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"feel" may be the same as "seed" in some foreign accents, such as Swedlish, but in US and UK, it's a diphthong and distinct from the sound in "seed". In fact, the vowel sound in "feel", same as in "real" is not covered in this key. Also, "seed" is an elongated vowel, whereas "fleece", like "feet" is much shorter in duration. This key makes no mention of this important distinction, which is often lost on ESL students. Dave Yost (talk) 21:19, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's because it's not important at the level of phonemes, which is all we can expect an IPA key to cover. Of course different accents have different allophones. Rothorpe (talk) 22:42, 14 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. The sounds of the vowel aren't identical, but it's the following consonant that determines it, not the word: feel rhymes with we'll and seed rhymes with we'd, and here the word is the same... A. di M. (formerly Army1987) (talk) 14:12, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Seed" rhymes with "weed", not "we'd". 68.208.127.65 (talk) 20:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I know it's not really an FAQ, but obviously I'm referring to the first comment/reply about the IPA being gibberish. I'm not an expert in linguistics by any stretch and am not looking to get into a super technical argument/discussion, and I'm basically speaking here as a reader more than an editor.

I've been meaning to comment on the IPA issue for years and am finally doing so now, for whatever reason, though I'm not trying to relitigate the decision to use IPA. However the "answer" to the "gibberish" complaint is completely inadequate in my view, and will only come across as highly off-putting to most readers (including myself) who have this complaint. The fact is, to many (indeed most) people reading en.wikipedia, the IPA is gibberish, but the reply above essentially says "too bad, get with the program, the other thing you might kinda know is worse." That's not really acceptable in my view, even if it is some sense "right." The answer also admits that there are other ways we at Wikipedia could do phonetic transcription which might be more familiar to many, but we don't really bother to. Why not? Another problem is that it's unclear, to me at least, what exactly the phrase "for foreign pronunciations" means. If it means "pronunciations by non-English speakers" (I'm guessing that's it) it will be unclear to many why that is prioritized in our phonetic transcription rather than trying to list out the top five or so conventions used in many English-speaking societies.

Put in other terms, would you guess that using IPA helps more people pronounce words in our articles than would be helped if we used the system from the American Heritage Dictionary (or whatever)? Certainly something nation-specific would be off-putting to many, but then again many others would be helped by it. How many readers would you estimate actually know (or take the time to learn) the IPA and are helped by it when they come here, and how many just get annoyed and have no idea what it means, viewing it as useless? I'd be curious to see a survey on that, but I'd have to assume the latter vastly, vastly outnumber the former. If the point of phonetic transcription is to help people who read the English language Wikipedia to pronounce things they don't know how to pronounce then I doubt IPA helps more people than other major transcription systems in English.

I don't know what the solution is, but if you're really going to answer the "what is this gibberish" question you should probably start by admitting that it is gibberish to many, explain how there is not a really good solution, and apologize for the fact that they way we do phonetic transcription here at en.wikipedia might be pretty useless to a huge percentage of readers. The other remedy would be to embark on a concerted project to tag articles that have especially tricky pronunciation issues and then work on listing out alternatives to the IPA (after the IPA version) for as many of them as possible, rather than saying "few of us bother with that." Or if that project is too difficult (and it might be) then say, again, "sorry, we'd like to do this but haven't been able to pull it off yet."

The current answer basically says, "you're wrong, and maybe even a little dumb" in response to an incredibly valid question (though it's mildly humorous that it includes the phrase "all other conventions have shortcomings" while ignoring the fact that basically anyone reading the above is doing so because they thought, "what it the hell is that", i.e. the IPA system also has a pretty severe shortcoming—most don't know a damn thing about it). I'm sure those writing the answer had the best of intentions, but frankly it's pretty tone deaf. Rant, fin. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 07:48, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's any transcription system which is understandable by more than 60% or so of the readers. Now, it might be that the American dictionary system is gibberish to pretty much everybody outside the US, and IPA is gibberish to pretty much everybody in the US, and that most readers are American; but these readers are native English speakers so they are likely to already know the pronunciations, and we had better use the system which is most understood by those readers who don't already know the pronunciations–namely, IPA. (Then I do use things as "pronounced /sɒl/ (rhyming with doll)" or "/ɡɪ/ (as in gig)" whenever practical.) A. di M. (formerly Army1987) (talk) 08:17, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think "for foreign pronunciations" means pronunciations of foreign-language words. Of course, one wouldn't really use WP:IPA_for_English for that anyway, so it may be a general point about using IPA. (I absolutely cringe at the thought of using AHD for, say, Irish). I suppose I should also point out that the alternatives are so unreliably inconsistent that a even reader familiar with them can't be sure in many cases what the intended pronunciation is, and will have to consult the relevant key anyway.

I tend to think of this issue as similar to the Metric versus "Imperial/Traditional/US" measurement debate, but it may be more analogous to the earlier situation where every country had its own (perhaps more than one) traditional set of units: there's nothing wrong with using your local traditional system and it says nothing about your intelligence, but when talking to "outsiders" it's inefficient to have to redefine each measurement in terms of what each conversant is used to, and more efficient to encourage everyone to agree to a "neutral" standard. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 16:20, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Since we have someone with a non-specialist viewpoint willing to offer suggestions, I say we forego discussing the merits of the IPA and skip to drafting a revision of our reply in the "FAQ" before he/she gets frustrated with us. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:22, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is where drafting of revisions takes place to our stock reply to the question "The IPA is gibberish and I can't read it. Why doesn't Wikipedia use a normal pronunciation key?" The changes should not be implemented until after clear consensus has been reached.

Because the IPA is the international norm, and all other conventions have shortcomings. For foreign pronunciations, the IPA is the only widely understood choice. However, in the case of English, there are a range of conventions which may be used in addition to the IPA, though few editors bother with them. See WP:Manual of Style (pronunciation).

The IPA is the international and therefore the Wikipedia standard for phonetic transcription. In the case of English pronunciations, this key may be linked through the template {{IPA-en}}; there are also some alternatives. An editor can simply say "rhymes with X" or "sounds like Y". Another option is a respelling key, linked with the {{respell}} template. Note, however, that the result may be gibberish to many people. For example, 'vice' is respelled vyes, which people may read as 'vye-ess' or as 'vies' ('vize'). Yet a third option are the in-house conventions of dictionaries published in the USA, which are more familiar to American children than is the IPA. Since each dictionary has its own variation on this theme, Wikipedia has developed a compromise convention linked through the template {{USdict}}. However, for anyone who didn't grow up with US-published dictionaries, this system is as completely unintelligible as you find the IPA. It is also inadequate for other languages.

I sincerely hope this is the correct place for an answer to the query: "what is the proper IPA for Stretham"? (To defend myself, Template:Respell directed me to here). There is a duologue going on at Talk:Stretham#Phonetic transcription of Stretham. Taking into account that discussion, and after listening hard to local people speaking, I have transcribed Stretham as follows

• Stretham /ˈstrɛtæm/ (which I believe is the Received Pronunciation)
• in-line reference:

• Locally, the /t/ is a glottal stop as in Stre'am (locally /ˈstrɛʔəm/ or even locally /ˈstrɛʔm/)

--Senra (talk) 11:32, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is a perfectly fine place to raise such questions! In my experience, the townname sufix -ham is almost always an unstressed /əm/, thus giving /ˈstrɛtəm/. There may be some exceptions, but if you are correct that the locals use /ˈstrɛʔəm/, that suggests this is not one of them. No one uses /ˈstreɪtəm/, do they? Obviously, if you can find a source that would be good. Cheers! — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 17:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The IPA character ʉ is listed as corresponding to both beautiful and curriculum, but I am not aware of any dialect in which (if I may attempt a phonetic presentation) "beautiful" is pronounced as bj-oo-ti-fool, nor "curriculum" as ker-ik-ah-lum; ergo these contradict one another and so one or the other must be wrong (i.e. the other "u" than that indicated must be intended in one of these two words), yet it is far from obvious which it is. It would be helpful if this could be corrected. 94.171.240.69 (talk) 23:24, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In this transcription system /ʉ/ means that you can pronounce the word indifferently with either /ʊ/ or /ə/; it turns out that you use /ʊ/ for beautiful and /ə/ for curriculum, but other speakers can do otherwise. A. di M. (formerly Army1987) (talk) 00:13, 31 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

All of the "reduced vowels" (except, arguably, /ə/) have that sort of variation. Should we put an explanatory note? I doubt the above anonymous user is the first to be confused by this convention. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:02, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is it OK now? A. di M. (talk) 21:32, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I like it, but isn't the product of happy tensing a short [i]? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:49, 10 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It depends on the dialect; there are speakers for whom Andy's and Andes are homophones (see the archive of this talk page). Anyway, it might say "(either I or i: or something in between)", and the same for all the others... A. di M. (talk) 08:20, 12 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Where does this come from? It's not in Accents of English. Grover cleveland (talk) 19:17, 16 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Removed. Grover cleveland (talk) 01:56, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion relevant to this project is underway on WP:VPR#Change /r/ in English IPA transcriptions to /ɹ/.—Emil J. 12:39, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There was a discussion, but I, the starter of it, have accepted that my idea was bad. So the discussion is over now. Skrodl (talk) 23:12, 26 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In the last months many threads have been archived to Wikipedia talk:IPA for English/Archive 1, ..., Wikipedia talk:IPA for English/Archive 4, despite Help talk:Pronunciation/Archive 1 and Help talk:Pronunciation/Archive 2 and Wikipedia talk:IPA for English/Archive 3, ..., Wikipedia talk:IPA for English/Archive 8 already existing. As a result, /Archive 3 and /Archive 4 contain threads both from 2008 and from 2010. A. di M. (talk) 23:26, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Title says it all. I can't find any such thing here, and I wonder why it doesn't exist or isn't prominent on the page. Is there no software that can do that?

The first time I saw a word's pronunciation given on WP, after the word, in parentheses, and in some unfamiliar funny-lookin' characters that were obviously a kind of pronunciation code with which I was (and remain) unfamiliar, I turned on my speakers before clicking on it. I certainly didn't expect a link to a page about how to interpret the code.

I'm just a naive WP user. You Wikipedians must have discussed this possibility but I sure can't find any trace of it.

/jim —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.62.101.206 (talk) 20:31, 1 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We don't generally use sound files primarily because that's a lot of work, and many people don't consider it necessary. (Most dictionaries don't include sound files, and do just fine.) — kwami (talk) 07:01, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the point of using IPA in Wik is to help non-native-speakers, then I think there are deficiencies in either the IPA or the version used. Some-one coming from a language where aspiration is a phonemic rather than allophonic distinction is likely to be confused by some-thing like this: b buy, cab. (It's equivalent to saying F life live for some-one who speaks a language (like English) in which voicing is a phonemic distinguisher: s/he will be at a loss on how to pronounce the word -- even though to a person of a language with-out that distinction mightn't even notice a difference.)

So it seems to me that the IPA as used here is frustrating to many Americans because it's too foreign and complicated and frustrating to many speakers of other languages because it lumps "diverse" sounds together. Kdammers (talk) 06:34, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

IPA for English is intended for speakers, either native or good enough to know what the sounds of English are. You're correct: if you do not know how to speak English, this key will not help you much. Of course, you'd first have to decide which dialect you wish to use, and that is not encoded here at all. I don't think changing this would work. How would we ever agree on which allophonic differences are salient enough to include, and would good or native speakers even remember that "lull" has two different consonants, or that the stop in spy is a different consonant than the stop in pie?

As for it being too difficult for Americans, I'm sorry, but we can't dumb down everything for Americans because of their insular educational system. (And I say that as an American raised on that system.) We don't give astronomical distances in miles, for example, nor the mass of the Moon in pounds. Now, some editors, in order to make WP more accessible to them, go around adding conversions to more American-friendly units like pounds and miles; likewise, some editors go around adding more American-friendly pronunciation guides as outlined at {{respelled}} or {{USdict}}. However, that's a lot of work, and most people don't bother. — kwami (talk) 06:53, 4 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your reasoned response. I don't think we have to get into the dialect issue (IPA and the Wik advocates of it do a fair job of adjusting for and explaining that), but I still think the allophone issue should be better addressed. someone can be well enough versed in a language to read it and understand Wik entries yet still not comprehend that what s/he views as two totally different "letters" (phonemes) are not perceived as different by the average native-speaker of English ESPECIALLY when the examples given support this, to the out-sider, confusion.

On the second point: In the IPA discussion page, a solution has been proposed: a mouse-over gives examples using common English words. Kdammers (talk) 00:59, 5 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The logic expressed above seems to make no sense whatsoever... IPA is used so it can be read by non-English speakers, but then use a pronunciation guide that cannot be used by non-English speakers. Meanwhile, there seems to be wide agreement, including the note at the top of this page, that IPA is not useful for English speakers and is being included for non-English use. Wow. Maury Markowitz (talk) 23:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's a bit like saying that we use the metric system for non-English speakers, but then write the articles in English, so that they're not useful for either. The IPA is just the phonetic equivalent of metric. Americans complain about it for the same reason that they complain about the metric system: their insular education leaves them unprepared to work internationally. — kwami (talk) 00:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Who says the IPA is used so it can be read by non-English speakers? Neither Kwami nor the post at top say as much so I'm not sure where you're getting that, Maury. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:05, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think Maury is confusing America with the rest of the vastly greater English speaking world. Common enough in Kwamis land of 'insular education' . --Kudpung (talk) 01:34, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect as much, too. But perhaps we should let Maury speak for himself. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:48, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is much more interesting than I thought possible. All of you appear to be perfectly happy to throw around culturally predugicial comments attacking other users, without a shred of backing evidence. Didn't anyone think of going to my personal page before attacking me for being a cultural imperialist?

For the record, my comment above is based on the statement "someone can be well enough versed in a language to read it and understand Wik entries yet still not comprehend that what s/he views as two totally different "letters". This is the complaint that everyone coming here has, and it appears the common response is to call the person an imperialist. Wow.

Surely the group of people that created the world's largest and best encyclopedia in a few short years can do better? What I see here is institutionalized laziness. This is a technical issue, there are many obvious technical solutions. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:20, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

One user, Kdammers, has asserted that we use IPA to help non-native speakers of English. We don't, and this is what Kwami has said in response. When you say "The logic expressed above seems to make no sense whatsoever" it seems as though you're reading the exchange as being made by one person. You'll have to excuse me if I come off as culturally prejudicial in asking you to implying that you make sure you comprehend things as they are intended before responding.

It is possible to put allophones in a diaphonemic transcription scheme, but why would we do that? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 12:24, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

it's not a good example; please remove it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.126.70.183 (talk) 07:26, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It is a good example, if it warns you that the transcriptions may not reflect your dialect. Can you think of a word ending in L which has that vowel? — kwami (talk) 07:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For whom does foal [fol] rhyme with full /fʊl/? -- Evertype·✆

Nobody? --Kudpung (talk) 01:14, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Phoneticially the phoneme /ʍ/ is not at all the same thing as the sequence of phonemes /hw/. Phonetically the one is [ʍ] and the other might be [hw] or [hʷ]; Indeed that sequence is typologically rare and tends to [xw]. [ʍ] is more akin to [ɸ] than to [h] or [hw] or [hʷ]. It is s voiceless [w], like blowing out a candle, not a labialized [h] or a sequence. In IPA for English I suggest that only /ʍ/ should be given, and not /hw/ at all. The Concise Oxford typically writes only /w/ for words in wh-, and while the OED has used /hw/, it notes:

In OE. the pronunciation symbolized by hw was probably in the earliest periods a voiced bilabial consonant preceded by a breath. This was developed in two different directions: (1) it was reduced to a simple voiced consonant (w); (2) by the influence of the accompanying breath, the voiced (w) became unvoiced. The first of these pronunciations (w) probably became current first in southern ME. under the influence of French speakers, whence it spread northwards (but ME. orthography gives no reliable evidence on this point). It is now universal in English dialect speech except in the four northernmost counties and north Yorkshire, and is the prevailing pronunciation among educated speakers. The second pronunciation, denoted in this Dictionary by the conventional symbol (hw), and otherwise variously denoted by phoneticians, (wh), (w), (ẉ), (ʍ), is general in Scotland, Ireland, and America, and is used by a large proportion of educated speakers in England, either from social or educational tradition, or from a preference for what is considered a careful or correct pronunciation.

Note: the OED says that the OE sequence /hw/ was either reduced to /w/ or devoiced to /ʍ/. It is a mistake for IPA for English to write a velar/labial sequence /hw/ in contexts other than Old English. I propose that the policy (for Kwami says it is a policy) be changed and that /ʍ/ be used, as this accurately describes the pronunciation of wh- in the dialects which have it, and /hw/ does not. -- Evertype·✆ 09:23, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I never said it was policy, I said it was a consensual convention.

I wouldn't use the OED for an argument in phonetics; in any case, you're confusing phonetics and phonology.

The /hw/ analysis is a common one. Treating it as a separate phoneme /ʍ/ is also common. I doubt either can be proven: it's a theoretical issue.

So that we don't repeat ourselves, the discussion to switch to <hw> was here. — kwami (talk) 09:55, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to the analysis of [ʍ]=/hw/ being common (though I don't know how common), it is also easier for the target audience to read. I understand Evertype's argument that it's less phonetically precise, but this isn't a transcription convention known for its phonetic precision. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The previous discussion seems to have had a brief mention of the 3rd option, /w̥/, which went over without much comment. However, this has the advantage of both visual similarity to plain /w/, and phonetical accuracy. Unlike /ʍ/, it also adheres to the regular IPA method of representing voiceless sonorants. It won't do any better against the "but is it really a single phoneme?" arguments (anyway, isn't that a topic for English phonology, not this key?), but I don't see anything that puts this at a disadvantage against /ʍ/. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 17:33, 7 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

/w̥/ is too easily confused with /w/. There is absolutely nothing wrong with /hw/ as a phonemic analysis: it's used all over the place in reliable sources. Indeed, even the use of /h/ for words like hit is arguably phonetically inaccurate, since most English speakers do not have a glottal constriction in such words: phonetically they are more like [ɪ̥ɪt]. Grover cleveland (talk) 01:03, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I can't say I've ever seen [w̥] used for English, certainly not in phonemic (or diaphonemic) representations. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:35, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's used in The Sounds of the World's Languages as a phonetic analysis. Grover cleveland (talk) 01:41, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Phoneticially the phoneme /ʍ/ is not at all the same thing as the sequence of phonemes /hw/. Minimal pair, please? (Or, at least, an example of each.) The [ç] in human is transcribed as /hj/ and no-one objects to that; how is this different? A. di M. (talk) 10:47, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes: I think Evertype must have intended to say "the phone [ʍ] is not at all the same thing as the sequence of phones [hw]", which is true, of course, but irrelevant. Grover cleveland (talk) 19:29, 8 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so: he was careful in distinguishing slashes from brackets and went on to describe what the possible realizations of each were. Now, by /ʍ/ he means the one in white, which etc., but I can't tell what he means by the "typologically rare" sequence /hw/ which "might be [hw] or [hʷ]" and "tends to [xw]". If he can provide an example of the latter in English (preferably but not necessarily a minimal pair with /ʍ/), his argument is valid; but I don't think there's one. A. di M. (talk) 10:24, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps Evertype is thinking of Spanish borrowings like Juan? For me they're identical to the English /hw/ words like what, but perhaps there are some speakers for whom they are somehow different. Grover cleveland (talk) 17:04, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thought this was interesting, and perhaps relevant if old criticisms come back. The BBC has a respelling key in which they transcribe diaphonemic /r/. — kwami (talk) 00:47, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Our respellings acknowledge word-final or pre-consonantal R, as in words like party and hair, which is pronounced in some accents of English (rhotic) and not in others (non-rhotic). Therefore Parker is transcribed as PAAR-kuhr, not PAA-kuh, and the rs will be pronounced or not according to the speaker's accent."[1]