Help talk:IPA for English

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This page was nominated for deletion on March 1 2008. The result of the discussion was Keep.

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October 2007 to March 2008 April 2008

Contents 1 Pronunciation of /i/ needs to be added 2 Pronunciation of ɑ 3 While Chart Is Useful - It Violates All Wikipedia Principles 4 Media 5 Distinctions 6 Move

[edit] Pronunciation of /i/ needs to be added

Suggestion: add a vowel entry

• /i/ ee as in meet

This suggestion seems to agree with Help:IPA.

I was led here from the Greek letter Pi which has pronunciation /pi/.

There seems to be no reference on this page to the /i/ sound. (I thought the /ɪ/ was it but that has a short i as in pit. As I understand it Pi has an i sound as the ee in meet.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ablonus (talk • contribs) 09:15, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

You have stumbled on perhaps the only minimal pair distinguishing /i/ (pi) and /iː/ (pee) in English. The sign /ː/ is generally used to mark a long sound. In almost all cases /i/ is long in English. So the symbol chosen in the table is /iː/. You can derive /i/ from the table as shorter form of /iː/. However, the standard pronunciation of "pi" is /pаɪ/. −Woodstone (talk) 09:54, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I should have checked the pi article first. It explicitly states that the pronunciation in Greek is /pi/. Clicking on the link leads you to help:IPA, the page for language independent (phonetic) application of IPA, that contains a separate entry for /i/. This page "help:pronunciation" is only meant to describe the way IPA is applied to words in English, which generally does not have short /i/. −Woodstone (talk) 10:06, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

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Yes, the same is true for the page Pi (letter). Again it uses /pi/ for the Greek pronunciation as, "In Modern Greek, the name of the letter is pronounced /pi/; in modern English, it is pronounced /paɪ/," and, again, the link on /pi/ takes the reader to the Help:Pronunciation page which does not have /i/ listed. I guess we could edit the two pi pages which point here to point to the Help:IPA page instead but I expect there are other pages which also point here for the pronunciation of /i/.

I believe the modern Greek name of pi is 'pee' as it is in English for the letter P. If that is right can we correct Wikipedia by adding /i/ to this, the Help:Pronunciation page? Ablonus (talk) 10:05, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

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Though of course as you all know standard American English does not have phonemic vowel duration, and /i/ etc are the standard American transcription (as found in for example the Oxford American English Dictionary), and American Wikipedia editors will often never use /i:/ -- which gets into the existential problem of this page, claiming to be how things are and should be done in Wikipedia... a thought continued in a new comment below ("While Chart Is Useful - It Violates All Wikipedia Principals")

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Ablonus (talk) 12:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC) It seems from the footnote on the page that /i/ is now generally used instead of or as well as /iː/ to represent the same sound. To my surprise the Help:IPA page links both symbols to exactly the same ogg file. Per the previous contributor it seems questionable to have two pages to explain certain symbols. This is exacerbated when they disagree or when symbols which are linked to a page are not explained on that page. But there has just been a very recent discussion on whether to keep or remove the Help:Pronunciation page and the decision was Keep so I guess we are stuck with it for now.

My objection would be resolved by adding /i/ to the Help:Pronunciation page. What happens to the page longer term is another issue but for now while articles link /i/ to this page Wikipedia is in error and confusing. I'm not familiar with the talk process. What do we need to do to decide whether to add /i/ to the page or not, i.e. when does the talk on this topic come to an end? The alternatives of either

1. Relinking every /i/ in Wikipedia which points to Help:Pronunciation to point to Help:IPA, or,

2. Changing every page with /i/ to use /iː/

are not practical, IMHO. So can we simply add /i/ to this page while other discussions continue? Ablonus (talk) 12:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

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Ablonus (talk) 19:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC) Well I've added and entry for /i/. Notably it was already referred to in the footnote on /I/ and /iː/. I included the same footnote on /i/. It would be good if someone could check that I've made acceptable updates. Ablonus (talk) 19:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of ɑ

Why do we use "ɑ" for father all over Wikipedia? The "ɑ" I know is an extremely nasal-sounding vowel, for father I would use "ʌ", I'm far from an expert though and am probably wrong in this. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:46, 5 May 2008 (UTC) PS: My comp is screwing up IPA I just found, so I don't actually know what letter the IPA symbols I used are or which I intended to use, but my question stands, why doesn't the upside-down v correspond to 'father'. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:51, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Short answer, because the upside-down v corresponds to the vowels of "mother" and "brother". —Angr 16:29, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Er, and they're pronounced differently than father? In my speech the letter a in father is just the lengthened (ː) letter a from brother and mother. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 06:45, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

My dictionary has father with the vowel of car and mother/brother the vowel of cut. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

To me all those are the same vowel but lengthened for car and father (cʌː & fʌːðʌ versus kʌt & mʌðʌ & bɹʌðʌ), but I'm not an expert on phonetics and I may be confusing two vowels. I don't think I am though. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 07:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It could be your specific dialect. Generally, the vowel of car is more open and more back while the vowel of cut is more central and higher. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I speak Australian English (general, I think; but definitely not broad), and am from Sydney. Wow, I never knew that those are pronounced differently in other dialects of English. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 08:43, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, yes. Our article on Australian English phonology says just that. You can also look at IPA chart for English which is nice in that it compares the vowels of major dialects. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:51, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Cheers, I'll read up on those links. +Hexagon1 ^(t) 10:34, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] While Chart Is Useful - It Violates All Wikipedia Principles

This is an innovative work, using some controversial approaches, without citations, presented as standard fact -- and as such should be utterly banned from appearing in Wikipedia. But in fact it's locked instead.

It also suggests that all IPA transcriptions in English Wikipedia follow this system -- when in reality people use all sorts of dialect-specific and/or inaccurate approaches and/or alternate (national) conventions. Where's the part about "We [and who is that??] recommend this system for use by WIkipedia editors"?

Additionally -- since I secretly think it's a good, albeit highly illegal approach, and generally makes good choices -- it lacks the syllable-division symbol.

In the long term, Wikipedia needs a "pronunciation widget" at the start of each article -- with various pronunciations (British, American, local for local-specific subjects) and audio. Can set a cookie on your browser to give you your preferred rendering.

At any rate: at the moment, this article needs a clear disclaimer at the start explaining its true identity as a special help page contrived by some Wikipedia editors and not any kind of of official international English transcription norm. It's recommended for use by editors, but you will in reality find all sorts of variation in Wikipedia articles.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.199.65.53 (talk) 11:09, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Check this archive which features a very thorough critique of the system we have right now (from a user who has raised the issues you've brought up). Syllable breaks were part of it, perhaps you could take a look and we can all talk some more about it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 11:22, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh thanks but here's just some more of my thoughts -- I really don't have time to pursue this further:

In general its character as a mishmash of British and American sounds and transcription conventions should be noted. This could be really confusing to someone just getting acquainted with IPA, trying to equate these symbols to their own speech.

Although unlikely to get anywhere in today's IPA-is-law environment, I'll mention there is an alternate possibility -- to use capitalized abstract symbols for the vowels rather than IPA symbols. For example /O/ for "historical long-O".

One last issue: there's no indication of the standard American split of historical short-O between /ɔ/ ("boss") and /ɑ/ ("hot").

In conclusion I do think it's a reasonable practical solution, the symbols used (including long signs on /i:/ etc) are pretty much the best choices (might quibble on a few) -- but its all about labelling it clearly for what it is - nonstandard, Wikipedia-invented, potentially controversial, but best practical solution to problem, and only an attempted recommended much variation will be found in articles.... Thanks.

[edit] Media

hey, is this relevant to be put in the See Also section?> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Pronunciation and does anybody know what is the format to put as an audio .ogg file the native term of Places/Subjects in articles? Thanx -CuteHappyBrute (talk) 00:43, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Distinctions

For the sake of neutrality, I strongly feel this page should have as many practical distinctions as possible among the intelligible polished pronunciations. Distinctions that are conservative (some accents still keep them) and splits that are common and phonologically distinct (like the way short /u/ and /oo/ are treated in Southern England and in Northern England), and only excluding things like...phoneme splits that aren't even heard by their own speakers (like ae-tensing and the bad-lad split). In particular, pre-meet-meat merger as [miːt-mɪːt] (conditional until it is assuredly extinct worldwide within our language), pre-pane-pain merger as [peːn-peɪn] and pre-toe-tow merger as [toː-toʊ] (both distinctions are reportedly alive and well in Welsh English), a full recognition of the pre-fern-fir-fur merger as [fɛrn-fɪr-fʌr], and the pre-horse-hoarse merger as [hɔərs-hoərs], and metapronunciations involving cut-put-good-mood as [kʌt-pʊt-fʊːt-muːd] (North-South difference in England), and distinguishing fore-four ([foər-foʊr]), fare-fair ([feər-feɪr]), threw-through ([θriu-θruː]), you-yew-ewe ([juː-jiu-iu]) and such—all distinctions that are still alive and (for the most part) well in a few corners of our global intelligible language. I do not believe that this page should be discriminatorily majoritarian, as it will leave large swaths of speakers of our same language phonologically unrepresented. It seems that the most neutral thing to do here is to keep pronunciations conservatively broad, even keeping distinctions that may sound archaic to some, as long as they survive in spoken language that still communicates clearly with the rest of us as English. I used to think this would involve a great deal of research, but not necessarily—the mergers we know are not globally complete can have pre-merger distinction preserved until and unless they are known to be 100% complete, and the details of phonemic splits (like North-South England /u/) maintained if the split (that would be the South part of England) is especially more common than not (as it exists in England-Wales and in the Americas and the Southern Hemisphere...). Then, with this level of broadness in place, we can finally agree that the pronunciation is internationally neutral and isn't biased towards specific varieties). - Gilgamesh (talk) 13:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

The problem is that most dictionaries don't indicate such distinctions, so it will be nearly impossible to maintain consistency between the pronunciations listed in the articles and the key that's supposed to explain them. kwami (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

At the very least we should distinguish horse-hoarse. Even many American dictionaries do that—that's how I discovered that words like cord-lord-sort have a horse-style vowel and ford-port have a hoarse-style vowel. As for pane-pain, toe-tow and threw-through, it's actually pretty straightforward, as English has already clearly spelt the majority of these distinctions since the Chancery standard. [eː] is for all normal long /a/, tense /e/ (like in café and break) and so forth. [eɪ] is for all normal /ai ay ei ey/ in words such as rain-gray-rein-grey. [oː] is for all normal long /o/ and /oa/, as well as the /ol/ in /olm/ words like Holmes, and /au/ in words loaned from modern French such as faux. [oʊ] is for all normal /ou ow/ that are pronounced like in soul-snow, as well as /o/ in /ol/ words such as roll-poll-cold-colt, and the /ol/ in /olk/ words such as folk-yolk. In fact, the unique regular pronunciations of sequences like /all alt alk alm oll olt olk olm/ are from a historically regular diphthongization of the vowel before dark L (or the disappearance of the L in /alm olm/ and compensatory lengthening of the vowel), each becoming like /awl ault awk aːm owl oult owk oːm/. (Of course, the /au/ diphthong subsequently monophthonged to [ɔː] centuries ago.) threw-through distinction is simply not dropping the yod where RP or GA typically would. These are highly regular examples that seem to derive from common reading sense, for certain. - Gilgamesh (talk) 07:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there any evidence that people are indicating these distinctions when showing how English words are pronounced in Wikipedia entries? Don't forget this page is not about describing every variety of English, it's about explaining pronunciation symbols used in articles for readers who are unfamiliar with them. "Simplify, simplify" needs to be our motto here. —Angr 18:44, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

You're right, I may be missing some principles. I keep switching between Wikipedia and Wiktionary and I'd forgotten the scopes of focus. However, what I'm saying is not about describing every variety of English, but describing English conservatively so that we don't have to describe every regional variety. In many ways, RP and GA are oversimplified for a global scope. A conservative transcription need not be prescriptively dialectal, but there are conservative features of Modern English phonology that are still maintained in actively spoken English in our world. Keeping conservative distinctions simply indicates, "This is the conservative distinction of this pronunciation that exists in our world." I don't think it is too much if toe is [toː] and tow is [toʊ]. In the varieties where they sound the same, both transcriptions [oː oʊ] are regional allophones. And besides, being autistic, I totally suck at being simple, and need help. Discussion helps. I still think I have good and important ideas, but I alone cannot easily convey them in simple layman's terms. - Gilgamesh (talk) 05:47, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Besides, we already indicate the horse-hoarse distinction. kwami (talk) 19:39, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Touché. - Gilgamesh (talk) 05:42, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Move

How about moving this page from Help:Pronunciation to Help:IPA for English, which is where all of the other language specific pages are (i.e., Help:IPA for Hebrew, Help:IPA for Italian, Help:IPA for Korean, Help:IPA for Polish, Help:IPA for Russian, Help:IPA for Spanish)? Epson291 (talk) 19:39, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll be bold and move it, since it makes a lot of logical sense. Epson291 (talk) 23:54, 29 May 2008 (UTC)