The only disadvantage of the new scheme is that only admin users are able to edit the font declarations in Common.css (or is it an advantage?). But you can override the font declaration for yourself by editing your own Wikipedia user style sheet. See Template talk:IPA#Applying custom styles to IPA text. Alternatively, you can use a browser like Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Safari, in which Unicode text just works.

The reason for this change is that the Mediawiki software no longer allows comments in inline style sheets, because Microsoft Internet Explorer's incorrect parsing is unsafe and can be used for cross-site scripting attacks. See Wikimedia bug no. 3588.

Similar font declarations applied to any tables or divs on Wikipedia should have one of the above-mentioned class attributes added instead.

The style sheet code in Common.css looks like this:

/* Support for Template:IPA, Template:Unicode and Template:Polytonic. The inherit declaration resets the font for all browsers except MSIE6.  The empty comment must remain. */
.IPA {
        font-family: Chrysanthi Unicode, Doulos SIL, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Code2000, TITUS Cyberbit Basic, DejaVu Sans, Bitstream Vera Sans, Bitstream Cyberbit, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro, Matrix Unicode;
        font-family /**/:inherit;
}
.Unicode {
        font-family: TITUS Cyberbit Basic, Code2000, Doulos SIL, Chrysanthi Unicode, Bitstream Cyberbit, Bitstream CyberBase, Bitstream Vera, Thryomanes, Gentium, GentiumAlt, Visual Geez Unicode, Lucida Grande, Arial Unicode MS, Microsoft Sans Serif, Lucida Sans Unicode;
        font-family /**/:inherit;
}
.polytonic {
        font-family: Athena, Gentium, Palatino Linotype, Arial Unicode MS, Lucida Sans Unicode, Lucida Grande, Code2000; 
        font-family /**/:inherit;
}

Please discuss this at Template talk:IPA#Font declaration has been moved to Common.css. —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 15:39 Z

Discussion

css is certainly the right way to handle this sort of thing. However, not everyone uses monobook -- there are 7 other styles available in Special:Preferences. Since I can't edit the css files, I am fixing this temporarily by reverting to the old system. Please revert back after all the other css files are updated. And then, please test on a variety of configurations. Thanks. --Macrakis 18:54, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What's the name of the skin you are using? Do you know the location of its style sheet, and the other six? I'm glad to make the same changes to all of them. —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 19:03 Z

I use Classic, myself. Special:Preferences also shows MySkin, Cologne Blue, MonoBook, Nostalgia, Simple, Amethyst, and Chick. When you're done, you can also change back Template:Polytonic. --Macrakis 19:12, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't find any of those style sheets, but I've moved the offending code to MediaWiki:Common.css, so it should work in all skins. Please refresh and confirm that it's working for you. Thanks. —Michael Z. 2005-10-4 20:39 Z

No, it will not work in all skins. If there are 6 of them, and the inclusion of Common.css is done only in 5 of them (it's not automatic; it has to be done by hand on each of the skins, since there's no support for it in the software), one of the skins is not working correctly. Someone should find out which page on the MediaWiki: namespace the missing skin is calling and create it, copying from one of the other skins (for instance, MediaWiki:Cologneblue.css). --cesarb 21:06, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, I've done it myself (there were two skins which didn't have the Common.css include). I have not tested them, but it should work. --cesarb 21:17, 4 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Compare:

• ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι
• ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι

The second one looks more like monobooks sans-serif font (defaults to Arial for western text, at least in IE and Firefox), doesn't it? Is there a specific reason Tahoma isn't in the list (and more importantly, before P.L.)? Are there important characters Tahoma doesn't support? Shinobu 02:10, 15 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The template does not work with Macintosh and IE

System Software Overview:

 System Version:	Mac OS X 10.3.9 (7W98)
 Kernel Version:	Darwin 7.9.0

        Explorer Version: 5.2.3 (5815.1)
              Encryption: 128 Bit
              User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.23; Mac_PowerPC)
            Machine Type: Unknown
          System Version: System 10.3.9
         TCP/IP Software: Open Transport - version 16.3.0
            Drag Manager: 68K & PPC Version
 Text Encoding Converter: Version 1.9.0
           System Memory: 2097,148K Bytes

Andreas 02:02, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

[Replied at template talk:Polytonic#Mac and IE —Michael Z. 2005-12-28 06:02 Z]

If any CSS hackers are in the house: Could you please have a look at Talk:Voiced_velar_plosive? It appears that Firefox preferably uses the font MS Reference Sans Serif for IPA letters, but the font is broken. Thanks, AxelBoldt 21:53, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Update: this is the same issue that Angr reported above for Netscape. AxelBoldt 22:34, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Please add an interwiki link to the Vietnamese version of this template:

<noinclude>[[vi:Tiêu bản:IPA]]</noinclude>

Thanks.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs) 22:32, 5 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --CBDunkerson 17:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, I don't really know what I'm talking about, but I was wondering if you can shed some light on this. At Korean language, there is this use of the template, <͈>, which does not render correctly on my browser (Firefox 1.5). Is it something you could fix perhaps? Cheers. PizzaMargherita 22:25, 21 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The character in question is combining diacritical mark, code point 0348, its appearance and usage are described at Korean language. Since you use Firefox, {{IPA}} does not affect your display. (It affect only MSIE.) If it does not render correctly on your browser, that would indicate that you don't have a font that supports this code point. If it displayed correctly, it would modify the preceding character: two vertial lines would appear under the < (which may not be what the editor intended). --teb728 16:44, 8 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could we place the fonts that do not handle diacritics placement lower in the CSS font priority? Fonts like Gentium or Chrysanthi Unicode do not have diacritics placement, so diacritics will not always be well placed, some centered, others not. Also could we put those that do and are hinted with a higer priority? Here's a proposed order:

1. Doulos SIL - best IPA support: diacritics placement, stacking and decent hinting
2. Charis SIL - same as quality as Doulos SIL
3. DejaVu Sans - Sans Serif font with diacritics placement, some stacking and good hinting
4. Gentium - good IPA support except for no diacritics placement, no stacking, good hinting
5. Code2000 - good IPA support, diacritics placement, stacking but no hinting
6. Chrysanthi Unicode - good IPA support but no diacritics placement and no hinting
7. Others

---moyogo 06:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am using MSIE 6.0 on WIN XP and unfortunately Charis SIL does not show IPA diacritics correctly. Jan.Kamenicek (talk) 23:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Esteemed Powers That Be,

I am using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6. Normal text of Wikipedia gets displayed in Arial as specified, text in the IPA template gets displayed in Arial MS Unicode, which works perfectly (except for the bug with the tie bar, of course). Today I wanted to open a WordPerfect document and installed OpenOffice 2.0 for this purpose. Surprise! The most basic characters in IPA template now get displayed in a weird font with shading (each letter looks like a jpeg, sort of), and all other characters are rectangles! It turns out that in this template Bitstream Vera Sans has priority over Arial Unicode MS. Bitstream Vera Sans indeed looks like what Internet Explorer displays now, and it is devoid of special characters more "exotic" than Čč. It is not a Unicode font!!! It is even worse than plain Arial (which has, for example, basic Greek and Cyrillic)! Please remove it! *wince* *wail*

(The alternative, of course, would be that I and everyone else with both Windows and OpenOffice delete that font from their computers. Surely deleting it from the IPA template would make more sense.)

Yours truly

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:06 CEST | 2006/5/15

Addendum: These strangenesses do not happen with {{unicode}} and {{latinx}}. These templates do not have Bitstream Vera Sans, as shown in Template_talk:Polytonic. Accordingly, it's indeed Bitstream Vera Sans that is the culprit.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 02:01 CEST | 2006/5/17

Hello? Anybody here? Is this page on nobody's watchlist?

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:13 CEST | 2006/5/27

There is no font specification in this template.--MarSch 10:21, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, yes there is (indirectly). class="IPA" triggers a stylesheet rule, which should be changed. Shinobu 20:27, 29 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I removed Bitstream Vera from the .Unicode and .IPA classed. I wonder how it crept in there in the first place? —Ruud 00:50, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's how. --cesarb 04:17, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much!!!

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 16:32 CEST | 2006/7/17

What exactly do we anticipate the category being used for? This is a meta-category and should properly be on the talk page, if a category is needed at all. But I would think what links here would be just as good. Christopher Parham (talk) 23:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind, I think. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:59, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

mi:Template:IPA on the Māori wiki (mi), for use on mi:Takuu, an article I am developing, and on upcoming linguistics-related articles. I have made it a protected template. I can't add the interwiki here since I am not a sysop on en. Cheers Kahuroa 05:17, 9 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is this be needed for the Bambara Wikipedia? Guaka 00:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I propose a new template to link to articles using an IPA anchor. A preliminary version is available at {{User:Kjoonlee/tl}}. It uses the "nounderlines" class to stop underlines from being displayed.

Usage: {{User:Kjoonlee/tl|Target article|/aj pi ej/}}

• Works with slashes
  • /ŋ/
• And brackets
  • [ŋ]

You can see Elder Futhark to see why this might be needed. --Kjoonlee 07:13, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

But what should we call this template? Template:IPA2 is already taken and IPA3 isn't very easy to remember. Template:IPA link, perhaps?

Another reason this sort of template might be needed: Northern cities vowel shift can link to the vowels directly. --Kjoonlee 09:16, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doh. Template isn't really needed, since class="IPA" is now sufficient to suppress underlines and {{IPA|[[Voiceless dental fricative|[θ]]]}} syntax does the job. --Kjoonlee 09:38, 21 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have an idea which I call "IPA Quickhelp templates" for making IPA symbols more comprehensible, like this: ʒ (try rolling over that with your mouse). That is, {{Ʒ}}. Currently it doesn't work with popups, I'm hoping to fix that. This is an improvement over the "linking" mentioned above for two reasons:

1. The tooltip text that it shows is a redirect with a non-jargon name, so the average person who doesn't know all the IPA symbols (I consider myself savvy and I know maybe half by sight) and who doesn't know what "fricative" means can figure it out by just holding the mouse over each symbol in turn.
2. The process of adding an alias is handled by a template and so requires much less typing and thought and linkchecking.

To discuss the concept, go here: template talk:Ʒ.--Homunq 04:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I have just downloaded the upgrades for Internet Explorer 7 (version 7.0.5730.11), and I am sorry to say that the template {{IPA}} does not work well with it -- from what I can see, many diacritic modifiers to main IPA symbols show up as little square boxes, despite the use of the template (for an example, look at the dental affricate in the phoneme chart of the Wari' language). With the previous version of Internet Explorer everything went fine. Is there someone with the necessary template-making expertise who could fix this problem? --Smeira 12:10, 16 December 2006 (UTC) [Copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Phonetics by  Andreas  ^(T) 13:26, 16 December 2006 (UTC)][reply]

Let someone add polish interwiki - pl:Szablon:IPA Dodecki 14:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could interwiki links for these languages be added? Thank you. :) --Kjoonlee 03:08, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 03:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Browsing Canadian Gaelic, I find that the IPA sequences are illegible. The main problem seems to be the '&thinsp;' entities, which are appearing as the letters "THSP" in a box, as in the image on the right (a screengrab of my browser's attempt to render the first example in 'Phonology'). The associated text is:

 {{IPA|/ ʟ /}}

I'm using Mozilla 1.7.2 ("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040803"); I'm not sure how to find out what font it is picking up. Hv 15:27, 21 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki does not know about  ; you will have to use the corresponding numeric entity. --cesarb 17:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, but I'm not sure what that means: why should MediaWiki need to know about it? And is that a collective you, as in: nobody should be using   in any WP pages? If so, I hope there is a bot fixing things up, because it doesn't sound like fun to do by hand. Hv 10:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

MediaWiki uses a whitelist approach. This means that only entities it knows about will work. You can also request at bugzilla that thinsp be added to the list. --cesarb 10:56, 19 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There should be some lang attribute added to this, such as lang="x-IPA", to signify that the text is not in standard English. —155.33.61.98 06:20, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is this documented somewhere? That is, what is the correct value for lang here? CMummert · talk 14:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

RFC 1766 would appear to be the relevant document. Any code starting 'x-' can be used safely, it seems; if there is a code for IPA, it would be one of the 'Codes of 3 to 8 letters may be registered with the IANA by anyone who feels a need for it', and I'm not sure if any of those codes have been registered. (Google doesn't seem to help tracking down the relevant information; references to the RFC are easy enough to find, but none of them mention the actual list of registered 3+-letter codes.) --ais523 17:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

If these pages are right, the correct syntax would be lang="en-fonipa". [5] [6] Does that look right to you? CMummert · talk 18:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I've found the official IANA page on that linked from the websites you mention: [7]. Searching for 'IPA' indeed reveals that '-fonipa' is a suffix that identifies IPA used as the script. On the other hand, 'en' before the hyphen implies that it's the pronunciation of English, whereas it might be the pronunciation of some other language in the tag. So either we give IPA a parameter for the main language code, or we're stuck without the -fonipa designation. (I'm temporarily removing {{editprotected}} until it's decided what we want to do here.) --ais523 18:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for looking into this. I would be glad to make the protected edit, but it's not obvious to me what the right thing is. I'm going to post a pointer to this on WP:VP/T to get more eyes on it. CMummert · talk 18:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In the meantime, I thought of lang="{{{2|en}}}-fonipa" as a possible solution, but I agree that this needs more input first. --ais523 18:43, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

It would be great to have the Template:IPA article placed into Category:IPA so that editors would be more aware of its existence. Or would placing this talk page in the category be an acceptable alternative? --Blainster 20:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}} . That seems to be a category of articles; I don't think we should put a template in there, because of Wikipedia:Self reference. CMummert · talk 17:24, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not too long ago, most people putting IPA pronunciation into an article usually preceded it with a wikilink (IPA) to the IPA article to explain what it was. Now many of them use this template instead, perhaps thinking it might provide such a link, which it doesn't. I would like to see a link included in the template, if it would not make excessive work looking for instances in which the link was already separately provided. --Blainster 17:27, 5 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems there is an alternate template, {{IPA2}} available, which does include the IPA wikilink I suggested. --Blainster 16:01, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please link sv:Mall:IPA? Thanks, – SmiddleTC@ 17:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

{{editprotected}}

--Kjoonlee 17:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 18:07, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In most cases where this template is used, it is counterproductive. I'm not only talking about the many display issues others mentioned above. But let's take a look at what it actually does: Its main function is displaying a tool tip saying "Pronunciation in IPA". Now let's look at the different cases when it is used, and if it makes sense.

• Pronounciation explanations of article titles, such as geoduck. For these, we have already {{IPA2}} and {{IPA3}}, which provide a standardized way of referring to the pronunciation.
• Tables, such as {{Consonants}}. In such cases, it is absurd to use this template. All it does is it prevents the tooltip from displaying the actual name of phone - which is automatically provided by the name of the linked article. (Compare the old version with the one without this template.) Moreover, by using {{IPA2}} in a table like {{Consonants}}, we introduce dozens of second-level transclusions into many dozens of pages. It's an absurd waste of bandwidth!

Can anybody point to a really useful application of this template? If not then I'd propose to delete it. — Sebastian 05:52, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This template is necessary because Microsoft Internet Explorer is stupid about displaying fonts in mixed Unicode ranges. Without this template, most Unicode characters won't show up in that browser. Before its introduction, there were constant revert wars over pronunciation guides and IPA.

It does screw up the tool-tip on links, but IPA text should not normally be linked (per Wikipedia:Pronunciation#IPA style), because underlines in browsers make some IPA unreadable. If you must link IPA text, try using <span class="IPA">, or some other HTML element with the attribute.

Tables with a lot of IPA should have class="IPA" added to the table attributes, instead of using multiple instances of template:IPA.

Template transclusions have been discussed elsewhere. They definitely don't require any bandwidth—although the code they insert may increase page size—and the consensus seems to be that they are not taxing on the Wikimedia servers. It's been a while since I've read any of the relevant discussion, but you may find more info at Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits. Cheers. —Michael Z. 2007-06-19 06:51 Z

Thank you for your good comments; especially the one about using <span class="IPA"> was very helpful. That settles the matter for the big tables. I overlooked that the class property was part of the template, too. I now see that the template has some use.

However, I still don't see a use for the tool tip in this template. It comes at a cost, and I think the benefit is less than that of other templates. The template is used for two different cases:

1. Where we want to ensure IPA displays correctly. This is for cases where it is already clear to the reader that the text is IPA.
2. Where we want the above and alert readers that this is an IPA text.

I feel #1 would be better served with a simple template that only contains the class property. (I just created such a template as {{IPA0}}.) #2 would be better served with {{IPA2}} or {{IPA3}}. I therefore propose to phase out {{IPA}} and replace all occurrences with one of the three numbered templates. — Sebastian 21:30, 19 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We need it because Template:IPA is used for both screen output and print output. Observe:

Polemics (pronounced [pʰəˈlɛmɪks, pʰoʊ-]) [...]

We need custom anchors, so we can't use IPA2 or IPA3 in all cases. Sometimes you want to use square brackets instead of slashes as well. It's also nice to provide a visual cue on the IPA transcription itself, because that's where people would most likely point to first when they see something they don't recognize. --Kjoonlee 10:55, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's one think I don't understand, though. Look, Template:IPA doesn't interfere with link titles. [ʃ] --Kjoonlee 11:00, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your patient explanation, and for fixing my oversight on IPA0. I now see that there are legitimate uses for this template, so the question of this section "Why use this template at all?" has been answered.

I still think most of the articles that use this template would be better served with one of the numbered IPA templates, and we need to think about how to standardize the pronunciation hints in our articles, but that would be the topic of another discussion.

To answer your question about the link: There are two ways to combine the template with a link - inside or outside. When used inside, as was the case in the consonants template, it appears like this: [ʃ]. — Sebastian 15:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

custom anchors for links

The following was a reply to Sebastian's message of 15:34, 20 June 2007 (UTC); this headline was inserted after the reply.

There's still the problem with custom anchors for links. Sometimes you might want to link to different articles for different languages. You can't use custom link text (anchors) with the numbered templates, which is something you haven't addressed yet. There's also the problem between phonetic [] and phonemic // transcription, which both need to be available as choices. The IPA2 and IPA2 use only one variant each. As for combining the IPA with links,

<span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA"><a href="/wiki/%C6%A9" title="Ʃ">[ʃ]</a></span>
<a href="/wiki/%C6%A9" title="Ʃ"><span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA">[ʃ]</span></a>

I think the former (from [ʃ]) results in more elegant code. --Kjoonlee 17:14, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree, it's much more elegant. As I wrote on User talk:Denelson83#IPA template transclusion, it was a smart idea.

I'm not sure what your point is about custom anchors. Are you trying to convince me of the usefulness of the IPA template? That would be beating a dead horse, since I already agreed that there are some legitimate uses. Or are you stating this as a related problem that needs to be discussed? (As a compromise between both possibilities I inserted the above headline only as level 3. Please adjust as needed.) — Sebastian 19:21, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to say that you can't just switch from IPA to IPA2 or IPA3, because of custom anchors and slashes/square brackets. You still said most articles would be "better served with one of the numbered IPA templates". --Kjoonlee 19:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I did. And right in the next sentence, I specified: "We need to think about how to standardize the pronunciation hints in our articles, but that would be the topic of another discussion." It is beyond me how you can read "just switch" into this. By "standardize" I meant precisely the fact that we have many different ways providing pronunciation hints, including slashes (e.g. in Arizona and Aeschylus), brackets (Aberystwyth) or neither (Isaac Albéniz), not to speak of the many cases which use other templates or even pseudo-English pronunciations (Kulam, Qi), which are much harder to find. Bringing some order in this chaos obviously is more than "just switching", but it is worthwhile since these pronunciation hints are usually the first thing readers see in an article. However, I don't think that this template talk page is the right place to discuss this. — Sebastian 02:33, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But we can't standardize on what editors think should be written: phonetic or phonemic transcription. We can't just all think alike in every case.... --Kjoonlee 04:37, 21 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, we don't have font names in the template anymore. I've updated bits of the talk page, and I would appreciate some help with this page and Template:IPA/doc. Thank you. :) --Kjoonlee 16:50, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

font-family: "Chrysanthi Unicode", "Doulos SIL", Gentium, GentiumAlt, 
Code2000, "TITUS Cyberbit Basic", "DejaVu Sans", "Bitstream Cyberbit", 
"Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro", 
"Matrix Unicode";

Hi, the above is what MediaWiki:Monobook.css has, more or less.

I think we should propose a change. Charis SIL ought to be added, and readily available fonts should be moved to the front. Matrix Unicode isn't easily available, so it might as well be deleted.

font-family: "Doulos SIL", "Charis SIL", Gentium, GentiumAlt,
"DejaVu Sans", Code2000, "TITUS Cyberbit Basic", "Bitstream Cyberbit",
"Arial Unicode MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro",
"Chrysanthi Unicode";

How does this look? --Kjoonlee 17:51, 20 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know about each specific font, but in principle better fonts should appear earlier in the list, and readily-available ones should be further back as fallback choices. —Michael Z. 2007-08-20 21:20 Z —The preceding signed but undated comment was added at 21:20, August 20, 2007 (UTC).

• Doulos SIL, Charis SIL, Gentium, and DejaVu Sans are top-notch. Doulos SIL and Charis SIL are good all-round fonts. Gentium could have the positioning of the combining diacritic marks improved somewhat, and it lacks some stand-alone tone marks, but it's pretty comprehensive. (And we don't use stand-alone tone marks much at Wikipedia.) DejaVu Sans has weak positioning also, but it has very nice coverage. It's sans-serif as well. These are all readily available for download.
• I don't have enough experience with the others to comment about their merits. I know I dislike TITUS Cyberbit Basic's stress marks.
• Code2000 can be downloaded easily —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kjoonlee (talk • contribs) 19:46, August 21, 2007 (UTC).
• Arial Unicode MS comes with some versions of MS Office
• Lucida Sans Unicode comes with Windows XP
• Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro is for Mac OS X, but I don't know much about it
• Chrysanthi Unicode I've never used. --Kjoonlee 19:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Any comments?

font-family: "Doulos SIL", "Charis SIL", Gentium, "DejaVu Sans",
Code2000, "TITUS Cyberbit Basic", "Arial Unicode MS",
"Lucida Sans Unicode", "Chrysanthi Unicode";

I can't imagine someone having GentiumAlt without Gentium, so removed GentiumAlt. Bitstream Cyberbit isn't freely available anymore, so it was removed also. Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro is for Mac OS, so I doubt MSIE users (who are the only people who need this font list) will have it handy. If no suggestions are made, I'm going to request an update of MediaWiki:Monobook.css. --Kjoonlee 20:36, 5 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, is that done? --Koryakov Yuri (talk) 09:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't, but I've just put up the request for change. --Kjoonlee 21:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Charis SIL should come before Doulos SIL. They cover the same range, & have the same OTF properties, but Charis is more recent and better designed typographically. It's not great, but Doulos is pretty bad. When Gentium is finished, that should come first. kwami (talk) 19:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Suggestions have now been made at MediaWiki talk:Common.css --Kjoonlee 21:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And now they've been implemented. After deleting my cache, I can confirm Charis SIL works for me with IE6. --Kjoonlee 11:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Usually, MS IE versions 6 and 7 cannot visualize the complementary IPA signs correctly. The solution would be adding the string "lang=en" to the template. See: http://www.ibloomstudios.com/articles/the_ie7_css_hack/ --TheMexican ^(talk) 14:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't work for me, with MSIE6.

• [ˈkæ.ɹəkˌtə(ɹ)z]
• [ˈkæ.ɹəkˌtə(ɹ)z]
• [ˈkæ.ɹəkˌtə(ɹ)z]

The first and third look the same in MSIE6, so there's no real need to add lang="en" in my case. --Kjoonlee 19:51, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, normal simple signs will appear always correctly if you have Arial Unicode MS or Lucida Sans Unicode font installed. But try to put an IPA sign with a complementary (joint) character, like the sign for "bilabial approximant", and it will show a "beta" with an empty square (just see the table in the IPA article, there should not be empty squares). We tried the same in the Hungarian Wikipedia and it works perfectly if you complete the template with the string I suggested. --TheMexican ^(talk) 20:28, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Let me see:

• β̞ hmm strange... here it really doesn't work as well. Then maybe you should change something else, too. See hu:Sablon:IPA. --TheMexican ^(talk) 20:54, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Look at also this test page, there is no squares: hu:User:El Mexicano/Teszt --TheMexican ^(talk) 21:01, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see the reason now. The English Wikipedia uses:

.IPA { font-family: foo, bar, baz;
       font-family /**/:inherit; }

But the Hungarian Wikipedia uses:

.IPA { /* IE only ( http://www.ibloomstudios.com/articles/the_ie7_css_hack/ ) */
       font-family: foo, bar, baz; }
.IPA:lang(en) { font-family: inherit; }
.IPA:empty { /* Safari */
       font-family: inherit; )

--Kjoonlee 21:03, 1 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, so an admin should make these changes to the IPA class and there'll be no problem in IE either. :) Regards, --TheMexican ^(talk) 06:22, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

But it's a wrong hack. IPA can be used for all languages. The lang="en" attribute means that it's English. --Kjoonlee 09:13, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's the only reliable IE7 CSS hack though, and the lang attribute isn't used by anything. Usability should come before semantic correctness IMO. --Tgr 10:56, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If usability was king, MS would fix IE7 right away so that Template:IPA would be obsolete. If the lang attribute isn't used at the moment, all the more reason to keep it safe for future use. --Kjoonlee 15:58, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep safe from what? You can remove it from the template any time if screen readers start to interpret IPA codes differently depending on the language (which is rather hard to imagine, given that the whole point of IPA is to contain all pronunciation information in the characters). --Tgr 21:57, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very bad approach. You are implying that we have tested this in every single screen reader on the planet, and know that none of them uses the language tag. Obviously that's impossible, so you are simply implying that we don't care that much about a few cripples and their weirdo assistive devices.

Of course you're not implying this, but coding this way would have the same effect. Wikipedia should be the last site on the web to use such practices. —Michael Z. 2007-10-03 04:53 Z

I'm not very familiar with IPA, but it should be language-independent, shouldn't it? If a screen reader transforms the IPA markup for an english and a french word differently, then that reader doesn't know what IPA is, and will get it wrong without the lang attribute too.

And it's not like there is some more sensible default the lang=en overwrites; in fact, the whole page is wrapped in a lang attribute determined by the interface language; thus if I set messages to french in my preferences, for me IPA texts will be lang=fr by default, wich is just as much incorrect. (And setting a language attribute for the whole document is a standard practice; if a defunct screen reader gets confused from that, it is pretty much useless for reading IPA anyway.)

If you want semantically correct pronunciation markup, the only way is to include it as a parameter in the IPA template, and set manually for every bit of text; but that's a lot of work for nothing.

--Tgr 08:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you make some valid points there. IPA is language-neutral, so on the one hand, it should not cause any problems to redundantly specify lang=en for IPA text. On the other hand, I think it's silly to pepper the code with meaningless markup, (slightly) bloating the page, to work around a bug in one browser. I'd rather see this go in the browser-specific style sheet, so the rest of us don't have to worry about why the code is there, and don't have to have it loaded in our browsers. —Michael Z. 2007-10-03 08:33 Z

Or the .IPA rule could be moved from Common.css to the IE-specific stylesheets which are served in conditional comments, but I'm not sure all skins use them. --Tgr 11:09, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please. It would be great to get these hacks out of the main style sheet. —Michael Z. 2007-10-03 04:53 Z

I've checked a few skins, no two use the same file for conditional comments, and most don't have one at all. Maybe it could be loaded from Common.js with browser detection and DOM scripting; that way, slowing page loading by reading in one more style file could also be avoided. --Tgr 08:02, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Something like this should work:

--Tgr 08:33, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, guys, whatever the solution is, while I'm seeing any empty squares in the IPA article even in my IE7 with all the unicode font sets and extra features installed, there must be something wrong. Of course we are here to help you solving the problem and not just for disturbing or forcing you to change something. Thank you for your understanding and positive collaboration. --TheMexican ^(talk) 17:57, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone still here? Compared to the outcry over a few disabled people maybe not being able to listen to IPA markups, you are taking the fact that daily a million or so IE 7 users can't read them rather calmly :-) --Tgr 09:51, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We shouldn't knowingly degrade the presentation of Wikipedia for people who have adopted accessibility technologies, not even for a single one of them. Some of these are people who have more difficulty with many everyday actions including reading, and they may have spent significant effort or money to adopt technologies that help ameliorate this disadvantage. Such degradation can also affect millions of other users of various handheld and other web minority browsers.

On the other hand, IE7 users have started with a broken browser which can't properly display multilingual web pages (and I am surprised that MS hasn't fixed what was a serious known problem in IE 6). Let's do what we can to overcome the limitations of their platform, without screwing it up for anyone else. If they care about reading every character in IPA, we can suggest they find a way to use the free Firefox or other browser.

That aside, I'm not crazy about implementing what looks like a complicated hack potentially affecting other mainstream browsers. Have the declarations .IPA:lang(en) and .IPA:empty been tested in other browsers and versions? It looks like this hack depends on a bug in Safari—is that bug present in versions 1.0, 2.0 and the Safari 3.03 beta? This could further break things unpredictably in all kinds of browsers.

Let's put the IE stuff into the conditional code. Since it will work in Monobook and most other skins, it will fix the display for practically all IE users. —Michael Z. 2007-10-08 21:58 Z

Yes, the code you suggested putting into my monobook.js, works perfectly. It should be put into the common configuration file. --TheMexican ^(talk) 21:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Should be in Common.js now. IE7 users with javascript turned off will still see boxes, but whatever. --Tgr 07:29, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I see boxes in IE7 with JavaScript enabled. Yecril (talk) 23:01, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{Editprotected}}
Please change the span title to "Pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" instead of "Pronunciation in IPA". — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Actually scratch that; let's change it to "Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" which is actually correct, and won't frustrate readers who think that if only they can try to click on the pop-up tooltip fast enough that they'll actually get to hear the pronunciation. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 03:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Y Done - Nihiltres^{t.l} 17:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a template out there that also forces uncommon characters to display on Internet Explorer 6 or lower but without titling the tagged text "Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)"? For displaying characters other than in an IPA transcription (e.g. in a phonemic transcription such as /ṭūž/ ), where the "IPA" information would be misleading? Dan Pelleg (talk) 01:24, 27 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Seems there's none, so I suppose I'll create one, if nobody minds. Dan Pelleg (talk) 22:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

{{IPA0}} and {{Unicode}} might work. kwami (talk) 19:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Using IE6, in the phonetic transcription of Wrocław (regardless of whether this template or IPAudio is used), I see a "u" with a grave accent instead of what is supposed to be a "t" with a tie-bar. Is there anything I can do about this? It's been suggested I should download DejaVu fonts, but I haven't managed to get anywhere by doing that. (In fact, as I remember, the display was slightly less inaccurate before I installed DejaVu Sans etc.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:39, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, the best workaround I can find is to put a Unicode no-width space between the "t" and the tie-bar. I'm going to do that in the Wrocław article, and if that doesn't generate any complaints, will do the same in other similar situations I come across.--Kotniski (talk) 17:43, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What do people think about this idea - making templates which produce IPA representations where each individual symbol is linked to a relevant article or help-page section? Likely to be of any use? I thought it might be useful for non-specialist readers who want to find quickly what a particular symbol means; and having templates which do the linking automatically will make it easier for editors who do this sort of thing often.

To illustrate what I mean, see the templates I've constructed for Polish: {{IPA-pl}} and {{Audio-IPA-pl}}. (The links currently go to subsections of Help:IPA, but most of them could be directed to individual articles on sounds instead.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:32, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Could be a good idea, but quite labor intensive. I'm not sure it would be implemented well. kwami (talk) 19:14, 13 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Seems to me that entering and editing this would be more ongoing work than just looking up the sounds in a table and typing them normally. I am skeptical that it would work reliably for many languages. But if it is useful, then make it a one-time utility template—enter it with a subst:, and make it insert a normal IPA template into the article. —Michael Z. 2009-01-21 15:56 z

I did try this idea, but abandoned it in the end in favour of making one link to the appropriate WP:IPA for (language) page. My current preferred template for Polish is {{IPAr}} - it has the special functionality of allowing you to enter ordinary letters in place of the IPA symbols, which personally I find much easier. It could easily be extended (as I originally envisaged) to work for other languages, particularly those which (like Polish) have almost phonemic spelling.--Kotniski (talk) 16:41, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm all for linking to a chart rather than individual phonemes. But I'm saying that with a substitution, this could be a convenient utility for someone to enter IPA by typing the original language. For example: you type {{subst:IPA-pl|[|,|ł|o|dź|i|-|f|a|'|b|r|y|cz|n|e|j|]}}, and what gets left behind in the wikitext is “{{lang-pl|łodźi fa'brycznej}}, {{IPA|[ˌwɔd​͡ʑi faˈbrɨt​͡ʂnɛj]}}”.

I suppose it would only work for languages with phonemic native spelling. —Michael Z. 2009-01-21 18:37 z

I wonder what is the point of the various language-specific IPA-XX templates. The whole purpose of having an article linked from a pronunciation transcription is to provide help to readers who are not sufficiently familiar with IPA to decipher the transcription. The old generic templates link to WP:IPA, which gives a good job in explaining the symbols: it provides audio samples, links to articles for the individual sounds, and examples from various world languages.

OTOH, the language-specific templates link to articles which (with the exception of Polish) only give a listing of the phonemes of the language, with examples from the same language. This is patently useless information for someone trying to understand pronunciation of a particular word. It only works for people who know either IPA or the language in question — i.e., exactly the group of people who don't need the help in the first place. For example, an American may think that Czech "j" is pronounced dʒ as in English; the pronunciation is transcribed as [j], and the "explanatory" link shows just "[j] jídlo", which can only serve to reinforce the false impression that it is pronounced as English "j".

Unless the "WP:IPA for foo" pages give the help provided by WP:IPA, i.e., audio, article links, and examples from another well-known language (English if possible), the language-specific IPA templates should not be used, as the old generic templates are clearly much more useful. — Emil J. 10:58, 20 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, perhaps the usefulness is limited, not completely absent. Each one also points to the general IPA article, so I don't see the point of eliminating them. The Polish table's approach is good—I'd like to see the others developed that way. —Michael Z. 2009-01-20 15:27 z

I'm not saying that they should necessarily be eliminated, but we should think about what we are trying to achieve with them, and make sure that the goal is met to a reasonable degree. — Emil J. 12:47, 21 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is of relevance to this template. Any comments there would be appreciated. Happy‑melon 16:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Currently when clicking listen next to a sound file on an ipa like in the article Marco Polo, the user goes off the article and to the file page which still awaits to be clicked and the user then goes back to the article and continues reading. This is a very bad usability issue for general readers. Could this be somehow changed so that when click the reader stays on the page?--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 15:02, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, the sound file is off-site: it's on Commons instead of Wikipedia. But it would be nice if this worked more smoothly. Does anyone here know how to do this? (I'm going to copy this to Template_talk:Usage_of_IPA_templates.) kwami (talk) 22:32, 9 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This templates changes the font for the entire paragraph —often the entire introduction of an article— not just the pronunciation passed to the template!!! — Deon Steyn (talk) 12:23, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

All the template does is to put a <span class="IPA">...</span> around its argument. If this has any effect outside the <span>, it is a serious bug in your browser. — Emil J. 12:40, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've noticed something similar since the latest update of Firefox: if there is any Chinese text in a paragraph, the entire paragraph changes to my default Chinese font. Sometimes. kwami (talk) 21:59, 19 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any way that the IPA template can specify to not use the Helvetica font? That font is defective in having the same glyph for U+0267 LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL OE ‹ɶ› as for U+0153 LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE ‹œ›. On my browser (Safari on Mac OS X) these two characters are different in the edit box, but not in the article.

This defect means that the symbols for the open front rounded vowel and the open-mid front rounded vowel appear to be the same on the IPA vowel chart, and the comparison in this sentence from Open front rounded vowel#Occurrence appears meaningless: "It is the rounded equivalent of /æ/, not of open /a/, and so would be more narrowly transcribed as [œ̞] or [ɶ̝]." —Coroboy (talk) 18:33, 16 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

You can assign your own font to the .IPA class in your custom CSS. This class is only invoked on Windows, so any Mac related problems are not this template's fault. — Edokter (talk) — 08:42, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:IPA-en#Mouseover_help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.159.111.3 (talk) 01:44, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The fonts used for this model are bad ɩ (Latin iota) and ɪ (small capital i) are not different, they both look like ı (dotless i), at least when Arial is being displayed. --Moyogo/ (talk) As far as I can tell it's only broken on Firefox and Chrome on Mac, Safari and Opera are fine. Firefox, Chrome and IE are fine on Windows. On Linux it’s fine too. --Moyogo/ (talk)

Then it's a Mac problem; this template only targets Windows. — Edokter (talk) — 08:40, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be possible to have this template target other platforms, including Mac? --Moyogo/ (talk) 14:36, 23 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added Interwiki guide. I did so by creating a template that used all documented sub templates in IPA. The plan was that interwiki users could use a wiki's import page function with the include templates and download all. This was intended as a first step in this direction and worked well for the wiki I used. I had already imported some other IPA templates so there may be a foundation required before all the language specific templates become relevant. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iowajason (talk • contribs) 02:43, 24 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion here. — Lfdder (talk) 22:26, 8 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The computer I usually use is Windows 7, and uses Arial 5.0 both as its default Wikipedia font and as its default IPA font. Another computer I often use is XP. I installed Arial 5.0 on it, but it still uses Lucida Sans Unicode as default IPA font. Does anyone know how to fix this? Arial looks a lot better for IPA. _{(suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ)} nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 05:04, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Put this in you custom stylesheet:

   .IPA {font-family: Arial !important}

— Lfdder (talk) 10:54, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not being experienced with stylesheets, I don't know how to access my custom stylesheet. _{(suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ)} nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 20:03, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Special:MyPage/common.css — Lfdder (talk) 20:06, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! _{(suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ)} nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 20:10, 26 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The "listen" link, links directly to the actual file. This is problematic I think for two reasons:

1. No license information is observable, which is a copyright violation for any sound files that have a Creative Commons license.
2. In Google Chrome, FLAC files have difficulty in playback when linked to directly. I couldn't get any playback. In Firefox instalment of the VLC extention was required.

--1Veertje (talk) 11:34, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Neither  (formatted) nor  (unformatted) display for a user on Chrome with the SIL fonts installed. Does this template, or maybe class=IPA, need to be updated? — kwami (talk) 20:05, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt they will show in any font; codepoint U+F211 is part of the private use range. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 20:44, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It happens for me both in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, both when using Windows 8 and Windows 7. Chrome gives white blocks with a border, whereas Firefox gives a block with the text F2 11 in two rows and Internet Explorer white blocks without a border, regardless of the version of Windows. --JorisvS (talk) 20:50, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it's my CSS, then. — kwami (talk) 22:02, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The point is, characters in the private use range have no glyphs. Those code points are reserved for special-purpose fonts. One example of such use are the WikiFont glyphs. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 21:58, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They will show in SIL fonts, which used to be selected by this template. — kwami (talk) 22:02, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

1. Former  at U+F211 of SIL’s PUA encoding is deprecated and has been replaced by U+024B LATIN SMALL LETTER Q WITH HOOK TAIL.

2. I know what the formatted character  is supposed to represent because I see its Charis SIL v. 5.000 glyph on my Firefox, though the plain text character looks as described by JorisvS. This is due to a Stylish script I use, which contains the following line (in CSS syntax):

• .IPA { font-family: "Charis SIL", "Noto Serif", "Gentium Plus" !important; font-size: 111% !important; }.

Thank y’all for this template which enables me to see what I am expected to see. LiliCharlie (talk) 22:17, 7 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It seems like the IPA class should also target Android WebKit browsers, since by default they they use a font that's quite broken for IPA usage. In particular the glyph for Greek chi is indistinguishable from Latin x. Working around it with user CSS is impossible because the mobile stylesheet ignores it. Hairy Dude (talk) 14:52, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I say specifically WebKit browsers, because Chrome and Naked Browser suffer from this problem while Firefox doesn't. Hairy Dude (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

We could target Android, but then there's the question of what font to use. Is it is, Android only comes with the default Droid or Roboto font families. That is all we have to work with; if they don't work, we're simply out of luck. Firefox probably installs some additional fonts. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 17:50, 16 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a bit of research into glyphs for chi, and as far as I can tell no other font has a decender-less glyph. I'm convinced it's incorrect and a bug in Roboto. So I filed a bug: Android issue 160613 (Note I "officially" have no opinion on whether it's correct for Greek since I don't know the language. But I do think it's wrong.) Hairy Dude (talk) 03:57, 17 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Template {{Unicode}} will be deleted due to being obsolete. As XP is no longer supported, its font declararion (targeting XP) will also be removed. That begs the question: is the current font declaration for IPA (also targeting XP) still necessary, or can they be removed as well? Note this would only impact XP users, and the template itself is not under discussion; only the font. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 18:57, 11 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

§ Foreign words of the documentation uses French [o] as the base for examples. Two of the examples include a sound file:

Using the French word eau [o] as an example, we have the default format:

...

• Any of these may be combined with a sound file:
  • {{IPA-fr|o|lang|Fr-eau.ogg}} → French: [o] ^ⓘ
• For the default introductory phrase, however, a placeholder such as “-” is required:
  • {{IPA-fr|o|-|Fr-eau.ogg}} → French pronunciation: [o] ^ⓘ

However, the sound file, File:Fr-eau.ogg, is not just an example of the phone [o] or the French phoneme /o/, but the phrase de l'eau. The file is from The Shtooka Project, which is (bolding added) "a project for creating a multilingual database of words' pronunciations"— not phones or phonemes. And as the description of the file says, it is

Pronunciation of "eau" (de l'eau) in French. Male voice. Speaker from Paris region, France.

And that's not [o], but [dəlo]. That's a common way of citing French words for students of French, but it certainly isn't appropriate for IPA. Can't we do better? --Thnidu (talk) 17:49, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]