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{{For|requests for transcription|Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language}} |
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==Purpose== |
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{{Talk header|bot=Lowercase sigmabot III|age=3|units=months}} |
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This page is meant to be the key for the {{tl|IPAEng}} template (which displays "{{IPAEng|X}}") that is used as a broad pronunciation guide to key words in Wikipedia articles. It is not meant for phonetic detail, dialectical differences, or non-English phonologies. Please keep it as simple and accessible as possible, as many of our readers are not familiar with the IPA. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 19:41, 15 October 2007 (UTC) |
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{{Round in circles|search=no}} |
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{{WikiProject Help|importance=high}} |
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{{WP Languages|importance=mid}} |
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{{WikiProject Linguistics|phonetics=yes}} |
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{{reader-facing page}} |
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== Double entry == |
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As for syllabification, that is not distinctive in English and does not need to be indicated. Showing syllable breaks just sparks edit wars with people who think they should be somewhere else. Problem is, English has ambisyllabic consonants, which cannot be represented by the IPA. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 23:03, 15 October 2007 (UTC) |
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Why is ɪ appearing twice, both under "Vowels" and "Weak vowels"? If we need two entries here, I would expect separate symbols (even if one is a modification of the other with a combining mark of some kind). <span style="white-space:nowrap;font-family:'Trebuchet MS'"> — [[User:SMcCandlish|'''SMcCandlish''']] [[User talk:SMcCandlish|☏]] [[Special:Contributions/SMcCandlish|¢]] 😼 </span> 22:05, 29 April 2024 (UTC) |
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==Problems== |
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:I believe the double entries for //ɪ// and //oʊ// are mainly there for historic reasons, back from the day when we were propagating our own idiosyncratic symbols for the weak vowel versions of the two. I have tentatively unified the symbols, keeping all the content. --[[User:J. 'mach' wust|mach]] [[User talk:J. 'mach' wust|🙈🙉🙊]] 06:11, 1 May 2024 (UTC) |
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The obvious problem is that there is no single pronunciation of English. Attempts to create a standard either privilege one dialect over others; create an artificial pronunciation no one speaks; or are a confusing mixture of both. This particular mode picks up some odd bits of phonetic trivia (like the insertion of a schwa before a syllable-final r, which does not occur in many varieties of English) but omits other pan-English phonetic developments, like voiceless stop aspiration - which, of course, cannot be determined by rule without reference to the supposedly "non-distinctive" syllabification. [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] |
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:This is a pan-phonemic transcription, and so doesn't suffer from these problems. Aspiration is irrelevant, and the schwas are not relevant to those who don't pronounce them. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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::Then why are you including the one and not the other? Because they happen to occur in ''your'' personal speech variant? [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 17:22, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:::Actually, I have the aspiration and not the schwas, so it's the exact opposite of my dialect. But aspiration is allophonic, and so has no business in a phonemic description. For example, if we were to write ''tie'' {{IPA|/tʰaɪ/}} and ''die'' {{IPA|/daɪ/}}, how would we write ''sty''? It would have to be either {{IPA|/stʰaɪ/}} or {{IPA|/sdaɪ/}}, because there is no third phonemic stop, and therefore {{IPA|/staɪ/}} is not an option. Since neither of those would be acceptable to our readers or editors, we can't be phonemic and also indicate aspiration. The schwas before ar, on the other hand, are phonemic in most English dialects, including RP, and therefore should be including even if you and I do not have them. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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::::You really don't grasp that the schwas are conditioned variants? Do I need to spell it out for you? [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 12:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:::::I guess you do. Could you explain how ''Sirius'' /ˈsɪriəs/ and ''serious'' /ˈsɪəriəs/ are conditioned variants? They look like minimal pairs to me, and that is how the OED treats them. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 18:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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== Colons for length symbols == |
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Not surprisingly, IPA transcriptions of English words used in America, England, and Australia are all different -- and slightly more surprisingly, phoneticians in these countries all use the IPA in slightly different ways, rather de-internationalizing it, and making it very difficult for a person trained in the tradition of one country to read another person's transcriptions correctly. Even more problematically, "traditional" or "standard" transcriptions of sounds may be read in ways that are quite misleading from the point of view of IPA, especially its canonical vowels. A Midwesterner seeing [ ɒ ] in [ stɒp ] may suppose that it is the ''same'' sound he or she uses in pronouncing "stop", though in fact the latter is closer to [ ɑ ], or even [ a ]. |
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:Again, these are [phonetic] details not relevant to a /phonemic/ transcription. |
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In the 3rd bullet point of the Dialect variation section colons are used in place of length symbols: |
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It is likewise "traditional" to transcribe the "long a" and "long o" diphthongs as [ eɪ ] and [ oʊ ]. But in America, England, and Australia alike, the dominant pronunciations have much lower nuclear vowels than [ e ] and [ o ], while the off-glides are closer to [ i ] and [ u ] than [ ɪ ] and [ ʊ ] in most pronunciations, outside of the now vanishingly rare RP. The "traditional transcription" thus enjoins a pronunciation that almost no English speaker actually uses. |
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: Most speakers of North American English (with the exception of Eastern New England) do not distinguish between the vowels in father /'fɑ:ðər/ and bother /'bɒðər/, pronouncing the two words as rhymes. If you speak such a dialect, ignore the difference between the symbols /ɑ:/ and /ɒ/. |
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:Again, irrelevant detail. /oʊ/ is the vowel of ''bone,'' however you pronounce it in your dialect. After all, the only point of this key is to show you how to pronounce a word in your dialect. If you're interested in someone else's dialect, this key is obviously of no use, because of the objections you raise. |
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I think they need to be replaced. [[Special:Contributions/2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:B1A9:DA55:640A:FC65|2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:B1A9:DA55:640A:FC65]] ([[User talk:2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:B1A9:DA55:640A:FC65|talk]]) 20:13, 1 May 2024 (UTC) |
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The scheme shown assumes a rhotic dialect, but the vowels are for the most part chosen from a (typically non-rhotic) British variant of English, strongly influenced by RP. This cannot be back-translated into a non-rhotic dialect without the use of a rule involving deletion of a non-onset r and compensatory lengthening; a task considerably complicated when syllabification is considered irrelevant! |
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:Give me an example that is problematic. If you speak a non-rhotic dialect, just drop the ars and keep the length, as in the key words. If you merge some of the vowels, then go ahead and merge them as in the key words. No problem that I can see. If there are problems, that only means we missed some phonemic distinctions. |
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:Done. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 22:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC) |
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I also note the -- to me, quite novel -- use of [ ɨ ] to represent the slightly lower and more centralized variant of [ ɪ ] found in unstressed vowels. The symbol [ ɨ ] canonically represents a quite different-sounding sound, the desired sound being not nearly so high, nor so central -- being, indeed, closer to [ ɪ ] than to any other canonical IPA vowel, though of course not identical; while a fully stressed [ ɪ ] (perhaps only heard in very emphatic speech) is more front than the canonical [ ɪ ]. |
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:We're not using [ɨ], we're using /ɨ/ - quite a different thing. We could've picked /♠/, but that would have thrown people for a loop. There is no good symbol in the IPA for this, and /ɨ/ is generally used by phoneticians who wish to keep it distinct from /ə/. This is covered in some of the links at the bottom of the page. |
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::Who is "we", anyway? [[User:Kwamikagami]] and who else?[[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 17:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:::The people who wrote the [[IPA chart for English]] and [[International Phonetic Alphabet for English]], where three reduced vowels, using (for some dialects) the same symbols, are distinguished. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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== Inclusion of /ts/ as a marginal phoneme and removal of /ʔ/ == |
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In the end, I am not particularly pleased with the use of IPA to represent some pan-English, not-quite-phonetic, yet not wholly phonemic transcription. I would rather see either: (1) consistent, side-by-side uses of a few common dialects; |
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:- that would be quite a mess, and a real editorial problem |
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::Not nearly so much of a mess as this one. [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 17:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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/ʔ/ is an entirely paralinguistic sound and "uh-oh" is not a valid word to base the inclusion of a marginal phoneme around. However, seeing and /ts/ is a common marginal phoneme in words like "tsar" or "Mozart", including it would probably be valid. [[User:Plexus96|Plexus96]] ([[User talk:Plexus96|talk]]) 14:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC) |
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or (2) one dialect, of any type, used consistently, and identified, and accepted as WP standard; |
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:- not politically feasible; no matter which dialect we choose, we'd be accused of cultural imperialism |
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:/ʔ/ is included for Hawaiian loans. It's illustrated by ''uh-oh'' simply because it's one of the most common and intuitive ways to illustrate the sound; it doesn't mean it's only used in paralanguage. |
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or (3) an abandonment of IPA altogether in favor of a phonemic scheme that can be translated by the aid of certain rules to an approximation of one of several dialects of English. |
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:/t/ and /s/ are already phonemes so there's no need to list /ts/ separately. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 00:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC) |
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:- you can see that here: [[Help:Pronunciation respelling key]], but what an outcry if you try to use it! I've tried explaining that such a convention might be preferable because the IPA is often misinterpreted as representing specific sounds, but people really get upset with pronunciation respellings. There's no real reason to reject the IPA; as far as I can tell, the distinction of [] and // takes care of your objections. |
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::/t/ and /ʃ/ are already phonemes so there’s no need for /tʃ/ as well…? [[User:БудетЛучше|БудетЛучше]] ([[User talk:БудетЛучше|talk]]) 18:15, 21 June 2024 (UTC) |
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::No, it doesn't, because it's based on a gross misunderstanding of the use of those symbols. [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 17:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:::Because it's a phoneme in English if you ask just about any linguist. See [[English phonology#Obstruents]] for why. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 18:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC) |
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:::It requires an understanding of the difference between phonetic and phonemic use of the IPA. The Association itself, in its Handbook, uses <c> as {{IPA|[tʃ]}}, for example - a phonemic transcription does not have to be phonetically accurate, and in general it ''cannot'' be, not if there is any complexity to the system. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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:::{{IPA|/ts/}} behaves more like a consonant cluster, rather than a phoneme. It doesn't appear word-initially, at least not regularly (see e.g. [https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3027]), only word-internally and -finally. Compare this with German {{IPA|/ts/}} which can easily appear in this position, as in ''zu'' {{IPA|/tsuː/}} or ''ziemlich'' {{IPA|/ˈtsiːmlɪç/}}. Native speakers of English constantly mispronounce those as {{IPA|/syː ~ suː/}} and {{IPA|/ˈsiːmlɪk, -x, -ʃ/}}. [[User:Sol505000|Sol505000]] ([[User talk:Sol505000|talk]]) 15:39, 23 June 2024 (UTC) |
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:"/ʔ/ is an entirely paralinguistic sound" |
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:It's also a common allophone across most dialects of English, particularly for /t/ [[Special:Contributions/167.206.19.130|167.206.19.130]] ([[User talk:167.206.19.130|talk]]) 19:56, 21 June 2024 (UTC) |
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::That's neither here nor there. We transcribe any allophone of /t/ as /t/ because this key is diaphonemic. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 20:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC) |
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== IPA overwhelming == |
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Of course this should be something that has some precedent of usage, and is not something made up by a WP user yesterday. [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 05:29, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:This is pretty much standard, and have been in the Talk pages for years. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 06:54, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:::As I pointed out right at the top, this is not a true phonemic scheme but includes all sorts of (dialectical!) phonetic details. |
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::::No, they are phonemic distinctions. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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:::It is moreover a wrong and a misguided assumption that all English dialects have the same underlying (phonemic) representations. |
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::::It does not assume that; it's a pronunciation key that will enable readers to pronounce words in their dialect by analogy with the key words in the chart. Theoretical conclusions based on that are misplaced. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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:::In fact they do not: almost every dialect will have a ''different'' underlying representation appropriate to its own system. |
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::::True, but many English dialects are close enough that this is not a fatal problem. (Trying to include Scots or Indian English might be asking too much, though.) |
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:::Phonological analysis is a synchronic form of analysis that simplifies uniform variations within a single spoken language variant; it has nothing to do with diachronic or comparative analyses. Creating a system of pre-dialectal or pan-dialectal representation that can (with a knowledge of the proper rules) be converted into a dialectical pronunciation is something ''entirely different'' from producing a phonemic representation. |
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::::Correct. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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:::I have repeatedly noticed a failure on the part of WP editors to understand what a phonemic representation is -- or indeed, what phonology is, which is what, I suppose, produces nonsensical statements like "/oʊ/ is the vowel of ''bone,''". Phonology does not determine underlying forms based on lexicographic fiat, but upon an analysis of sounds actually occurring in the spoken language -- and if [ oʊ ] is ''not an allophone'' that appears in a given spoken variant, then it is never going to appear in the phonemic representation. (And from a pan-dialectal or pre-dialectal point of view, the vowel is probably [ oː] anyway.) |
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::::Incorrect. There is no pan-dialectal ''phonetic'' transcription, and the symbols used in a phonemic analysis are irrelevant. True, an "elsewhere" allophone is generally chosen, but that is for the convenience of the reader, not a theoretical requirement. I forget now the phonologist who chose symbols something like /♠/, /♣/, /♥/, /♦/, to represent the four vowels of the Micronesian language he was working on, in order to make precisely that point. What is important here for us is that the symbols be intuitive and accessible to our readers, not that they carry a specific phonetic value. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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:::::Using the word "intuitive" wrt IPA symbols is silly -- people who are not intimately familiar with IPA most frequently complain that it's ''not'' intuitive. There's nothing "intuitive" about either the symbols themselves, or the specific values being used here; what is particularly striking is their lack of connection with the facts of any language. |
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::::::Of course the IPA is intuitive. Much more intuitive than, say, using numbers would be; it just takes a little getting used to. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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:::::My point, apparently missed, is that pan-English ''doesn't exist'' -- so there can be no "phonemic" representation of it. |
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::::::No, I didn't missed that point, but again it's not relevant. This is not a theoretical description, it's a ''key,'' and a much more helpful one than the often unintelligible mess that's out there. |
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:::::And applying ''phonetic'' symbols with a specific value to create glyphs that are never pronounced that way is neither doing phonology nor producing a useful Help scheme. I'd much rather see your card suit symbols than a set of ''phonetic'' representations which are necessarily going to be either misread or misapplied. [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 12:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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::::::Again, you seem to have the impression that the IPA can only be used as a phonetic alphabet. I don't know where you get that idea from. |
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IPA is overwhelming, redundant, and not user friendly. If you use the basic latin sounds the phonics are all there and we all know them. No need to learn a whole new set of sounds that are extremely numerous and cumbersome. [[Special:Contributions/136.143.149.206|136.143.149.206]] ([[User talk:136.143.149.206|talk]]) 17:51, 2 June 2024 (UTC) |
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:::In any case neither the phonemic representation (of any dialect) nor some pan-English scheme is going to be worth anything without supplying the rules by which that scheme can be converted into something that can actually be pronounced, i.e., a phonetic representation. [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 17:21, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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::::That scheme is supplied: the chart gives sample words for each symbol. All you have to do is pronounce the symbol the way you pronounce that word, and you have the correct pronunciation in your dialect, or at least you do if your dialect is RP, GA, Oz, and some others that fit. In other words, this is no different than the pronunciation guide of, say, Webster's 3rd, which is also inter-dialectal, except that it uses the IPA instead of some local in-house convention. Can you give me any examples of where this system breaks down for the national dialects? So far you criticisms have been theoretical, without practical examples, and this is after all a practical situation: a pronunciation key, in Help space, not a theoretical treatise, which we already have in article namespace. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 21:49, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:We don't "all know them", though. Your west coast US pronunciation will be different from mine. [[WP:RESPELL]] describes how simple pronunciation guides don't always work. For instance, I pronounce "[[English-language vowel changes before historic /r/|"Mary", "marry", and "merry"]] differently, but know that some Americans don't. The same applies to [[Cot–caught merger|"cot" and "caught"]]. Some of my compatriots pronounce [[Trap–bath split|"aren't" and "aunt"]] differently, but I don't. [[User:Bazza_7|Bazza <span style="color:grey">7</span>]] ([[User_talk:Bazza_7|talk]]) 18:55, 2 June 2024 (UTC) |
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:::::That is exactly ''not'' how the IPA is to be used -- it's not a series of random glyphs, and when people who actually know the IPA read it they are not going to read it in this sense of a ''unique'' (and probably OR) scheme that only exists in the pages of WP -- they are going to read the symbols with the values the symbols actually have. |
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::::::So, is the Handbook wrong to use <c> to represent [tʃ]? Or any of the litterally dozens of other cases where for convenience they use an IPA symbol for a value far removed from its defined phonetic value? [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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== Text on secondary stress == |
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:::::At which point it becomes apparent that something quite bizarre is being presented -- a "phonemic" transcription of a non-existent dialect of English, cobbled together from a bunch of half-understood pronunciation charts (with no actual phonological analysis having been done).[[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 12:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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::::::Am I supposed to be doing OR phonological analysis here? And how is this bizarre to a user of, say, Webster's 3rd, which also uses an inter-dialectal transcription? Your objection seems to be that the IPA shouldn't be used for such things; can you tell us what should? Because the folks around here are not goind to be happy with a pronunciation respelling using anything but the IPA. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] |
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On the help page, we show both primary and secondary stress marks, yet we never define how we do (or don't) use those symbols in the diaphonemic system. I believe the last chat we had arriving at some consensus was [[Help_talk:IPA/English/Archive_26#Secondary_stress|here]], where we agreed on WP to assign secondary stress only to a strong vowel ''preceding'' primary stress but not to a strong vowel ''succeeding'' it (i.e., following the British rather than American convention). It seems like it would be helpful to explain this, and even the concept of how secondary stress operates in English at all, if anyone can think of a concise wording for the concept. [[User:Wolfdog|Wolfdog]] ([[User talk:Wolfdog|talk]]) 12:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC) |
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::::P.S. You put a flag on the help page stating that the "factual accuracy of this article is disputed". Which facts? This is a convention, a help guide, not a statement of truth. Please give an example. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 21:52, 16 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:::::Okay, you disagree with this approach philosophically, as a matter of personal opinion. You still haven't come up with anything factually wrong about it. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 18:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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:Decided to [[WP:BOLD|BE BOLD]]. [[User:Wolfdog|Wolfdog]] ([[User talk:Wolfdog|talk]]) 13:54, 21 June 2024 (UTC) |
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===Bottom line=== |
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The bottom line is that it is extremely annoying that [[User:Kwamikagami]], though he doesn't seem to understand either the theoretical basis or the ''facts'' behind various transcriptions of English (much less the principles behind the English pronunciation of classical names, but that a whole different can of worms) feels the necessity to go hither and yon around WP imposing his misunderstandings upon hundreds of articles and thousands of pronunciations, creating errors -- often highly ridiculous and grotesque ones -- which may not be discovered and corrected for months or years. Why doesn't he just leave it alone? [[User:RandomCritic|RandomCritic]] 12:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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== Anki == |
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:Again, please give examples of these "grotesque" errors. You need to back up your claims. As for the principles behind Classical names, I wouldn't be at all surprised that I don't understand vowels that don't exist in my dialect, but that's a side issue to this page. I don't leave it alone because there are contradictory standards of the IPA used here in Wikipedia, so that often the result is ambiguous. We need some standard so that ''e.g.'' we know which sound /e/ is supposed to represent. [[User:Kwamikagami|kwami]] 18:32, 17 October 2007 (UTC) |
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We currently show the pronounciation of [[Anki (software)|Anki]] as /ˈɒŋkiː/, which seems surprising to me. I am aware that /ɒ/ for the spelling ⟨an⟩ is not unheard of, especially in French loanwords with /ɑ̃/ in the original, but is Anki really pronounced like that? |
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[[Special:Contributions/187.245.68.84|187.245.68.84]] ([[User talk:187.245.68.84|talk]]) 00:15, 23 June 2024 (UTC) |
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:I expect /æ/ or /ɑː/ (especially from British and American speakers, respectively), but it's unsourced anyway. It should be sourced to an ad or a developer saying it. [[User:Nardog|Nardog]] ([[User talk:Nardog|talk]]) 06:01, 23 June 2024 (UTC) |
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:{{IPA|/ˈɑːŋki/}} is all I've ever heard in US English, so that's what was meant, most likely. I've corrected the IPA, changing {{IPA|/iː/}} to {{IPA|/i/}} because the nasal is always velar (so the vowel is weak, phonemically {{IPA|/ɪ/}} according to Cruttenden, or {{IPA|/ɨ/}} according to some others). [[User:Sol505000|Sol505000]] ([[User talk:Sol505000|talk]]) 15:47, 23 June 2024 (UTC) |
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::Youglish indicates that /ˈæŋki/ is the norm in BrE, which fits for the general pattern of nativisation of <a> in recent loanwords in BrE vs. AmE. [[User:Offa29|Offa29]] ([[User talk:Offa29|talk]]) 15:59, 23 June 2024 (UTC) |
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Revision as of 23:29, 23 June 2024
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Double entry
Why is ɪ appearing twice, both under "Vowels" and "Weak vowels"? If we need two entries here, I would expect separate symbols (even if one is a modification of the other with a combining mark of some kind). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:05, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
- I believe the double entries for //ɪ// and //oʊ// are mainly there for historic reasons, back from the day when we were propagating our own idiosyncratic symbols for the weak vowel versions of the two. I have tentatively unified the symbols, keeping all the content. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 06:11, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
Colons for length symbols
In the 3rd bullet point of the Dialect variation section colons are used in place of length symbols:
- Most speakers of North American English (with the exception of Eastern New England) do not distinguish between the vowels in father /'fɑ:ðər/ and bother /'bɒðər/, pronouncing the two words as rhymes. If you speak such a dialect, ignore the difference between the symbols /ɑ:/ and /ɒ/.
I think they need to be replaced. 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:B1A9:DA55:640A:FC65 (talk) 20:13, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
- Done. Nardog (talk) 22:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
Inclusion of /ts/ as a marginal phoneme and removal of /ʔ/
/ʔ/ is an entirely paralinguistic sound and "uh-oh" is not a valid word to base the inclusion of a marginal phoneme around. However, seeing and /ts/ is a common marginal phoneme in words like "tsar" or "Mozart", including it would probably be valid. Plexus96 (talk) 14:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
- /ʔ/ is included for Hawaiian loans. It's illustrated by uh-oh simply because it's one of the most common and intuitive ways to illustrate the sound; it doesn't mean it's only used in paralanguage.
- /t/ and /s/ are already phonemes so there's no need to list /ts/ separately. Nardog (talk) 00:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
- /t/ and /ʃ/ are already phonemes so there’s no need for /tʃ/ as well…? БудетЛучше (talk) 18:15, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
- Because it's a phoneme in English if you ask just about any linguist. See English phonology#Obstruents for why. Nardog (talk) 18:17, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
- /ts/ behaves more like a consonant cluster, rather than a phoneme. It doesn't appear word-initially, at least not regularly (see e.g. [1]), only word-internally and -finally. Compare this with German /ts/ which can easily appear in this position, as in zu /tsuː/ or ziemlich /ˈtsiːmlɪç/. Native speakers of English constantly mispronounce those as /syː ~ suː/ and /ˈsiːmlɪk, -x, -ʃ/. Sol505000 (talk) 15:39, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- /t/ and /ʃ/ are already phonemes so there’s no need for /tʃ/ as well…? БудетЛучше (talk) 18:15, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
- "/ʔ/ is an entirely paralinguistic sound"
- It's also a common allophone across most dialects of English, particularly for /t/ 167.206.19.130 (talk) 19:56, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
- That's neither here nor there. We transcribe any allophone of /t/ as /t/ because this key is diaphonemic. Nardog (talk) 20:41, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
IPA overwhelming
IPA is overwhelming, redundant, and not user friendly. If you use the basic latin sounds the phonics are all there and we all know them. No need to learn a whole new set of sounds that are extremely numerous and cumbersome. 136.143.149.206 (talk) 17:51, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
- We don't "all know them", though. Your west coast US pronunciation will be different from mine. WP:RESPELL describes how simple pronunciation guides don't always work. For instance, I pronounce ""Mary", "marry", and "merry" differently, but know that some Americans don't. The same applies to "cot" and "caught". Some of my compatriots pronounce "aren't" and "aunt" differently, but I don't. Bazza 7 (talk) 18:55, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
Text on secondary stress
On the help page, we show both primary and secondary stress marks, yet we never define how we do (or don't) use those symbols in the diaphonemic system. I believe the last chat we had arriving at some consensus was here, where we agreed on WP to assign secondary stress only to a strong vowel preceding primary stress but not to a strong vowel succeeding it (i.e., following the British rather than American convention). It seems like it would be helpful to explain this, and even the concept of how secondary stress operates in English at all, if anyone can think of a concise wording for the concept. Wolfdog (talk) 12:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
- Decided to BE BOLD. Wolfdog (talk) 13:54, 21 June 2024 (UTC)
Anki
We currently show the pronounciation of Anki as /ˈɒŋkiː/, which seems surprising to me. I am aware that /ɒ/ for the spelling ⟨an⟩ is not unheard of, especially in French loanwords with /ɑ̃/ in the original, but is Anki really pronounced like that? 187.245.68.84 (talk) 00:15, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- I expect /æ/ or /ɑː/ (especially from British and American speakers, respectively), but it's unsourced anyway. It should be sourced to an ad or a developer saying it. Nardog (talk) 06:01, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- /ˈɑːŋki/ is all I've ever heard in US English, so that's what was meant, most likely. I've corrected the IPA, changing /iː/ to /i/ because the nasal is always velar (so the vowel is weak, phonemically /ɪ/ according to Cruttenden, or /ɨ/ according to some others). Sol505000 (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2024 (UTC)
- Youglish indicates that /ˈæŋki/ is the norm in BrE, which fits for the general pattern of nativisation of <a> in recent loanwords in BrE vs. AmE. Offa29 (talk) 15:59, 23 June 2024 (UTC)