLS, J. C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ben Arnold (talk • contribs) 17:05, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I wish you hadn't. It's bad enough we have Australian English and up until recently Canadian English. This is supposed to be a simple chart explaining the symbols used in Wikipedia articles for the pronunciation of English words; AFAIK only RP and GenAm are used for that purpose. This is not supposed to be a description of every dialect of English spoken. —Angr 17:18, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Well I find it incredibly difficult (as an NZE speaker) to understand what the IPA symbols mean, precisely because I don't have a clear position of reference. I've referred to this page a lot and tried to infer from the Australian and RP symbols what the sounds mean, but still find myself lost a lot of the time. Having NZE on here will help a lot for New Zealand English speakers. Now I understand that we could potentially have a lot of columns, but if we limit it to one for each major country where English is a national language and native language of 90% the population we shouldn't end up with that many columns.

If we add South Africa, Ireland and Canada then I think that would be about it. It's also really handy for cross-referencing accent differences. Ben Arnold 17:57, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it would make more sense to add all of that (including NZ) to International Phonetic Alphabet for English rather than here. The more accents we add here, the less clear the table becomes, and the more people are encouraged to add their own accent, making the table ever less and less clear. —Angr 18:07, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I can see that more columns makes it harder to find the main two columns. I agree people who are coming to this table to understand British and American phonemic notation will find it harder to use this table for that purpose when there are more columns here. On the other hand there is another purpose for a table like this, comparing accents and maybe this is the correct page for it. Or do you think there's a place for having a comparison table on the IPA for English page? I'd be happy with having the NZE column moved onto a comprehensive table on IPA for English if there was a clear note on this page along the lines of to compare other accents see IPA for English.

Anyway, those are my 0.05 NZD. I'm not very active with Wikipedia these days so I'll probably not come back for a while and it'll all have been resolved by then. But if you do decide to kill the column, I'd appreciate it if the NZE stuff were moved into the IPA for English page rather than merely deleted. I've put the table in a more concise form under New Zealand English so it should be easy enough to copy and paste. Ta. Ben Arnold 18:24, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

aɪ in GA

I admit I've never seen the following in print (and with-out such support, it shouldn't be added to the article, but maybe some-one else has read about it and can support me with a ref) , but to my ears there is a clear difference between two forms of "short i" (given here as the dipthong aɪ). Here are some examples of contrastive pairs: Hi / highchair wide / white my / might Kdammers 02:12, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Drifting away from phonemic, lay-friendly transcription

You are phonetically correct about long (not short) i. However, the main goal of this page is to make EN-Wikipedia's use of IPA in transcribing English words as phonemic and lay-friendly as possible. A drift toward painstakingly differentiating allophones that laypeople perceive emically as "the same thing" is phonetically accurate, but is counterproductive to the point of this page. We should not start giving people linguistic lessons on the etic differences between /k/ and /k^h/ or between the allophonic diphthongs in wide and white. As more and more trees get added to this page, we are going to lose sight of the forest. If people need linguistic pedagogy, they can pore over the IPA article. The reason this page was created was to give them a lay-friendly alternative to that page, about which many have said that it's too long and technical for what they are trying to get out of it: simply to know how a certain word sounds. — ¾-10 02:53, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

• Point taken about long "i" (I don't know how I made that slip). But then why is the distinction between /i:/ and /i/ made? I (native speaker, grad courses in linguistics) can't hear the difference, though I know, from linguistics texts that there is one. Kdammers 03:06, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

You are very right. (Sometimes /i:/ is held longer than /i/, but not consistently.) IMO, this page should forgo that distinction as well, for the same reason (i.e., phonemic/broad/lay-friendly goal rather than phonetic/narrow/TMI). (BTW, did not mean to be combative in my last comment—meant it as a general response to narrow transcription, not to denigrate specifically your phonetically valid example.) I may try pruning back the narrowness of transcription soon—and see whether it gets shot down. — ¾-10 16:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

No problem: I didn't take Your comments as combatative. But, by the way, the two long i-s are not (always [if that restriction makes sense) allophones to my ear, since "high chair" ( a chair stacked onto others ) and "highchair" (a baby's eating chair) are distinguished by the two phonemes. But I agree with Your efforts to keep the page as trim as possible while still imparting adequate help.

Kdammers 03:32, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Deboldify

Since Kjoonlee seems to be against my bold-removal, I thought I'd explain it here briefly: it looks like crap. Because IPA characters are not bolded in normal usage, users not familiar with IPA might find normal-weight type easier to read. Besides, I feel the tables already have plenty of bold text. --MinorContributor 11:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

That seems a bit odd, because with my fonts (DejaVu Sans) the bold letters look fine. Can you tell me what font you're using, please? --Kjoonlee 14:08, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Palatino Linotype. I checked and it is missing many of the glyphs. I do not know from which font it is substituting them, but especially ʃ, ʔ, and the diphthong table look really bad. The page looks OK if I switch to Arial Unicode MS (DejaVu Sans's bold feels too heavy for me). --MinorContributor 15:49, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Then if you switch to using Arial Unicode MS in your user stylesheet, all will be fine. ;)

.IPA, .Unicode { font-family: Arial Unicode MS; }

Put the above in your own monobook.css page if you use the default skin. --Kjoonlee 15:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, although I feel that my point of having "plenty of bold" still stands. --MinorContributor 16:19, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

[you replied while I was writing] I checked all of my fonts. Only a handful have the relevant symbols: Arial Unicode MS, DejaVu family, Lucida Sans Unicode, MS Mincho, Microsoft Sans Serif, Thryomanes. Only DejaVu and Thryomanes have bold variants. It's possible that it's choosing DejaVu Serif Bold for some characters and intermingles it with the less-weighing default font. --MinorContributor 16:04, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Organisation of the vowel chart

The main purpose of this chart is to show readers the meaning of the IPA symbols as applied to English. It seems to me that the table should therefore be organised according to the IPA symbols. The way it is now, the table reads more like an overview how the various dialects of English differ. Or a display of how allophones and phones are related to spelling. Rather a mixed message. I propose to have all used symbols one by one in the first column, elucidated by examples from the various dialects in the second column. −Woodstone 13:00, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

It would look like (with exactly the same information contained):

IPA: English Vowels
IPA	Examples
	RP	GA	AuE	NZE
a			run, enough
aː			father, arm	father, arm
ʌ	run, enough	run, enough
ɐ				run, enough
ɐː				father, arm
ɑ		father, not, wasp
ɑː	father, arm
ɑɹ		arm
ɒ	not, wasp			not, wasp
æ	lad, cat, ran	lad, cat, ran	lad, cat, ran
e			bed	bed
ɛ	bed	bed		lad, cat, ran
ə	about, winner	about	about, winner
ɚ		winner
ɘ				sit, about, winner
ɝ		bird
ɜː	bird		bird
ɵː				bird
i		city, see	city	city
iː	see		see	see
ɪ	sit, city	sit	sit
oː			law, caught	law, caught
ɔ		law, caught	not, wasp
ɔː	law, caught
u		soon, through
uː	soon, through
ʉː			soon, through	soon, through
ʊ	put, wood	put, wood	put, wood	put, wood

An interesting option. Each option has certain advantages. As I ponder them, I wonder if this page should actually contain both of these tables, with an explanation along the lines of "For vowels, here is another way to show the same information." Can't decide at the moment if people will call that "too complicated" or not. — ¾-10 16:45, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I understand it, the main purpose of this article is to explain IPA pronunciation guides after article lemmas ( /X/ ). I think it should therefor be as short, simple, and broad as possible, just a phoneme key, without dialectical differences but with links for more detailed information. Woodstone started a discussion here. The article should then be moved to the Help namespace. Either that, or create such a key there, and redirect the IPAEng template to that key. The vowel portion of the key might look something like this:

IPA	example
full vowels
/ɪ/	bid
/iː/	bead
/ɛ/	bed
/æː/	bad
/ɒ/	bod
/ɑː/	bahed, father
/ʌ/	bud
/ɔː/	bought
/ʊ/	good, foot
/uː/	booed, food
diphthongs
/eɪ/	bay, hay
/oʊ/	beau, hoe
/ɔɪ/	boy, hoy
/аɪ/	buy, hi
/aʊ/	bough, how
rhotacised vowels (/r/ silent in many areas)
/ɝ/	bird
/ɪr/	beer
/ɛr/	bear
/ɑr/	bar
/ɔr/	boar
/ʊr/	boor
reduced vowels
/ɨ/	roses
/ə/	Rosa’s
/ɚ/	runners

It would be nice to include other vowels before r, but I expect it would become so confused, with so many of our editors merging the vowels and making mistakes in transcription, that it would be best not to pretend to be any more precise than this. kwami 03:59, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

The two tables do not have exactly the same purpose. One (this article in article space) is meant for readers that see an IPA transcription and want to find out the pronunciation (decoding). The other one (in the style guide) is for people that want to create an IPA transcription for inclusion in an article in a standardised way for wikipedia (encoding). In the latter I proposed to use the inverted r symbol for rhotacised vowels, to distinguish it from the normal r (by convention used for the consonant r, even though it is mostly not a trill in English). −Woodstone 09:54, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

So, do we want this to be the key in Help space, or should that be a separate article? kwami 13:25, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

RP to RBP<

I changed RP to RBP so that if anyone was not to look up Received pronunciation they would not be Offended and or would know that The British pronunciation was not missing —Preceding unsigned comment added by Antiedman (talk • contribs) 18:35, 22 October 2007

I reverted your change, because RP is the standard abbreviation. The accent is simply never called "RBP". And why would anyone be offended by the abbreviation "RP" anyway? —Angr 19:14, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Flags?

Are the flags really necessary?
The flags expand the columns out to much. Plus, flags are to do more with nationality rather than dialect spoken. --203.94.135.134 00:00, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I made them smaller. Better?--agr 00:42, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but I still think the flags are unnecessary. --203.94.135.134 01:56, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Of course they are not necessary, but I think they are helpful in clarifying the meaning of RP, GA, etc, without requiring the reader to look up at the explanation above. Many readers just skip to the tables.--agr 03:12, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I think they're pure flagcruft. —Angr 04:29, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

I have to agree with 203... and Angr. JPD (talk) 10:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Keep the flags. The dialects are based on countries, and people need a symbol to know which country. Carl Kenner 13:18, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Why, because and are so visually distinct? —Angr 19:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

The codes AuE and NZE tell which is which. The flags make it clear the columns refer to countries, and the US and UK flags suggest what GA and RP refer to. Between the flags and the codes, a general reader can easily understand the tables without going back to the key in the paragraph above. That's a good use of flags. Adding a little visual interest to the page, isn't a bad thing either.--agr 03:19, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Rename to mention "dialect"

Now there is the broad Help:IPA English pronunciation key, the function of this page in article space has changed. It is now the page describing dialectic differences in English, using IPA to do that.

So I propose to rename this article. First thought is "English dialects (Pronunciation)" −Woodstone 10:22, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's anywhere near detailed enough for that - it only mentions one British Isles dialect. (If it's felt that it should go in that direction, a bit of use of Wells's Accents of English could probably expand it a lot.) It's true that it's now not entirely clear what it's for. As well as the one you mention, another page whose information overlaps somewhat with this one is Pronunciation respelling for English, which discusses IPA as well as non-IPA respelling schemes.--JHJ 12:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

"X" (& come to that, "q"...)

Insertion of "x" pronunciations just deleted, with explanation: "revert representations of orthographic "x" - that's not the point here". I don't understand this...

The column is headed "English consonants". "X" is a consonant in English, exactly as "c", "q", "sh" and "ch" are. In my experience, many English speakers are only vaguely aware that the pronunciation of "x" is the same as "ks", and rarely aware at all that it can be "gz". The chart is surely showing how the various sounds can be transliterated into English and back, and is it not therefore important that all the English consonants should be given in the English consonant column?

Incidentally, "q" is in a similar position, and I'm not sure the example given of /k/ in "queen" is quite correct. "Q" is only /k/ in words such as "unique and queue". In "queen" etc it is surely /kw/? Arguably, as with "ch", I suppose the consonant is actually "qu", not just "q", as this never occurs alone. --Richard New Forest (talk) 16:42, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

The column refers to consonants (and vowels) in the sense of sounds, not the sense of letters. "X" is a letter of the English alphabet, but it isn't a sound (or even two sounds) of the English language. The column showing example words is just there to give readers an indication of which sound is intended in each case. In "queen", I'd say the "q" is representing the /k/ sound (as it does in, say "Iraq") and the "u" is representing the /w/ sound (as it does in, say, "suave"). The sound /x/ is very marginal in English, and the sound /q/ doesn't occur in English at all. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Aspiration (phonetics)

It is nice to be able to know the difference between pʰ and p, between tʰ and t, and between kʰ and k. All of these sound appear in the English language, with the aspirated form occurring when the letter appears at the beginning of a word, and the unaspirated form occurring when the letter appears at the end of a word. A native speaker of standard American or British English always says "pʰɛn", never "pɛn". Saying "pɛn" would sound like a type of Italian, French or Spanish foreign accent. Noting these differences is fun, helps foreign speakers learn to pronounce English better, and, most importantly, helps Americans like me with foreign languages. I have just realized that in Latin I was always aspirating all my initial stops, pronouncing puella as pʰ'ueːla instead of p'ueːla, pronouncing Catullus as kʰa'tʰuːlus instead of ka'tuːlus, and tamen as 'tʰamen instead of 'tamen. If I had learned the difference between these sounds, I wouldn't have been mispronouncing them.

David G Brault (talk) 22:24, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

There are other pages, such as English phonology, for that. This page has always restricted itself to phonemic transcription. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 05:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)