Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation

see also Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style archive (pronunciation)

Native names

In some articles about foreign countries (e.g. Cuba and Venezuela), I've been traslating some IPAs, from English pronunciation to native pronunciation. I think that Wikipedia prefers native pronunciation, but I'm not sure. Can't we put a guideline on it? José San Martin 23:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I think Brazil article is a important case. It originally had the Brazilian pronunciation of the name of the country but somewhen an anon changed it to European pronunciation. Now, the pronunciation in the lead is the Brazilian one. Yet, there's a note that shows the European one. Thus, it would be also interesting say that the preferred pronunciation is not only the native one, but, in case of places or people, it will be transcribed in local formal pronunciation. (i.e. [benesu'ela], not [beneθu'ela], as it would be in Spain) José San Martin 23:32, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

In the case of names (such as Venezuela) that have an accepted pronunciation in English, I think we should show both the normal English pronuncation and the local one. I have never heard anyone pronounce "Venezuela" in English with an initial [b], so to give only the local pronunciation would seem bizarre. But of course it's desirable to show also the local pronunciation where different. I'm slightly puzzled however as to what should be done about for instance places in the south of Spain that don't locally use a Castilian pronunciation - should we use [θ] or [s]?

"Icck?" On the contrary, "Oooooooh!"

"Forms such as pro-NUN-see-AY-shun are of no help to people whose first language isn't English."

Yea? And IPA is of no help to people whose first language is not gobbledygook, and who have no clue what an aspirated allophone is, or time to spend learning either. The English language wikipedia is written in English, and fluent English speakers can figure out ASS-pur-Ay-tud AL-oh-Fone and so on without any problem. The same cannot be said for ˈkɛɹəktə(ɹ)z whatever the hell word that's supposed to represent. It looks like greek to me, is it referring to one of Socrates' students??

Sorry, but there is actually no way to consistently represent English pronunciation (let alone that of other languages) without some form of coding that needs a key to understand it. All dictionaries that I know of have a key to their pronunciation guide, the problem is that many of them use their own schemes which are different to those in other dictionaries. In Wikipedia we need a single pronunciation scheme, and the only realistic choice for this is IPA, which also has the advantage that it is applicable (in principle) to any other language. Here in the UK, just about every disctionary you can buy now uses IPA anyway, and in fact it's not at all difficult to learn the small subset of symbols that apply to English. See IPA chart for English. --rossb 13:29, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

I've got to agree, unless you're an academic who has specialized in linguistics, the IPA is just gibberish. It's not taught in schools, none that I've ever seen in the US teach it, except specialized classes in linguistics at the college level. It doesn't help people pronounce anything really. Within specific, professional environments the IPA may be useful, but in a general public reference work, it's academic pretensiousness. --Wingsandsword 04:52, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

IPA is not limited to linguists at all. It is commonly used from the very beginning of foreign language teaching in schools for, say, age 12 children. −Woodstone 13:35, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

• Keep the IPA. It is the most advanced form of unified pronunciation transcription, and approved by Unicode wherever modern character sets are found. --James S. 05:04, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Seriously, though, IPA is the standard, and all the symbols you need to understand IPA for English can be made to fit on a single screen: IPA chart for English. I agree it's not intuitively obvious, but it isn't rocket science either. Furthermore, no one who has ever complained about the IPA being too hard to understand has ever made a workable proposal for a replacement. Please see Wikipedia:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American) for an example of such a proposal and Wikipedia talk:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American)#Nohat's take for my explanation on why the proposal and any other potential proposal like it fails to be useful. Nohat 05:46, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Basic IPA for English is no more difficult to use than the English dictionary system that I used (but never really "learned") in grade school dictionaries. Please have a look at the example at Pleiades (star_cluster)#Names and technical information. —Michael Z. 2006-02-20 02:06 Z

Yes, I had a look at it. A few of the pronunciations are fairly self-evident, but some of them (Taygeta in particular) are pure gobbledygook. I say nix to IPA; it's overkill for this application. As someone above pointed out, it isn't taught in the U.S. at all, for the most part. And while you might be able to make a convincing case that we (Merkins) are the stupid stepchildren of the world, do you really want to, basically, spit in the face of that many millions of potential users of this encyclopedia by telling them "look, bub, if you want to know how [x] is pronounced, you're going to have to study up on IPA"? ===06:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

"look, bub, if you want to know how [x] is pronounced, you're going to have to study up on IPA" To be honest, I don't see a problem with that. OK, there probably should be some approximate 'English-spelling' guide alongside the IPA, but I still think that, whether or not the IPA's taught in schools, it's something people should either learn or stop complaining about. As Nohat points out, it's really not rocket science. The IPA isn't (as far as I know) taught in schools in the UK either, but all the quality dictionaries use it and we seem to manage. I think the most important thing is that for many pronunciations given in Wikipedia, the word isn't English and contains sounds not present in English - in these cases especially, the IPA is indispensible. Even where the word is English, however, there is much accuracy to be lost if a non-IPA pronunciation is given to the exclusion of an IPA one. garik 15:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I highly agree. Pro-NUN-see-AY-shun is much easier to understand for most readers than /pr@nVnsieIS@n/ or the IPA version of that. I see nothing wrong with using forms like Pro-NUN-see-AY-shun. Voortle 16:06, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, not all the UK quality dictionaries use IPA. Chambers (preferred to the COD by many Scots) uses a more traditional system. It's also worth noting that several dictionaries in the Oxford family use a rather odd broad transcription, with [a] for [æ] and [o:] for [əʊ] and other eccentricities. I heartily approve of this - it seems like an attempt to interpret IPA in a more user-friendly way - but it refutes the naive notion that IPA is single standard, practically speaking.

I strongly recommend that anyone interested in this debate look up Kwami's comments here and in the archives, which are very well informed and well-reasoned. One of his points is that a good non-IPA transcription (like the Pronunciation respelling key) has some technical advantages over IPA, apart from being more user-friendly. IPA transcriptions tend to be dialect-based; this not only increases the number of possible transcriptions for many phonemes (especially vowels), it gives rise to charges of "dialect imperialism". This is a more complicated than the question of UK/US/Commonwealth orthographies, since there's marked dialectal variation within most of the Anglophone countries. Received Pronunciation, for example, is non-rhotic, but many British speakers are rhotic. The reverse holds true for Standard American. A well devised respelling key like Kwami's does a decent job of smoothing over this problem.

So I'm holding out for a dual solution: IPA preferred; pro-nun or, better, the Pronunciation respelling key permitted alongside IPA wherever it is helpful.--Chris 18:29, 29 June 2006 (UTC).

Garik, re-reading this, I realize that I sound like I'm arguing with you, when in fact our views are pretty close.

Yes. I strongly agree with your dual solution. And you're quite right about Chambers. I was aware that older editions used a 'traditional' system, but for some reason was under the impression that they'd changed to IPA: my mistake (I believe their 21st Century Dictionary uses it, however). Of course I'm also aware of the many differences between different uses of the IPA - a practically infinite continuum of broadness... I agree moreover about the dialect-specificity of the IPA, although I don't see that as an insurmountable problem, provided transcription is suitably broad. In some cases, alternative pronunciations can be given too (which occasionally becomes necessary even with pro-nun). But yes, I can see that there are definite advantages to a pro-nun transcription (though preferably alongside an IPA one). I'd add though that the advantage really exists only when discussing English words phonologically. In discussions of foreign words or where a broader phonetic pronunciation is to be preferred to a phonemic one (which is likely to be the case in articles about non-standard or specifically dialectal usages and so on), then I think the IPA is clearly preferable. Partly for reasons of comparison, I also don't think it should be ommitted where pro-nun is used (and some readers will find IPA easier in any case). To be honest, I'm biased not only because I'm a linguist, but also because the words whose pronunciations I most often need to look up here and elsewhere are not English ones. I'm so annoyed when I pick up a Teach-Yourself guide to a foreign language and the pronunciation key is all 'sounds a bit like English...'! I'm also rather unimpressed by the 'Awww... I can't be bothered to learn something new'-attitude that seems to exist in one or two (though not all) of those who oppose the IPA on these pages. garik 20:16, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

In my view the Pronunciation respelling key should rejected outright because it is original research, not based on any recognised standard. And that is also in general the reason not to use PRONUN style indicators. −Woodstone 20:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Although, as the defenders of that page love to point out, Wikipedia:No original research applies only to articles, not to help pages, I wholeheartedly agree with you. There should be a single system for pronunciation on Wikipedia, and it shouldn't be that ad-hoc one. Want to put it up for deletion again? —Keenan Pepper 20:58, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

If you feel it violate basic WP principles, then of course you should try to have it deleted. Personally, I don't think it does, and in any case I'm more interested in pragmatic arguments. In fact, I think it's time to end this segment of the discussion and focus on writing up a new policy that modifies the current IPA-only position in reasonable way.--Chris 11:24, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Discouraging English pronunciations

I dispute this "Forms such as pro-NUN-see-AY-shun are of no help to people whose first language isn't English." Anyone who is reading Wikipedia in English can almost certainly make sense of such a pronunciation. It's almost certainly a lot more helpful than IPA for most people. There may be other reasons to discourage such pronunciations, but that reason doesn't make a lot of sense. 217.128.193.40 10:00, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

The deeper reason is: an encyclopedia must be precise. We cannot prefer "pro-NUN" instead of IPA, since the former is not accurate enough for an encyclopedia. Although, we cannot deny that is much less accessible. (although, some one with more free time could go and read the IPA page) I could argue that the physics articles are not accessible for everyone. It is a pretty complicated argument, since the IPA can be in many pages that aren't about linguistics.

Then I ask: when does we need IPA in an article? Although English ortography is totally a mess, everyone who reads English can get a more or less clear pronunciation without looking at the IPA. (What is the utility of the transcription in Wikipedia article?) We put transcription only in articles that the title is either a foreign word or a proper noun. If you want to get the real native pronunciation, you must know IPA. Costa Rica KOS-tah REE-kah would give you just the native pronunciation in a English throat. Well, if you want to get the English pronunciation, why don't you read the words "Costa Rica" and pronouce it loudly. The effect is exactly the same and in this special situation "KOS-tah" is totally worthless.

What I mean is not "let's abolish pro-NUN from Wikipedia". Albeit a little messy, they are much more useful in an article like List of common phrases in various languages, where both transcription coexists.

Finally, in many other cases, when neccessary giving an indication other than IPA, try the much more useful "rhymes with" before trying to write a "pro-NUN". José San Martin 12:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree; Wikipedia is for general consumption, it's not a specialist resource for linguists and those who believe that the IPA is taught to children from the age of two months. I learned French for five years at school (admittedly to no great degree), and I had not once heard of the IPA until I read Wikipedia; as far as British schools are concerned, it's not anything approaching a common element of language lessons. IPA descriptions of words should most definately be included in all pronunciation descriptions for purposes of accuracy, and English pro-NUN-see-AY-shun guides should most definately be included in all pronunciation descriptions (On en., of course) for purposes of usefulness.

Pti 14:20, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

I think I don't agree with you absolutely. IPA must be everywhere. When it is a English word with weird pronunciation, better use "rhyme with", that is more clear than pro-NON. When none of these has worked well, we should use pro-NUN.

An exception are the list of phrases in other languages, that are traditionally written in pro-NUN. In this very case, I think we should use both IPA and pro-NUN. José San Martin 12:57, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Special pronunciation key just for astronomical bodies

Some people have taken it upon themselves to ignore this part of the Manual of Style and make their own little non-standard system just for astronomical bodies: Spelling-pronunciation key for astronomical bodies. Just thought I'd point that out here. Good luck trying to do anything about it. —Keenan Pepper 01:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

How to add sound clips with pronunciation

Trying to describe pronunciation with words or exotic letters is all fine and well for paper media, but we can do better with multimedia capabilities. For how to pronounce København, most people would be far better helped with a sound clip of the correct Danish pronunciation than any attempt using words. I'm just not sure there is a good way to do it at this moment. I've been working on many an article where I think adding a discrete but clearly visible link to a sound clip in the first line of the article would add much to the article (consider Betelgeuze, Abu Ghraib, Qaqortoq). I've experimented with using the audio tag, which produces this: Danish pronunciation of København^ⓘ, but I'm not all that satisfied with it. I'd prefer having only the little icon and no descriptions, let alone 'info' and 'help', but I have no idea how to do so. Any suggestions for a better and more discrete way? Any suggestions for a standard? Jens Nielsen 16:51, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Added Template:IPARef

This stereotypes IPA citations, such as,

• apsala {{IPARef|ˈɐpsələ}}, yielding,
• apsala Template:IPARef

I don't have strong feeling on what the convention should be, but it should be consistent, and creating this template is a start. IPA citations are all over the map.

StrangerInParadise 21:51, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, it even forces the IPA font selection. When I tried nesting templates earlier on, it did not appear to work, but it seems to be ok now. Would it not be better named IPAref (small r) so IPA stands out better? Now it reads like the slight obscure "IPAR ef" −Woodstone 22:30, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the point. The square brackets [...] and slashes /.../ used to surround IPA have different meanings: they are part of the content and should be typed along with the IPA text, not hardwired into a template. Likewise, parentheses around the entire construction imply a certain way of using this in a sentence, and it will vary depending on the particular situation. Finally, the IPA link shouldn't be hardwired: what if you are providing the pronunciation for a half-dozen words? The IPA link doesn't have to be repeated.

I think you are over-specifying a lot of editorial decisions.

By the way, this does not "force the IPA font selection", it uses a meta-template {{IPA}}. Meta-templates should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, and that one should simply be used on its own. Template:IPA applies the bug-fix for MSIE/Windows's Unicode problems, without changing the format in any other browser.

This is how IPA should be entered:

   [[IPA]]: {{IPA |/ˈɐpsələ/}}, {{IPA |[gəd]}}

Which renders as: IPA: /ˈɐpsələ/, [gəd] —Michael Z. 2006-03-11 23:20 Z

Why not allow approximate 'pro-NUN' in addition to IPA?

Not everyone can 'read' IPA, and the majority of Web users' browsers don't display the UTF/IPA characters. Seems like cutting off our nose to spite our face to limit pronunciation information to a form that only a tiny fraction of users can use. 24.18.215.132 18:27, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm all with you here. And how about soundclips instead (see above)? Jens Nielsen 21:36, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

"the majority of Web users' browsers don't display the UTF/IPA characters"—this is quite false. A vanilla Windows XP system displays all but very obscure IPA characters, when they are enclosed in template:IPA. —Michael Z. 2006-03-18 19:17 Z

Why don't you like the "rhyme with/stress at" system that is much more clear and accessible to everyone? José San Martin 20:29, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Because "pro-NUN-see-ayshun" guides using ordinary letters can be read very differently by different people, giving apparent pronunciations that are greatly divorced from reality. They are worse than useless and can be very misleading. - MPF 17:54, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

As an example, take the case of Sade Adu. When she first became known, her promotional material contained notes that her name was pronounced "shar DAY". This was OK for people with non-rhotic accents, but in areas where rhotic accents were dominant, it led to the erroneous insertion of an [ɹ]-sound, which (I think) still persists today. Indefatigable 18:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Hear, hear! This is exactly why Pronunciation respelling key (formerly Spelling-pronunciation key for astronomical bodies) should be obliterated. —Keenan Pepper 18:34, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

For an even worse example, the peculiar habit some people have of sticking an aspirated 'h' sound at the end of nearly every syllable, giving pronunciations that read like the last expiring death throes of an asthmatic suffering from severe bronchitis (I see there's one such at the page Keenan cites, "prohteeus" /prɒhtiʌs/ for Proteus - what cr@p!) - MPF 19:20, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Americans generally recognize a post-vowel (h) to be an indication of increased vowel-length, not a mark of aspiration; a long vowel in other words, as in the common expressions "oh" or "ah", where the spelling reflects pronunciation. RP speakers can use an (r) for the same purpose, as vowel-lengtheners, and both may look equally ridiculous depending upon from which side of the Atlantic they are viewed. Why do you presume that only your interpretation is valid and any other is mere crap? --dshep/11sept2006/

There are good arguments here against attempts to represent pronunciation (especially of non-English words) by ad hoc respellings using English spelling conventions, but it's worth pointing out that Pronunciation respelling key is an attempt at creating a systematic way of doing things. A transcription using that key (or something similar) ought, in principle, to be translatable to an IPA transcription for a particular accent, as indeed described in the table for four different accents.

In general, my view is:

• I don't have a lot of sympathy with the "IPA is strange so we should use something else" kind of argument.
• Pronunciations of non-English words and names should always use IPA. Approximations to sounds which make sense in some English accents don't in others, e.g. the above use of ar for what I presume is [aː] or similar.
• Similarly, and for much the same reason, phonetic (in the linguistic sense) information about English pronunciation should always use IPA. For example, we shouldn't describe a New Zealand pronunciation of bet as "bit": it may sound like that to me, but it won't to a New Zealander.
• However, there are problems with using the IPA for certain other purposes, such as representing the pronunciation of unfamiliar English words and names (e.g. the asteroid articles). IPA transcriptions (both phonetic and phonemic, though the former more so) are based on particular accents (usually, for English, RP and/or General American). The IPA-based transcriptions in British dictionaries tend to have a fairly narrow view: most words (even ones like bath with very well-known variation within Britain) have only one pronunciation given, there's no concession in the system to variations from RP phonology (rhoticity, for example, which is the norm in Scotland and parts of western England), the symbols used are based on fairly old-fashioned RP pronunciations, etc. In a non-IPA symbol like the one at Pronunciation respelling key, oe can represent the vowel of goat regardless of whether it's [gəʊt] or [goːt] or [gɑʊt] or [goət] or whatever.

--JHJ 13:50, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

But I think that a broad IPA transcription can be as widely applicable for English words, although this may require a key to nail down the specifics. Couldn't we agree that /goːt/ represents "goat" in most English accents? I notice that dictionaries use slashes /.../ around their IPA, presumably to indicate that they are making certain assumptions about the way IPA is being applied (and not just British dictionaries, also my Canadian Oxford). It would be better to use just one set of symbols than two different ones. —Michael Z. 2006-03-21 17:46 Z

We could, and maybe it would work. However, I fear it's a can of worms. Some people seem to object to any use of slashes in this way, in spite of the British dictionary precedent. How would we deal with rhotic/non-rhotic variation? I'd go for something like north /nɔ(r)θ/, but there could be problems with accents whose vowel in north is phonemically different from their vowel in caught (the latter being the likely default meaning of /ɔ/). The system probably wouldn't actually be truely phonemic for anyone, which would pose questions about whether it was a proper use of the symbols. And how would we choose which symbols to use? To me /oː/ seems to be a reasonable choice for goat, but not everyone is going to like it. Ultimately it would probably be very similar to the Pronunciation respelling key you seem to dislike so much, but with IPA symbols instead of the current ones. I don't think there's a really satisfactory solution.--JHJ 18:16, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

All good points. It wouldn't be easy to settle on a system, and it would take more knowledge than I have. Something to think about. But it would certainly be better than "proh-NUN". And I don't hate the respelling system, I just don't see the point in using another system alongside IPA, when IPA should be suitable for the task. —Michael Z. 2006-03-21 19:36 Z

Oxford does have dictionaries covering a wide range of English dialects. It would be interesting to compare their IPA schemes for the different ones. —Michael Z. 2006-03-21 19:45 Z

Obviously I worded my original question/suggestion wrong. How about: Since a significant percentage of Wikipedia readers can't use IPA pronounciations for a variety of reasons, and since exact pronunciation is not critical in 'general use' articles, why not allow a more commonly understood approximation of words in articles that aren't linguistics-related, in addition to IPA? As a specific example, Açaí Palm has IPA: ɑː-saɪ-iː, which will be useless to many users. When I tried to add (not replace the IPA) ah-SIGH-ee, it was reverted. I don't see some potential, minor variations in the way different people might interpret that as critical in this context. Using only IPA also seems developed world centric and elitist, as IPA teaching, and the technology to display it, is highly geo-socio-politically limited. 24.18.215.132 02:10, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

There's a reason it's called the International Phonetic Alphabet. Someone for whom English is not a first language might think the G in "ah-SIGH-ee" represents a G sound. Could you explain how IPA is "developed world centric [sic]" and schemes based on English orthography aren't? —Keenan Pepper 03:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

But anyone who could read English would recognize the word "sigh" and know how it is pronounced, would they not? --dshep/12sept2006/

BTW, the accent in açaí is on the last syllable, so in your ugly system it would be "ah-sah-EE" or something. —Keenan Pepper 03:37, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Hm, I thought that ɑː-saɪ-iː would work on a vanilla windows system, but I see that the triangular colons don't show up. Perhaps we should consider substituting regular colons: ɑ:-saɪ-i:.

Anonymous, can you explain how IPA teaching and technology are "geo-socio-politically limited", any more than say, a non-Latin script Wikipedia, or a bound book which contains IPA text? I can't find anything about this issue in the article on IPA. It seems to me that all that's required is a free font download. —Michael Z. 2006-03-24 21:35 Z

The reason the "ah-SIGH-ee" stuff was removed is that, quite simply, it does not represent the pronunciation of the word. The first syllable does not end with an aspirated 'h' sound, so that is wrong. And in a pronunciation guide, 'sigh' reads something like 'sig-h', not the same as the word 'sigh' (think: you would not use the lettering 'sigh' to explain how the word 'sigh' is pronounced). - MPF 13:58, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

"Sigh" is a word that any literate person knows. No one is going to look at this and say, hmm, must mean sig-h(aspirate).--dshep/12sept2006/

The claim that IPA is linguist-specific and too technical is rather confusing to me. Aside from the fact that most dictionaries (in the UK at least) use it (or a slight variant) exclusively, and have been doing for decades without issue, wikipedia users can always visit IPA for a guide. That's the beauty of wikipedia - anything in the article you don't understand can be clicked on and explained. Furthermore, we shouldn't be trying to dumb things down and explain things that can be looked up elsewhere because it undermines existing articles. An article on black holes should not stop to explain how to calculate the circumference of a circle, nor should it simplify 2πr to "about three times the width". So long as we keep links to IPA handy, then readers can look up pronunciation. If we make up our own approximations, we'll be debating all across Wikipedia whether we should be using 3, 22/7, 3.1, 3-and-a-bit, and so forth.

On alternate prnounciations, it's easy enough to note the provenance of each IPA provided, so

Venezuela (IPA: BrE [ˌvɛnəˈzweːlə], Properly [beneˈswela], Castillian [beneˈθwela])...

To add ven-uh-ZWAY-luh, ben-eh-SWEH-lah, ben-eh-THWEH-lah (and/or alternate renderings) may be going too far, but I'm not sure. --Nema Fakei 14:22, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

As you say "in the UK at least". I thot Wikipedia was mandated to serve ALL English speakers, not just Brits. IPA is a non-event in the general US population. And you don't address the issue of technological limitations of IPA chars to the highly devleoped world. And what percentage of Wikipedia readers actually know IPA? 5%? 10%--I thot the project was to provide info for ALL, not just some educationally and technologically elite. Saying something is "international" doesn't mean it is actually used globally. 24.18.210.22 07:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Hear, hear! —Keenan Pepper 15:16, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

A 'simple font download' is not practical in remote/less developed areas, and that response doesn't seem to address CD-ROM, or especially print, versions of Wikipedia. Reading History of the International Phonetic Alphabet, it seems largely developed in Europe, and wasn't even close to its present form until 1989--how far has it actually dispersed in its short life? It doesn't seem to have made much impact in the US until more recently (and I don't know if it in common use here yet at all). Compare click 'show phonetics' (UK) to this (US)--the latter is more intelligible to someone familiar only with the English alphabet (or English and their native alphabets)--also note that neither chamois nor chamois leather address the punctuation at all, possibly because no one who has editted the article knows IPA. And expecting people in areas that don't even have schools to know the IPA 'language' (character set), in addition to their own, and/or English, seems 'developed world centric'.

That said, I've also begun to wonder if the precision being pursued is even practical or necessary (ie non-theoretical) in general interest articles--I bet if you got a group of 100 life-long residents of New Orleans, Louisiana you'd hear more than the three 'local pronunciations' given in the article. I suspect the same would be true even if you limited it to 20 life-long NO residents that are linguistics professors. 24.18.215.132 03:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

You must be joking. How would an average American reader know how to pronounce "wä" in the example shown? It is just as cryptic as the IPA. However IPA is well standardized, whereas practically every dictionary has its own ways. In wikipedia we need to standardise and should not develop our own particular additional way. −Woodstone

Oh man, not only is the IPA developed-world centric, but this entire encyclopedia is knowledge centric. I mean, how do you expect people to know stuff like black holes, and the history of China? They could read the articles on them, but that's probably too much work. Knowledge centricity is the worst kind of bias for an encyclopedia since it assumes a certain level of literacy and competance in the reader. AEuSoes1 10:45, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Since I came up with the pronunciation respelling key that's used in the asteroid and moon articles, I thought I should weigh in here. I've also written half the IPA article, so it's not like I'm uncomfortable with it.

I created the key for two reasons:

• Wikipedia has yet to come up with a cross-dialectal IPA transcription for English, which results in cries of 'cultural imperialism' (especially when rhotic and non-rhotic dialects differ), and
• the existing pronunciation respellings were an ad hoc mess.

If one of you is able to transcribe English (and not just a dialect of English) in an IPA system that doesn't spark edit wars, that would be wonderful, but until that time arrives we need something functional.

Some phonemic distinctions that I do not control were later added to the key by people who do control them, the letter schwa was added so that a wouldn't have to pull double duty, and ah, oh were changed to aa, oe because some people were flustered by them, but other than that the system has been stable. It's unambiguous for the dialects that it covers. (It doesn't (yet) cover Scots.)

Anyone who could or would deliberately misinterpret what is meant by "oh" and "ah" must enjoy obfuscation. --dshep/12sept2006/

I personally would never transcribe a foreign word or name like açaí with this key. That's not what it's designed for, and it would not be dialect neutral if used that way. And I also agree that it should be used as an adjunct to the IPA, not in place of it. An additional benefit is that when both systems are used, people no longer seem to get upset that the IPA represents a specific dialect. kwami 23:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

You forgot to include a link to which one you mean, but am I right to assume it's Pronunciation respelling key (recently renamed from the more modest Spelling-pronunciation key for astronomical bodies). Although I appreciate your efforts, it doesn't look any better than any of the many versions already shown in Pronunciation respelling for English. Yours must be qualified as original research and as such not a candidate for standardisation in Wikipedia. −Woodstone 09:53, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

What research? It's a convention. It's no more "research" than a table of contents. kwami 07:18, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Then it must be moved to the Wikipedia: namespace. —Keenan Pepper 10:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Or Help:, that's good too. —Keenan Pepper 10:35, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Linking single IPA symbols

User [[1]] has started systematically delinking IPA symbols from their formal description article. This destroys a lot of work done by other people. Before continuing, we should discuss first if this is the right way to go. I have always found it useful to have easy access to the more formal description of the sound in question and would like to keep the links. −Woodstone 16:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

IPA symbols are hard enough to read as it is. Having them linked (and therefore by default including an underline) makes it even harder to read them. Compare ʐzɳnɲŋ vs ʐzɳnɲŋ. Nohat 17:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

There are specific examples, such as in greek mid vowels, where the diacritic is obscured by the underline. So [e̞ˌliniˈka] would look like [e̞ˌliniˈka]. In narrow transcription of Russian vowels, there will also be some trouble as well. As in, пал [pɑ̟l] or [pa̠l] and режу 'rʲɛʐʊ]. Of course, what is most likely is that the link will be just an individual IPA character, but the retroflex sounds and any others with hooky things at the bottom will be obscured.

Here are two examples where de-linking did not obscure knowledge of the characters at all:

	Front		Back
	unrounded	rounded	unrounded	rounded
Close	/i/ ι	/y/ υ
Mid	/e/ ε			/o/ ο
Open	/a/ α

Alphabet	Pronunciation	Pronunciation with /p/	English eqivalent
अ	/ə/	/pə/	short Schwa: as the a in above or ago
आ	/ɑː/	/pɑː/	long Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father
इ	/i/	/pi/	short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit
ई	/iː/	/piː/	long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine
उ	/u/	/pu/	short close back rounded vowel: as u in put
ऊ	/uː/	/puː/	long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school
ए	/eː/	/peː/	long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong), or é in café
ऐ	/əi/ or /ai/	/pəi/ or /pai/	a long diphthong: approx. as ei in height
ओ	/οː/	/poː/	long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)
औ	/əu/ or /au/	/pəu/ or /pau/	a long diphthong: approx. as ou in house
ऋ	/r̩/	/pr̩/	short syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: approx. as American Eng. bird or meter
ॠ	/r̩ː/	/pr̩ː/	long syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: a longer version of /r̩/
ऌ	/l̩/	/pl̩/	short syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: approx. as handle
ॡ	/l̩ː/	/pl̩ː/	long syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: longer version of /l̩/

In the first table is designed to be so specific, that you already know the position and rounding of the vowels; that's all you really need to know to destinguish most vowels. The second table puts the link on the description so that if you read the description and still don't understand you can click somewhere. AEuSoes1 23:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we can have it both ways if the underlining is suppressed by default for the IPA links. Most of those are indicated by the IPA class or template. The stylesheet could be adapted to not only set the right fonts, but also suppress the underline, even if the normal user's preference (or lack of it) is underlining. It could look somewhat like:

• .IPA:link IPA:visited { <all the fonts as is>; text-decoration: "none" }

We should ask the experts to check this out and insert it in wikimedia:common.css. −Woodstone 12:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a very complicated solution for a type of linking I'm not terribly excited about begin with. I feel we should avoid linking IPA, ragardless of the problem that the actual linkage causes, since it seems like over-wikification to me. But if a compromise must be reached, I feel Aeusoes' solution is much better. Something other than the characters themselves should be linked.

Peter ^Isotalo 17:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. We should only link English words so people have a clear idea of what they're getting when they follow a link. We shouldn't link IPA symbols or Chinese characters or anything like that for the simple reason that unless someone already knows what the "funny" characters are, they have no idea what they're clicking on. Nohat 18:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Kirshenbaum

I see most of the IPA symbols as little boxes with hex numbers in them (running Mozilla 1.7.8 on Debian stable). It would be very helpful if we could have the IPA represented in Kirshenbaum, in addition to the unreadable Unicode. --Trovatore 05:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

apt-get install ttf-freefont or ttf-dejavu. —Keenan Pepper 12:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, but the point is not really whether I personally can see the symbols. There are lots of people who can't. An ASCII-based representation of pronunciations would be a good thing in itself, and Kirshenbaum is the best of those. --Trovatore 15:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I think introducing yet another transcription system is a really bad idea, even if we have some problems with displaying IPA. I'm afraid it would lead to yet more lead clutter, especially when combined with all the transcriptioncruft present in articles about many non-English, and especially non-Western subjects.

Peter ^Isotalo 19:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, in the final analysis I think Kirshenbaum is better than regular IPA. It maps to IPA one-for-one but is much easier to read (which is also its main advantage over SAMPA). In particular the lower-case vowels have pretty much the values you'd expect them to have in any European language other than English. So if it came down to it, I'd be in favor of replacing the IPA with Kirshenbaum. --Trovatore 01:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, another big advantage is that it's much easier to enter. To add an IPA pronunciation to an article, even if I knew the symbols, I couldn't just type them; I'd have to enter HTML entities, or find a table and do copy-and-paste symbol by symbol. With Kirshenbaum, I just type the letters. --Trovatore 01:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I consider it more, not less, difficult to read Kirshenbaum since the symbols involved are that much more abstract and because one needs to learn another set of symbols besides normal IPA. (Learning Kirshenbaum without internalizing standard IPA is not realistic.) And entering IPA is not that complicated considering that most of the symbols can be found in the Insert-table when editing.

I believe there are more downsides to using Kirshenbaum than there are advantages.

Peter ^Isotalo 07:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by the symbols being more abstract. The ones used for most sounds from English and European languages are just lower- and upper-case letters, and in most cases are the letters used, in at least one context, for that sound. I don't know why we have to make transcribing English and European pronunciation harder than it needs to be, just to make Xhosa look less complicated by comparison. --Trovatore 15:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

All the IPA characters are in the "Insert characters" box just below the "save page" button, so the argument that they are too hard to enter doesn't obtain. All you have to do is click to insert the character. And it is possible to type IPA symbols: there are a number of IPA keymappings available for a variety of computing platforms. But the main benefit of IPA is that it is much more known. Kirshenbaum is not used in any dictionaries, whereas there are many dictionaries that use IPA, such as most British English dictionaries, as well as nearly all English–foreign laguage translation dictionaries. Kirshenbaum is not taught in linguistics and other related classes the way that IPA is. The number of people who know Kirshenbaum is a tiny subset of the people who know IPA.

I don't think there is any point in arguing over which set of symbols are less complicated or more abstract or whatnot because that's not an argument that can ever be decided. In the final analysis, Kirshenbaum (and the similar SAMPA/X-SAMPA) are systems that were invented because it was not possible to type and store actual IPA characters, and now that it is possible to type and store IPA, they cease to have a raison d'être. I don't really see any benefit to cluttering up articles with another transcription, especially one that doesn't have the force of any international organizations behind it and doesn't enjoy significant usage in the "real world". Nohat 20:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately the argument about external recognition is a strong one. The rest of your argument isn't, though; the fact is that many users see most of these characters as little boxes, and thus can neither read them nor enter them. --Trovatore 20:36, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

We could also transliterate all scripts other than Latin, and represent diacritics by quotes, but that wouldn't be a good idea either. —Keenan Pepper 21:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds overly pretentious to me

So, basically, all the IPA-only advocates are saying that Wikipedia is NOT to be used by all those NOT "educated" in IPA, nor any of those who, for whatever reason, don't have access to the technology needed to display the IPA characters. And do any countries have more than 5% of their 'average Joe' population "educated" in IPA? 24.18.210.22 06:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying that at all. None of the other schemes are much use without prior "education" either. Pseudo-English pronuciations require familiarity with English orthography, which is not universal, and the various schemes in Pronunciation respelling for English require prior knowledge as well. IPA is the only international standard which is fair to people from all over the world. People who aren't already "educated" in IPA can read IPA chart for English, which is easy to understand. It doesn't take a genius. —Keenan Pepper 06:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Pseudo-English pronunciations may not be "universal", but it seems like they are FAR more commonly understood among English speakers (EN's primary audience) than IPA. Why not reach out to the masses instead of just the "educated"? And doesn't IPA chart for English basically use pro-nun? So you're just adding extra links to a 'translation table', instead of just providing pro-nun within the articles? And you didn't address the necessity of 'latest technology' to even display IPA characters. Again, why not aim for maximum accessibility? Isn't that what Wikipedia is about? And isn't accessible approximate pronounciation better than inaccessible exact (if such a thing even exists) pronounciation? Is this an encyclopedia or a linguistics dictionary? 24.18.210.22 06:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Nor did you address any countries' 'average Joe' knowledge of IPA. Any over 5%??? Is Wikipedia for the masses, or for the educationally and technologically elite? And most articles link to the non-helpful International Phonetic Alphabet, not IPA chart for English. 24.18.210.22 07:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with the alternatives is that they are parochial and misleading. What seems like a perfectly reasonable pseudo-English transcription to you might be completely confusing or just plain wrong to someone who speaks a different dialect. Better not to have anything at all than something that misleads readers into believing something incorrect. Nohat 07:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Well said, Nohat, you beat me to it. —Keenan Pepper 07:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the problem of "dialect imperialism" is much greater with IPA transcriptions than with pro-NUN, rhotacism being the most obvious issue.--Chris 16:43, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

They're FAR more commonly misunderstood, too. Your argument that IPA is only useful for some pretentious elite is misguided. Anyone can easily learn the basics of IPA. I don't understand what you mean about IPA chart for English; it's just giving examples of English words with those phonemes. You're wrong about needing the "latest technology", too. Unicode is an old, established standard by now and IPA has always displayed correctly for me, not only on my personal computer but also on public computers running all kinds of old software. It's not our fault if your software is broken or you're too lazy or stupid to figure out how to install a font. Would you have all text in different scripts transliterated into the Latin alphabet as well? —Keenan Pepper 07:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Would I have all text in different scripts transliterated into the Latin alphabet? I certainly would! And if it was choice between having only the foreign script or only a transcription, I'd take the transcription. I've been a professional editor for 20 years. In works intended for a general audience, I'd never let authors get away with this sort of cruft-loving pedantry. In my experience, it's usually the somewhat educated who push this sort of thing. Real experts wear their learning lightly.--Chris 17:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. All of us stupid people are unworthy of Wikipedia's information. So much for 'information for all'--you've just confirmed Wikipedia is for the educationally and technology priveledged. Doesn't matter if continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! says otherwise.

International Phonetic Alphabet for English gives us pro-nun info. UTF reads like crap (a bunch of blank squares) under many versions of IE--I guess we're all just 'too stupid'. Despite having 75% market share. 24.18.210.22 07:41, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

And yes, I consider the English language alphabet to have 26 characters, without any diacritics.

WHERE is IPA an 'old, established' standard??? Maybe UK, but I don't think US, or much of anywhere else. Again, what is the 'global perspective? How many SA or African citizens know IPA??? 24.18.210.22 07:41, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

You're contradicting yourself. On the one hand, you say pseudo-English pronunciation is good because only native English speakers matter, but on the other hand, you're complaining that IPA is bad because African people don't know it already. How many African people know English orthography well enough to understand those silly ad-hoc pronunciations?

Any African who both speaks and reads English can interpret pro-NUN. That camp must be a couple of magnitudes larger than those who read but do not speak English and know IPA.--Chris 16:49, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I have browsed Wikipedia many times using Internet Explorer, and IPA has always displayed correctly. —Keenan Pepper 08:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I would like to verify Keenan's comment as well. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 17:10, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

• I had put a reaction here earlier today, but since this discussion is more lively going on under the Why IPA shouldn't be the sole pronunciation guide in articles here header, I moved it to and expanded it under a new header: Suggestion for practical IPA usage in Wikipedia. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 01:41 (UTC)

Notice

The statement below was added by Denelson83 on 2006-03-31 01:55:29Z as a prominent notice at front. It was deleted by someone else and reverted again by a third person. Moved here for orderly discussion. −Woodstone 19:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

"A comment recently left by an anonymous user on the talk page of the International Phonetic Alphabet article has brought this directive into dispute." −Denelson83, 2006-03-31 01:55:29Z

Why IPA shouldn't be the sole pronunciation guide in articles here

I'll concede that IPA should be used to placate the eggheads and pointy-headed-scientist types who like to pretend that Wikipedia is a scholarly resource; let them have their fantasy.

But for the rest of us, it just doesn't cut it. Let me give you a real-world example:

Reading the article on the Turkish musical instrument, the cümbüş, I was hoping to resolve the pronunciation of this little banjo. Someone I know has one, and they pronounce it "joom-bush". According to the article, the pronunciation is

IPA: [ʤym.ˈbyʃ], sometimes approximated as [ʤum.buʃ] by English speakers

Now, I should say that until now, I'd basically ignored IPA, hoping it would just go away. Today, I bit the bullet, took a deep breath and clicked over to the IPA article here. I was hoping I could skim it, find the inevitable symbol chart, and figure out how to get my mouth around "ʤym.ˈbyʃ".

Ha! No such luck. Turns out, you basically need to be a linguist in the first place to even interpret the symbols. For instance, when I tried to figure out the difference between the two examples given (the vowel y vs. u), I was confronted by a chart showing the relationships of vowel sounds using the technical terms "close", "near-close", "mid", "open-mid", "near-open", etc. Now of course all these terms are conveniently linked to more Wikipedia articles explaining them. So if I had the inclination, and maybe a couple hours of reading time, then I could work out these sounds for myself.

I'm going to some extravagant overdramatizing here to try to drive home the point that for the average reader, using IPA just ain't going to happen. It's basically a closed academic system, meaning that if you don't already understand it, or don't have some other reason to study it, then it's basically just a bunch of gobbledygook, as someone put it up above. The barrier to gaining the knowledge to interpret these strange symbols is just too high; a fact which is not helped by the poor quality of the tools given here (the article on IPA) in explaining this to the layperson. (This seems to be yet another article written at an academic level too high for the average reader, with little attention paid to accessibility.)

Therefore, the reasonable solution is to have both IPA (because the academics insist on it) and "pro-nun" guides. The pro-nun version, had it been present in the article in question, would have saved me much frustration and fruitless searching, and would have done the job, which is to impart a reasonable facsimile of the pronunciation of the word.

Further data point: if you read any newspaper (at least in the U.S.), words which need explaining use pro-nun guides. I'm sure this is governed by their style guides.

==ILike2BeAnonymous 23:54, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I think a reasonable summary of the arguments against pro-nun is that it gives different pronunciations (often incorrect) depending on the reader's dialect. For example, "joom-bush" is not the correct pronunciation of "cümbüş." Ardric47 00:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me to ask for pro-nun guides for cümbüş. I'm not convinced that it's true that there are no accurate pro-nun renditions. How would you render this word in pro-nun?

Actually, your answer itself argues against what you say; if you say that '"joom-bush" is not the correct pronunciation', that implies that you know what "joom-bush" (correct or not) sounds like, right? ==ILike2BeAnonymous 00:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that in an English-language context "joom-bush" ([ʤum.buʃ], if you like) is a perfectly correct pronunciation, while [ʤym.ˈbyʃ] borders on the pedantic (exceptions made for people with native or near-native ability in Turkish). In a Turkish-language context, it's different, of course.

As far as IPA vs. pro-nun goes, it's worth stressing that, to a naive reader, IPA often conveys no pronunciation whatever, or a highly inaccurate pronunciation. So, there's a strong case for using both, at least in non-linguistic articles. In a few articles, I've done something like this:

cümbüş (IPA [ʤym.ˈbyʃ], roughly joom’-boosh)

with a link to Kwami's Pronunciation_respelling_key, and no-one's complained.--Chris 00:46, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

What can I say but "you the man"? (regardless of gender, of course)==ILike2BeAnonymous 00:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Cümbüş can't be rendered in pro-nun because it has a sound ([y]) not present in English. I guess an additional symbol could be added or something, though. I do know what "joom-bush" sounds like—to me at least. To me it is [ʤumbʊʃ]. In other dialects, it is different (e.g. someone in Scotland might say [ʤʉmbʉʃ] according to Help:Pronunciation respelling key). I said that "joom-bush" is not the correct pronunciation because "joom-bush" would not be pronounced [ʤym.ˈbyʃ] in any native dialect of English. Ardric47 02:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

No offence, Ardric, but you've missed my point. Please re-read my comment. A monolingual English speaker is unlikely to master the Turkish pronunciation of cümbüş, no matter what transcription you use (in fact, not even if you provide an audio recording). Even phonetically savvy speakers may regard the authentic, native pronunciation as pedantic in a colloquial English-language context. So you need to provide an approximation alongside the IPA; that's what pro-nun is for. If he speaks Standard American, he'll say something like [ʤumbʊʃ] or [ʤumbuʃ]; if he's Scottish, he may say something like [ʤʉmbʉʃ]. Both these approximations are well represented by the pro-nun spelling "joom-bush" or Kwami's joom-boosh. --Chris 03:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, Ardric, you're probably correct that there's no way to render a correct Turkish pronunciation through pro-nun; the larger point, elucidated above, is that in this context, an approximate pronunciation for a non-native speaker is plenty close enough. Anything more is pendantic and overkill. Another example would be some of the umlauted vowels (ö, ü) in Hungarian. I have a passing familiarity with that language, and yet I really cannot pronounce those vowels correctly. One shouldn't expect the random man or woman on the street who wanders in here to have that level of proficiency in a language they don't speak, particularly one like Turkish or Hungarian with very peculiar pronunciations that are difficult for English speakers. This isn't pandering to the ignorance of such people, but rather just recognizing reality and delivering information that's useful, rather than trying (and failing) to fulfill some lofty goal. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 03:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I will agree that "joom-boosh" (not "joom-bush") for cümbüş is "close enough" (unless of course [ʤumbuʃ] means something else in Turkish...does it?). There will inevitably be other situations in which a pro-nun rendering will produce an entirely different meaning. Pro-nun literally obfuscates the pronunciation; there are several examples above. You said, "I'll concede that IPA should be used to placate the eggheads and pointy-headed-scientist types who like to pretend that Wikipedia is a scholarly resource; let them have their fantasy." (I hope "pointy-headed-scientist types" was not an insult). That "fantasy" is actually a reality in some cases. Well-referenced comprehensive articles (specific citations for every fact) on Wikipedia are better than anything a paper encyclopedia has produced, and it does a disservice to the reader to place the IPA second to an ad-hoc, inconsistent, and confusing system. Ardric47 06:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Fine, then; put the IPA first and the pro-nun second if you think the other way around would be a "disservice". And yes, it was meant as an insult. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 06:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to not take it personally, but please read Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Ardric47 06:28, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Then don't take it that way, because it wasn't intended that way. I have read that, by the way, but choose to ignore it. It's the human way, you know. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 08:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

"I will agree that "joom-boosh" (not "joom-bush") for cümbüş is "close enough" (unless of course [ʤumbuʃ] means something else in Turkish...does it?)."

Ardric, it makes no difference whether it means something else or not. A linguistically naive reader cannot interpret exotic IPA symbols, and if they could, they could not pronounce the sounds they represent. There is no way you can get a linguistically naive English speaker to say [ʤym.ˈbyʃ]. The only options are:

• [ˈkʌmbʌs], or perhaps [ˈkumbəs], based on a naive reading of the Turkish orthography,

• [ˈdzɪmbɪ] or [ˈdzɪmbɪz], based on a naive reading of the IPA, or

• [ʤumˈbuʃ] based on pro-nun or the English respelling key.

Which would you prefer?--Chris 07:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I came here to post this, thanks for covering it already. NO ONE can pronounce anything with IPA pronunciation, I believe we should go back to the "sounding it out" thing, or just post both. --Liface 05:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I can, so your claim of "NO ONE" is already proven false. Please stick to the facts. —Keenan Pepper 17:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, it's true only as a very broad generalization. A large majority of North Americans - even most university graduates - are not conversant with IPA. Claims are made that tbe vast majority Britons understand it, but I'm frankly skeptical that even a bare majority do. IPA is clearly the best transcription for those who understand it, but since most WP users don't, a dual IPA/respelling solution seems logical.--Chris 18:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Uh... thanks for your comment. I guess I'll refrain from making generalizations in the future. Having just IPA is ridiculous, I'm going to start adding pro-nun to articles also. --Liface 18:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Then you'll find yourself quickly reverted. User:Angr 06:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

• See on this discussion page (also) under header Suggestion for practical IPA usage in Wikipedia. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-25 21:56 (UTC)

What cümbüş and similar articles need is two things: an IPA transcription and an audio file of someone (preferably but not necessarily a native Turkish speaker) pronouncing the word. That way people who don't already know IPA don't have to spend forty-five minutes learning it just to find out how the word is pronounced, without having to rely on insulting and patronizing "pro-nun-see-AY-shuns". User:Angr 06:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

"Insulting and patronizing" - Bingo! That's why the IPA-only folks are so adamant despite the thinness of their arguments. They're embarrassed by pro-nun and similar schemes. Yes, they do look a bit like an illiterate hillbilly's attempt to write standard English. But emotional reactions are not a good basis for policy. Reason tells me that pro-nun etc. are on many occasions more useful than IPA for many people, and therefore a dual system makes sense as an option.--Chris 08:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Audio files are not a bad idea, but are not a panacea as some people seem to assume. It can be remarkably difficult to pick out the actually pronunciation from audio, particularly if pronounced with a foreign accent. If you think about it, providing a audio file is the equivalent of providing an ultra-narrow phonetic transcription... a few moments of thought will show you that that wouldn't be such a great idea, and not just because of the usual IPA difficultie--Chris 08:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)s.

Suggestion for practical IPA usage in Wikipedia

• IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. It's what you see in introduction pages of dictionaries for many languages, most certainly English dictionaries. Which readers – even as one had put it, in Africa – of the English Wikipedia might not have used a dictionary of this acquired language? Perhaps some users do not have a proper Unicode character set yet, but a complete UTF Arial font exists already and in informatics new things tend to get widespread in a very short time. The more exotic one's native alphabet, the sooner one will install such font. We are building Wikipedia also for the future: it would be unwise to introduce some unfamiliar phonetical references set for which there will be no need any more after one or two years.
• On the other hand, the link IPA redirects to International Phonetic Alphabet showing a decent linguistic description. As the cümbüş discussion here above illustrates, most people will start reading without even noticing the link to an English language approximation: it is hidden in what everyone sees as a disambiguity header while the underneath article looks as the relevant one. I might suggest putting that link in one of the first lines of the article proper, and let it stick out, so non-linguists would spot immediately their quick guide to a pronunciation – in fact that's what the article 'Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation)' does: one might put it much like that in the 'International Phonetic Alphabet' article to which IPA redirects. Though such guideline will only give a rough idea (inexact transliteration for some non-English sounds and again inexact interpretation of what the English is supposed to sound like), such will suffice for most users.
  

Better still, one should redirect 'IPA' (the article linked near any [<IPA characters>] in some normal article) towards the article 'IPA chart for English'. (I made a minor modification of that page's header line, making also such redirection appropriate and I assume acceptable for everyone.)
Advantage: impatient non-specialists get their thing immediately, anyone else (probably a minority of the occasions anyone actually clicks on 'IPA' near an IPA-transcription, because specialists do not often need the information) will know well enough which next link to follow.
Within any chart, an IPA character could link to a sound file so (most) users would simply and accurately hear the proper sound.

Note: Wikipedia standards should not allow linking to these sound files directly from an IPA representation on a normal page: users would correct some character but might forget to match the sound file, which would after a while cause a lot of confusion. The linking of sound files from charts should be protected against vandalism and against changing to what a person might think some looked-up word (in his particular dialect or language) and 'thus' an IPA character must sound like.

SomeHuman 2006-06-25 21:56 (UTC)

I'm not sure I quite understand this all, but you're saying if I want to know the pronunciation of something, I have to click on a link, scroll down and match up each character with a sound. Most people aren't going to want to take the time to do that, I think. I have a short attention span and I like to see the pronunciation right there before me on the page in a language I understand. --Liface 20:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

That's why it is allowed for some cases to write in a text e.g. "stress on the second syllable" or "rhymes with...". For rendering of the sound of a complete word, nothing simple will ever be able to give a good idea for the many words one may need help for (except a separate sound file but that's hard to create for several technical and practical reasons). Since you spent some time in discussing the matter, I assume you needed such help rather often. Once you start looking up IPA characters in a – as I suggested – directly linked easy-to-use table, you will very quickly remember some of the IPA and no longer need to look them up (as my personal experience with dictionary tables has proven – I'm just a layman too). -- SomeHuman 2006-06-25 20:34 (UTC)

The IPA chart for English is only suitable for looking up the pronunciation of English words. In many cases the words for which a pronunciation is given would be a non-English word. In that case it would be a mistake to use that table and recourse should be taken to the full IPA table. There are many sounds and symbols that do not occur in English. Apart from that, it is customary to use rather wide phonemic symbols for one specific language (c.q. English) that lead to mistaken phonetic value if applied to another language. For example, assuming that the symbol [r] in an Italian word is the same as [r] in English is quite wrong. −Woodstone 21:16, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

That's why I edited the initial line of IPA chart for English (if one does not revert, see its talk page under 'Linguistically detailed'): A link to a more proper but for many users too refined and illegible article must stand out but not be the first article these users (and most clicks on 'IPA' will come from them) arrive at to figure it all out. Linguists must not expect an average user to be interested in the particular difference between Italian and English pronunciation of some character, the latter user may often not even be able to hear, let alone to produce the correct sound of a non-English language; the speakers of such language will not click on 'IPA' because they know what 'their' word sounds like. My suggestion is a practical solution, a perfect and general one can not exist (not even with sound). Note: I'm not saying the 'IPA chart for English' might not be improved (to establish such or do something about it, is out of my league) -- SomeHuman 2006-06-25 21:59 (UTC)

SomeHuman writes: "[IPA is] what you see in introduction pages of dictionaries for many languages, most certainly English dictionaries."
I'm puzzled by that last phrase. You appear to be unaware that few - perhaps none - of the major American general-use dictionaries employ IPA. Does this make any difference to your thinking?--Chris 00:42, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I was aware of this, but can't see how it might change the suggestion: it merely allows Americans to tackle a problem a lot of people (also outside the UK) encountered by the same easy-to-use IPA table. You would have a point in case the American dictionaries would commonly use an alternative standard, but to my knowledge they don't. Perhaps the need was not felt as much in the US because there are not the many old dialects of people that for generations stay in a same locality, by not having a number of old colonies, by not living in the neighbo(u)rhood of countries with dozens of quite different languages... and for those reasons perhaps people in the US may not even often want to click on the link under 'IPA'. But if they do, as speakers of (American) English, the 'IPA chart for English' is going to be a lot more helpful than the 'International Phonetic Alphabet' article they have been seeing so far. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 01:41 (UTC)

I agree completely, as I said in the semi-ranting continuation to my comment in the next section. I have no objection to bringing people up to speed on the IPA. However, I believe that in the short term (and this is likely to be one or two decades, not one or two years) a dual system will be optimally helpful for the user community as a whole - and, frankly, respectful to it. Occasionally I get driven into intemperate commentary by what I perceive as the doctrinaire position of some IPA-only proponents.--Chris 01:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense, but see also my 2nd reply in your section 'Fuzzy thinking and unintentional cruelty' hereunder (and linguists, pay extra attention to the words 'some common sense' therein, please). -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 02:51 (UTC)

I object strenuously to mangling encyclopedia articles and redirects for project-management reasons. IPA is the IPA, and we should not be redirecting that to IPA chart for English (which is clearly not the actual IPA, and linking like so violates all kinds of editorial guidelines) for infrastructural reasons. If such a need is truly great, there ought to be a Wikipedia: namespace page to contain a pronunciation guide. We do not co-opt Encyclopedia for a description of Wikipedia, and neither should IPA or IPA chart for English be chain-ganged into being anything less than the absolute best informational encyclopedia articles we can make them. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The article 'IPA chart for English' starts with this line (and that rendering in bold):
.   Of the linguistically detailed International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), this page is a concise version for English sounds.
I can't imagine anyone assuming the chart underneath would be the absolute best informational encyclopedia article on International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) – it is pretty much like a disambiguity page – thus any reader who wants that standard of quality, will simply click the very first link on that line. The important part is that wherever a word's pronunciation is spelled by IPA characters in an article, the acronym 'IPA' must not send people to a page they simply can not use. Wikipedia is not the Standard Reference Work of Linguistics, it is an encyclopedia for everyone and its quality improves by making it accessible. Please see "Ignore all rules". -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 06:33 (UTC)

(Invoking Ignore All Rules in an argument is, I believe, one of the ways of losing an argument by virtue of the very nature of that meta-rule. As a courtesy, I'll ignore the invokation beyond this.)

Make it accessible by doing it right, then. Abusing encyclopedia articles that are about a subject (IPA chart for English is decidedly not a disambig page or other infrastructural page: it's an article) by adulterating them with material that is Wikipedia-specific is not done. See Wikipedia:Avoid self-references for a grounding in why; I believe that spindling, folding, bending, and otherwise mangling an article for Wikipedia-project purposes (as opposed to quality of article purposes) goes against the same spirit.

Just to put this in context, I grant you that the change you made to IPA chart for English is small. I'm arguing the principle that it shouldn't be done at all so that any larger-scale co-option of articles can be nipped in the bud. We have the project's manual of style at Wikipedia:Manual of Style, not at Manual of style. Neither should we use IPA nor IPA chart for English as a replacement for Wikipedia:Pronunciation guide. We must keep our article space clean of project contamination. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Fuzzy thinking and unintentional cruelty

I tend to agree that the IPA link should access the IPA Chart for English. Proponents for the IPA-only solution have long argued that a link to the general IPA page was all a novice needed to orient themselves. The fact they would make so patently ridiculous a claim (see cümbüş above) suggests that they haven't thought through their arguments properly. You at least have. If the average English speaker was as linguistically sophisticated as the average Dutch speaker appears to be, an IPA-only solution would be desirable. As it is, insisting on IPA only seems an act of unintentional cruelty. Those who already know IPA well (that is, well enough to interpret the various conflicting transcriptions in use in WP), or who are able to quickly master it through the IPA Chart for English or similar are least likely to actually need help on pronunciations. They will already know how to pronounce Ayn Rand, Bruggen, Houston Street, and so on. Those who need the help are precisely those least likely to know or be able to quickly learn IPA. In many cases, a dual solution (IPA + a intuitive respelling key) will be the most practical.--Chris 01:04, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

(See also my reply on your edit at 00:42 today in the chapter with my suggestion, please). I'm not implying people have to learn IPA: the IPA is a shorthand that does not take too much room and, unlike spelling-it-out (which is very often misleading for non-native speakers of English), it can be easily disregarded if not to the reader's field of interest: Everyone who ever saw this shorthand will immediately recognize it as a pronunciation indicator. The simple chart allows a fast look-up of whatever part (usually just one or two IPA characters) one can't immediately figure out by the normally written word. Believe me, it's really not going to be unbearably cruel at all – I know because I still use it myself, since I do not master IPA, it just helps me out. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 02:09 (UTC)

We all seem close to agreeing on something here. Is it acceptable to say that both a "rhymes with" or "sound-out" pronunciation and IPA pronunciation should be sufficient for most hard-to-pronounce article subjects? --Liface 02:12, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The "rhymes with" or "stress on nth syllable" is not quite "sound-out": the latter would often require a too long series of approximations and force paying attention to the pronunciation. More often just IPA will do fine, but one must not expect every writer of an article to master IPA and (even if one has some IPA knowledge) it will be easier just to sound-it-out. Helpful linguists might later on insert the IPA symbols and, with some common sense decide that the sound-out is not really needed and omit it for easier reading of the article's real topic. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 02:32 (UTC)

The statement that the people who know IPA already know how to pronounce everything is wrong. I know IPA but I'm totally unfamiliar with, for example, German orthography, so when I look up Wittgenstein the IPA is the only thing that tells me how to pronounce it correctly. Something like "VIT-gun-stein" would be useless to me. I strongly doubt I'm the only person in this position. You can't divide everyone into "people who know all about language" and "people who are totally helpless". —Keenan Pepper 15:49, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree of course; it's just a tendency. The Keenan Peppers of this world are more likely to know how to pronounce "Wittgenstein" than some grade 8 student -- if only from the Monty Python Philosophers' Sketch :-). Vitˈ-gən-styne might be of some use (note anglicised pronunciation!), though [aɪ] is notoriously hard to represent in a intuitively obvious manner. The IPA version tends to get pronounced vitˈ-gən-stainby the naive, and if there's an audio file whoever does it will probably insist on a full Austrian pronunciation - so there's no way to win--Chris 16:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Gentlemen, please, as we are trying to understand each others views, we should not focus on our own. Of course a 'sound-out' can not possibly be used for all non-English sounds (and there are many in the world's languages). The idea is to have IPA at all times a pronounciation indication is required, but very few authors will be able to produce a correct IPA themselves: for a while a 'sound-out' may be the only thing available. When someone (like Keenan) spots it later on, he might create the IPA characters string. Should then a 'sound-out' remain? Is such properly standardized? I'm not very familiar with it but do not think so: I saw the 'pro-nun-see-AY-shun' and wonder how 'pronoun' would look as 'sound-out': the first syllable of 'pronunciation' should not sound identical to the one of 'pronoun'. How could one realize that '-see-' has a short vowel? The '-AY-', not preceeded by a consonant, to me looks like Aye-aye thus I would expect it to sound like the word 'eye'. That's just one word 'pronunciation' and I would be left uncertain or dead wrong three times. I'm afraid the easily read 'sound-out' will refrain people to look at the IPA chart and they might then have been better off without any pronunciation indication at all. Some words might be easily represented by 'sound-out' without much risk of anyone who reads English to misinterpret – is there some source (American dictionary?) that recognizes and tackles the problem? In other words, instead of arguing, let's find out whether it can work and which restrictions there would be. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-26 22:59 (UTC)

SomeHuman, I appreciate your constructive approach. I will try to write up a longer response tomorrow.--Chris 06:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

As the article Pronunciation respelling for English shows, there is no standard. Practically every dictionary employs its own specific way of respelling. It is not possible to define a clear set of respellings, that are never confusing in any context. That is the major reason IPA is preferable. −Woodstone 21:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, different dictionaries' interpretations of IPA vary almost as much the traditional respelling keys. For instance, the Canadian Oxford and the Shorter Oxford use [a] for the vowel in cat, while the Oxford ESL Dictionary uses [æ]. The vowel in pipe is [əi] in the Oxford Canadian, [ʌɪ] in the Shorter Oxford, and [aɪ] in the Oxford ESL. And that's not even touching on the rhotic/non-rhotic distinction. IPA, though invaluable for many purposes, is no panacea.--Chris 06:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

The story so far

This discussion has meandered under several headings. I will attempt a summary. The options appear to be:

• Sound files
  • Obviously useful for giving "what the word sounds like" if the speaker is clear and a native speaker of the relevant language/dialect/accent
  • Impractical as a sole solution, in any context
  • Does not articulation of the vocal tract explicit (which is relevant in articles discussing phonetics in detail).
• IPA transcription [prɘˈnʌnsiˈeɪʃɘn]
  • Essential for non-English words, and when discussing specific English accents, dialects, phonetics, speech impediments, etc; makes articulation of the vocal tract clearly explicit.
  • Those unfamiliar with IPA may have difficulty interpreting symbols.
    • For pronunciation of English words this could be reduced by linking to an English-specific IPA guide rather than the general IPA page.
  • For pronunciation of specific English words, will inevitably be specific to a particular accent. Those who speak with a different accent will be obliged to extrapolate accordingly.
  • Needs IPA template for IE readability
• Ad-hoc desciptive workarounds "rhymes with nation"; "stress on second and fourth syllables"; "the C has an S sound"
  • Easy to understand
  • Only possible for some cases
  • May be verbose
  • "rhymes with" may be accent-specific
• Ad-hoc respelling pruh-NUN-see-AY-shun
  • Sometimes easy to understand for native speakers of English
  • sometimes ambiguous, through poor choice of representation, or almost inevitably for certain sounds (th for [ð]/[θ]; oo for [u]/[ʊ]) unless combined with descriptive workarounds
  • sometimes rely on assumptions about accent (especially when attempting to approximate foreign words)
  • often difficult for nonnative speakers of English
  • Possibly as a stopgap on a particular article, this is better than nothing at all, provided the accent of the editor attempting the transcription is made clear; can be replaced by a better method by a competent subsequent editor.
• Standardised respelling prɘ'nŭn.sē'ā.SHɘn
  • Need to interpret via a key
  • Key may be more intuitive than IPA for English-speakers, especially those familiar with American dictionaries
  • Can be applied to a variety of accents; more symbols will allow more mergers and splits to be accommodated, though at the risk of misrepresentations in a transcription by somone whose accent has the merger.
  • Would be specific to Wikipedia as no external standard exists (though I guess we could plump for any one of the many in use)
  • Only usable for English
  • Depending on symbols chosen, may need a template similar to IPA for IE readibility

Questions for the floor:

1. Which of these substantive points are in dispute?
2. Any points missing?
3. Based on these points, what option(s) should we pursue?

jnestorius^(talk) 14:02, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

• Sound files

Symbolic notation can make articulation of the vocal tract explicit, whereas even a clear speaker's speech can be difficult or impossible to analyze.

• IPA transcription [prɘˈnʌnsiˈeɪʃɘn]

IPA also makes articulation of the vocal tract clearly explicit.

• • Those unfamiliar with IPA may have difficulty interpreting symbols

This is equally true for all systems. I would argue that IPA is more intuitive than others (see below).

• • For pronunciation of specific English words, will inevitably be specific to a particular accent. Those who speak with a different accent will be obliged to extrapolate accordingly.

I don't believe this is so. Although we haven't developed a specific convention in Wikipedia, a 'broad' IPA transcription can be used for English words which uses only the more basic Latin symbols, and allows, e.g., an American, British or Scottish reader to pronounce the letter /r/ in their own way. As a convention, square brackets [...] could be used to indicate phonetically precise IPA for foreign words, and slashes /.../ could denote phonemic English IPA. Where necessary, phonetic notation in brackets could be used to illustrate precise details, e.g. comparing different English accents.

• • Needs IPA template for IE readability

Is this true for the basic English phonemes?

This is true of the old-fashioned dictionary respelling systems too. The following symbols break in MSIE 6 on a vanilla Windows XP system: o͝o, o͞o, ʉr, s​͡h, th̸, K​͡H. Some also require HTML: <i>th</i>, <small>K​͡H</small>.

• Standardised respelling prɘ'nŭn.sē'ā.SHɘn

This is not standardized: see the inventory at Pronunciation respelling for English

• • Need to interpret via a key

IPA interpretation can be similarly assisted with a simple key for basic English phonemes

The IPA vowel and consonant charts are also logically arranged according to place of articulation, to help readers interpret the full range of international sounds.

• • Key may be more intuitive than IPA for English-speakers, especially those familiar with American dictionaries

It may feel more familiar to some readers, but it's less intuitive than IPA. For one thing, the many systems have subtle variations so a key is absolutely necessary, for another, IPA characters have logic:

• IPA uses plain English Latin letters for many sounds: /a, e, i, o, u, b, d, f, g, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, ts, v, w, z/
• IPA uses letters representing sounds as in other languages, whose use may be familiar to many readers, even if they aren't fluent in the other language: /θ/ from Greek, /æ, ð/ from Old English, /j, x/ from central European languages, /y/ from French.
• The more subtle phonetic variations, when needed, are variant forms of the related Latin letters, assisting learning: /a, ɑ, ɒ, ʌ, æ/, /e, ɛ, ɜ, ə, ɚ/, /i, ɪ/, /o, ɔ/, /u, ʊ/, /n, ŋ/, /r, ɹ/, /s, ʃ/, /w, ʍ/, /z, ʒ/.

• • Can be applied to a variety of accents; more symbols will allow more mergers and splits to be accommodated, though at the risk of misrepresentations in a transcription by somone whose accent has the merger.

This could also true of phonemic IPA for English, denoted by slashes /.../, see above.

—Michael Z. 2006-06-30 15:23 Z

I added to the summary based on your response; some of your points I thought were already addressed. To clarify: by "Standardised respelling" I mean standardised within Wikipedia (with a key on a Wikipedia: or Help: page) as opposed to each editor rolling their own for each word they give a guide for. I don't think there is any dispute that IPA is needed for non-English words, and for non-native-English-speakers, and where phonetic detail is needed.

As regards using IPA for accent-neutral English phonemes: is there any standard for this? Can you give some sample transcriptions? It seems to verge on what I have called "Standardised respelling" except that the symbols chosen would happen to be IPA symbols. Whether this is better for using "standard" symbols or worse for stretching the definition of "phonemic transcription" is certainly worth debating. jnestorius^(talk) 16:43, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Michael Z's first note: "Sound files: Ideal if the speaker is clear and a native speaker of the relevant language/dialect/accent" is only true for that language's native listeners, others seem to hear what they expect or remain quite deaf to some differences in sound (e.g. many Germans, Dutch and French have a problem correctly hearing the sounds represented in normal English writing by 'th'. (One might spot their nationality by their way of attempting to pronounce the English sounds). The phonetic symbols are then more easy for them to differentiate. Native speakers of English have the same problem with some foreign sounds. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-30 16:45 (UTC)

Jnestorius, a standardized phonemic IPA for English would work essentially the same way as another spelling key, and a simple key would help unfamiliar readers (it could be simpler than the existing IPA chart for English). Examples exist (e.g. in any English dictionary that uses IPA, but I'm not familiar with one that is meant to be accent-neutral). Using IPA this way has the advantages that it is compatible with international IPA, and that a standard convention for indicating it exists (/.../ vs. [...]).

SomeHuman, IPA can convey information even to a native speaker which can be hand to divine when listening or even speaking. Articulation has subtleties that speakers don't think about in natural speech, but this issue is relevant to detailed phonetic analysis, and not to conveying the simple phonemic pronunciation of English words. —Michael Z. 2006-06-30 17:18 Z

An example of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary's IPA for Canadian English is transcribed at Talk:Canadian English/Archive 1#Vocalic differentiation of Canadian English from American English—it has a few generalizations specific to Canadian English, for example the commonly-used pronunciation of the letter a [æ] is transcribed as /a/, and adds some French vowels used by Canadian anglophones. For Wikipedia use, it would use some similar conventions, but somewhat more generalized: e.g. /a/, /æ/, and /e/ could suffice to cover most of the subtle variations of these vowels; /r/ would be suitable for the dialectic American [ɹ], British non-rhotic [ɑː], Scottish rolled [r]. —Michael Z. 2006-06-30 17:37 Z

Comparing fourteen apples to an orange

Which English dictionary respelling system is being proposed in favour of, or in addition to, IPA? There are fourteen different systems documented at Pronunciation respelling for English. Are any of these usable for MSIE/Windows without a font template like template:IPA, and without any HTML code? Below are my results from a quick test—more investigation would be in order:

A quick look at that page with MSIE on a vanilla Win XP system shows that the AHD, MWCD, NOAD, RHD, DPL, A, and COD systems display some broken characters even with class="IPA" applied to the table. Removing the class and previewing in the browser shows that only the WBO, NBC, MWO, Cham, and AB systems appear to work without the class applied. The AHD, MWCD, NOAD, RHD, MECD, and MWO systems use HTML code in the table.

Summary ("X" passes, "-" fails)

System         IPA  AHD  MWCD NOAD RHD  WBO  MECD DPL  DPN  NBC  MWO   A   COD  Cham  AB

Okay in MSIE    -    -    -    -    -    X    -    -    -    X    X    -    -    X    X
Okay with font  X    -    -    -    -    X    X    -    X    X    X    -    -    X    X
No HTML req’d   X    -    -    -    -    X    -    X    X    X    -    X    X    X    X

Most of the respelling systems give worse results in MSIE/Win than IPA (although there may be workarounds). The DPN system has the same technical requirements as IPA, and MWO works without a font specification but requires typing HTML code. Only the following systems have the advantage over IPA and the rest, because they seem to work in MSIE without requiring a font specification (like template:IPA), and without typing HTML code:

• WBO – World Book Online
• NBC – NBC Handbook of Pronunciation
• Cham – Chambers Dictionary
• AB – ARPABET

Are there any online references for these four respelling systems? —Michael Z. 2006-06-30 17:06 Z

ARPABET, used by The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, is described here. Nohat 17:39, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I think most of the discussion here about respelling systems has focussed on the Help:Pronunciation respelling key that some Wikipedians originally developed for astronomical articles (based on the key in Robert Fagles' editions of classical texts). It's outside article space, and so shouldn't run afoul of Original Research charges. It's a proposed convention, like a hundred other WP conventions. However, an existing respelling system like one of those listed in Pronunciation respelling for English might also work. I suggest the main criterion for favouring one over another is absence of special characters, at least of any characters that create technical difficulties. Ideally, one that uses only the 26 standard letters of alphabet. Note that the Help:Pronunciation respelling key used the IPA schwa symbol - does any browser have problems with this?--Chris 17:42, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I totally did not realize that anyone was talking about the astronomical system; I thought it was about the familiar dictionary keys we were used to seeing in grade school.

The usual culprit is MSIE/Win; Safari, Firefox, Opera, and even Lynx (!) all handle Unicode text better. I routinely use a Mac, so I can't check immediately—can you read the following schwa in MSIE/Win: ə? —Michael Z. 2006-06-30 22:11 Z

I can. Schwa is used in Latin alphabets other than the IPA, so perhaps MS thought it worth covering. kwami 17:22, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Wiki IPA for English

For use only for English words I like the idea proposed above of using IPA in principle, but converting it to use only latin letters. Whenever the IPA symbol is a latin letter, use it. When not, use a close relative. Here is a possible way of doing it, based on the IPA for English article. For the consonants it's not difficult. For the vowels (only 5 in the latin alphabet), some diacritics are used. The colon (like "o:" or dash on top "ō"?) can be used for the long vowels, and implies as well their articulation variant. The ě is used for shwa and ǔ for the sound in "run".

IPA: English Consonants IPA WIKI Examples p p pen, spin, tip b b but, web t t two, sting, bet d d do, odd tʃ tsh chair, nature, teach dʒ dzh gin, joy, edge k k cat, kill, skin, queen, thick ɡ g go, get, beg f f fool, enough, leaf v v voice, have θ th thing, teeth ð dh this, breathe, father s s see, city, pass z z zoo, rose ʃ sh she, sure, emotion, leash ʒ zh pleasure, beige h h ham m m man, ham n n no, tin ŋ ng singer, ring l l left, bell ɹ r run, very w w we j y yes ʍ wh what (some accents, such as Scottish) x kh loch (Scottish), Chanukah (Yinglish/Yeshivish)

IPA: English Vowels IPA Examples RP GenAm AuE WIKI   ɑː ɑ aː a: father iː i iː i: see ɪ ɪ ɪ i city ɛ ɛ e e bed ɜː ɝ ɜː ǔr bird æ æ æ ae lad, cat, ran ɑː ɑɹ aː a:r arm ʌ ʌ a ǔ run, enough ɒ ɑ ɔ o not, wasp ɔː ɔ oː o: law, caught ʊ ʊ ʊ u put uː u ʉː u: soon, through ə ə ə ě about ə ɚ ə ěr winner   IPA: English Diphthongs IPA Examples RP GenAm AuE WIKI   eɪ eɪ or e æɪ ei (ey) day aɪ aɪ ɑe ai (ay) my ɔɪ ɔɪ oɪ oi (oy) boy əʊ oʊ or o əʉ ou no aʊ aʊ æɔ au now ɪə ɪɹ ɪə i:r near, here ɛə ɛɹ eː e:r hair, there ʊə ʊɹ ʊə u:r tour juː ju jʉː yu pupil

−Woodstone 19:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Rather dangerous, I'm afraid: one would need to understand two phonetic alphabets: WIKI (English sounds) and IPA (other sounds) and become even more confused. Would we see a Turkish word represented by WIKI+IPA or by strict IPA when it contains only some sounds that occur also in English? Think about the problems that would be caused by either choice. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-30 19:56 (UTC)

Obviously the systems should not be mixed. The simplified form is only suitable for English words. Any foreign words would have to be expressed using real IPA. −Woodstone 21:00, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

An English approximation would be better and more realistic than a character set which fails to come out on many computers, including public ones. --Etaonsh 04:28, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

We used to use an established system for this purpose called SAMPA. Since English Wikipedia gained the capability to display UTF characters, SAMPA has been completely abandoned. I don't think anyone wants to reintroduce a non-standard replacement. —Michael Z. 2006-06-30 22:14 Z

I still say Kirshenbaum is the best choice for this. It's much easier to just read than either SAMPA or straight IPA (the advantage over straight IPA is not having to memorize a bunch of symbols for which most of us have no names). --Trovatore 22:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia may have 'gained the capability to display UTF characters,' but it doesn't mean that we can all see them this end. --Etaonsh 04:28, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

New approach

Might someone know whether this can be realized (server side .php, user side JavaScript and possibly css, I guess):
Behind a word that could use help for its pronunciation, we would only see a single small symbol, its colour would indicate the first available option :

The cümbüş x• • • xis a Turkish instrument.	– each time you bring the cursor on the gray symbol (half a second), you hear the word (sound file – in this demo not functional); – click on the symbol and the colour of the symbol would indicate the next available option :
The cümbüş x• • • xis a Turkish instrument.	– hold the cursor on the dark blue symbol and read the IPA representation for the word (best keep the pointer moving just under the symbol); – click on the symbol and the colour of the symbol would indicate the next available option :
The cümbüş x• • • xis a Turkish instrument.	– hold the cursor on the clear blue symbol and read the sound-out representation for the word (best keep the pointer moving just under the symbol); – click on the symbol and the colour of the symbol would indicate the initial option is ready again.

Wikipedia's 'user preferences' might even allow to change this default order according to the personal preferences of the receiver (thus most often one would not even have to click once).
If one (or two) of the three is not available and thus has to be skipped, the next (user preferenced) available presentation is indicated with its matching colour. Note: each of the 3 dots would automatically be very light gray when its option is 'available', reddish if 'unavailable'; their order remains the above shown default order just as the colours stick with the presentation options, regardless user preferences, thus the appearance has the same meaning for everyone. This prevents needlessly pointing or clicking.

• It solves a practical problem: a writer of an article is rarely able to add two or three sound representations, just any one of the three is enough and other users can afterwards provide the missing options.
• A practical sample in case just the audio file is not available: a user who prefers sound-out above hearing and really does not want to bother with IPA, will see  ^{x• • •} x; a user with default preferences intially sees  ^{x• • •} xtill someone adds the sound file. While a writer only offered a sound-out, everyone sees  ^{x• • •} x until someone adds one or both missing options.

SomeHuman 2006-06-30 18:24 / 2006-07-01 11:20 (UTC)

This is an attractive, cluttering-reducing idea, but probably a future project rather than something that would be the outcome of our current debate.--Chris 18:37, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

If the three-click-symbol is not too difficult to apply (both server side and user side handling, and server side creation from template), then what would the purpose of the current debate still be? -- SomeHuman 2006-06-30 18:45 (UTC)

There's still debate over whether a sound-out system is acceptable, and, if so, what its specifics should be. Once that is settled, then a system like yours -- which is simply an elegant way of present multiple systems - becomes discussible.--Chris 19:06, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

My approach makes 'sound-out' only debatable for its defenders: it is far easier to accept if not everyone has to live with it. -- SomeHuman 2006-06-30 19:22 (UTC)

Where do I get help?

Where do I go to request someone put the IPA pronunciation style on an article (specifically, Gallipolis, Ohio)? youngamerican (ahoy-hoy) 11:54, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there a template? Hyacinth 08:23, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

You mean like Template:ConvertIPA? —Keenan Pepper 19:08, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

King of the Hill

Regardless of whether you think IPA is the greatest thing since sliced bread or a terrible disaster for WP, it's clear that it's highly controversial among WP editors. The MOS ought to reflect that. WP is not King of the Hill, where the people who get up first have the right to push everyone else down. Nareek 01:49, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

If you can offer an alternative or compromise that actually serves all the purposes to which Wikipedia puts pronunciation guides, you're welcome to do so. The current compromise I'm aware of is using IPA and a "rhymes with" or "PROnun" rendition simultaneously. IPA is necessary for accuracy (an important feature of an encyclopedia article), and the rhymes/PROnun is offered for those who can't read IPA. — Saxifrage ✎ 02:35, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah I'm not the biggest IPA fan but the compromise is fine with me. --Liface 03:03, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

To avoid King of the Hill fights, I suggested a new approach where every user can put his own preference (actual sound, IPA, sound-out) at top of his/her hill. Debates should then be restricted amongst people with a common preference, e.g. on having a slow pronounciation followed by a normal conversation pace in the sound file, others on the detail of IPA, a third group on choosing the kind of sound-out representation; it would soon become more constructive then. — SomeHuman 2006-08-10 03:07 (UTC)

That solution is technically interesting, but is of limited use when Wikipedia sees print. A preference-driven pronunciation style system is unlikely to be popular for the same reason that we don't have a preference-driven American/British English system in place. — Saxifrage ✎ 03:51, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

US/GB would require every page to have 2 complete versions, unthinkable unless some genius finds an automated translator technique (might as well do it from/towards all the world's languages then). Do you intend to have every page word by word rewritten in IPA or in PROnun, perhaps? User preferences already exist, for instance how a date is shown: it does not take different page content. The advantage of the three-click symbol is that it can be inserted by anyone who wants to deliver a pronunciation indication for an uncommon term, even (and most usually) only a single type. Other users can add one or both missing types at any later time without a problem. The defenders of IPA never suggested that every writer must either master IPA or stay away. The small symbol is not so intrusive as sound-out or as IPA; contrarily, delivering both (or just one type) in plain text would hinder normal reading regardless one's preferenced type, especially since many users will often have little need for an indication because they already know how to pronounce the specific term. — SomeHuman 2006-08-10 05:01 (UTC)

I skimmed and in my haste misunderstood your proposal. Yes, a BrE/AmE conversion would be much more problematic and isn't a good analogy.

Still, though, how would that work for a print version of Wikipedia? It seems that in deciding how to translate the symbol into plain text for a print edition we still have the same problem of what to include and how. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

A print-out would not show any representation (and certainly no sound files). Theoretically it could be done for IPA and PROnun, even with user preference, but the effort and overload would be out of proportion to the number of pages actually becoming printed. How often will a pronunciation indication on paper matter to 99% of the users? – One can always get back to the original article if the need arises. Articles become updated, let's assume improved, constantly; thus Wikipedia on paper seems a grotesque waste of both natural and intellectual resources. — SomeHuman 2006-08-10 15:44 (UTC)

I'm totally in support of your idea. --Liface 21:48, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Part of the point of WP is to provide free encyclopedic content for anyone to use who has need of such--either online or off. Hence articles are supposed to be designed to work in either format. Nareek 17:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Regardless, Wikipedia is aiming for a print version, though it's current target is a CD release. If a proposed standard for pronunciation would result in a preventable loss of information when put into print, I don't think I could support it. — Saxifrage ✎ 17:41, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Having multiple systems in the soft edition will offer more choices for a hardcopy one. Whoever is formatting it can decide which ones to include. jnestorius^(talk) 18:11, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't it make sense to do it right the first time? On the first point I agree: multiple systems in the soft edition are valuable. They're included by the current defacto standard though. — Saxifrage ✎ 01:46, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Standard? I thought that's something everyone uses a same way... and a reasonable one does not cause eternal debates. The three-click would for a writer be a simple template {{pron:||}}. A PROnun writer would put {{pron:||joom’-boosh}}, later someone creates a sound file (in a repository like now for images) and simply inserts the filename (assuming only normal characters would be allowed for filenames): {{pron:cumbus.wav||joom’-boosh}} and weeks or months later an IPA adept puts his part in the middle. Meanwhile the thing works as soon as options become available without giving a sloppy unfinished impression, and takes very little room in a text so one can easily read the content without being distracted. As for printing: all well-designed works offer more options online than in a book or print version, it's the strenght of the medium. — SomeHuman 2006-08-11 02:18 (UTC)

A reader who encounters a term he cannot figure out how to pronounce, can simply insert an empty template behind the word. A bot reports these (and incomplete templates) on some page and I'm sure some users will become active in adding the representation they specialize in. I do not see such possibilities with the 'de facto standard' or anything suggested so far. — SomeHuman 2006-08-11 02:28 (UTC)

You obviously have a lot of passion for this subject, and I must apologise that I just can't match that level of interest. A nice and polished version of that proposal might benefit Wikipedia. It doesn't seem to have gotten much discussion, though, and since I'm not much interested in pursuing this further, I have one suggestion to leave with: compile your original proposal and the clarifications you've made here and put them in one place (perhaps in a new section here, or a project-subpage of your userpage), and make mention of it on one of the Village Pumps. If it's given a thorough going-over by many interested parties with their various concerns (not every concern I can think of is covered by the proposal so far, as it understandably reflects your particular concerns), that might just result in neat solution and an end to these debates. — Saxifrage ✎ 05:01, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

IPA usage in Wikipedia articles is a disaster

It is horrifying that IPA is used as the pronunciation guide on Wikipedia articles, and more horrifying that it is encoded into this manual of style. It is safe to say that, statistically speaking, nobody understands it and nobody uses it. Claims that "it's more accurate" or "it's more international" or "we should lead the way" are hopelessly ivorytowerian. We should use simple soundalike guides. Tempshill 17:32, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

What you said. I am implacably opposed to the use of IPA for just the reasons you gave. However, in the spirit of compromise, I propose a two-state solution here, where IPA and "pro-nun" guides live side-by-side in peace; I'll even let the IPA come first as a convention, if that's what the pointy-headed types here demand. But I insist on good sounds-like guides to the non-academics among readers here.

Besides, a cursory glance at a few articles here shows just what I'm proposing as an evolving de facto standard here anyhow. +ILike2BeAnonymous 17:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Please be civil and refrain from name-calling. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:00, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Soundalike guides are inadequate for terms that aren't originally from English, and vary depending on the accent of the reader. Pronunciation is an encyclopedic detail that needs to be stored somehow. If you like, you are welcome to add soundalike guides alongside the existing IPA, which would maximize usefulness. — Saxifrage ✎ 17:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Any objection to editing the guidelines to reflect that position?--CJGB (Chris) 18:20, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Not at all! Never mind, it's already in there at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation)#Other transcription systems. You might want to move stuff in that section around to make the allowability of additional systems come before the historical discussion. — Saxifrage ✎ 18:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I very much object to IPA being the standard, and soundalikes being "allowed". This is absurd. By the rationale you have put forth above (in bits and pieces; I don't mean the preceding paragraph), we should just make it Wikipedia policy that all quotations from the Bible must be in Aramaic or Hebrew, because an English translation would alter the meaning slightly. Please re-examine your basic assumptions with regard to the function of this encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are meant to be used. Let's make our articles usable. IPA is not usable by 99.98% (and I am being generous) of the people who will ever read these articles. The ability of an article to communicate information is more important than encoding into the article an undecipherable fact for the benefit of future linguists. Tempshill 21:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

By all means add information to articles, but I, as you put it, very much object to the removal of information. Just because it is not useful to you and a hyperbolic percentage of the population doesn't mean it should be omitted, much less actively removed. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Not exactly an objection, as such: I am very much in sympathy with the original poster and consensus, here, but I'm unconvinced that 'soundalike guides' are the whole answer, like Saxifrage. I feel we need a dictionary key like the IPA, only much simpler. Spelling reformers like myself spend a lot of time discussing spelling systems which better reflect the sounds represented in speech, and one of the 'ways in'to public consciousness we discuss is the use of our systems as dictionary keys. I, for example, use a system called 'Qixpel' [[2]] which makes use of some of the numeral keys to convey common sounds not represented by single Latin letters. --Etaonsh 18:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe dictionary keys have already been discussed at some length. Note that IPA is a dictionary key as well. — Saxifrage ✎ 19:10, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You would have to invent one first that is immediately understandable and useful, which is not the function of Wikipedia, fortunately. Tempshill 21:25, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

= 'Come back when you're established.' Sounds like the Conservative Party or something. :( --Etaonsh 06:54, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Standard for phonemic IPA transcription of international English

I propose that we develop, or better yet find an existing standard for a broad phonemic IPA transcription which would cover all dialects of English. Such a transcription scheme would be functionally equivalent to one of the dictionary-specific respelling schemes (see the details of fifteen different schemes at pronunciation respelling for English), in that only a limited number of symbols would be used. But unlike any of those, it would serve equally well for an anglophone from London, Edinburgh, Pretoria, Toronto, Dallas, or Canberra. It would also be compatible with and a step towards learning the full set of IPA used for other languages or describing speech sounds in detail, for which other dictionary respellings cannot be used.

To demonstrate the basic pronunciation of English words, the phonemic IPA could be surrounded by slashes /.../. Phonetic IPA in brackets [...] would be used for foreign words, or when discussion detailed sounds, such as comparing regional English dialects or describing a speech impediment.

There's an example of such a schema here: The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet at antimoon.com. It is footnoted with the assumptions it makes. Interestingly, it uses a superscript /^r/ to show where rhotic and non-rhotic accents differ, and a regular /r/ where they don't. This may be a good start for an international chart for English pronunciation. Does anyone know of any other examples, to compare? —Michael Z. 2006-08-17 01:11 Z

See the above threads for reasons why soundalike pronunciation guides are approximately 72 trillion times more useful to our readership than the above idea. Tempshill 04:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Mm-hm. I'm proposing a standardization of the way we use IPA for English, which I hope will make it easier and more consistent with its use in dictionaries and throughout Wikipedia. Abandoning IPA is a separate issue. —Michael Z. 2006-08-17 05:00 Z

Let me interject here: why do IPA proponents here seem to see this as an all-or-nothing proposition? Most of us who are critical of IPA, like me, would like to see another system (like "pro-nun", but not necessarily that, just some overall decent system) alongside IPA. What we're saying (most of us, anyhow), is that IPA alone is a very bad idea. +ILike2BeAnonymous 06:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm proposing refining the way we render English words in IPA. You are talking about another issue. —Michael Z. 2006-08-17 06:12 Z

I've done a bit of research on the topic of IPA use in dictionaries, and summarized it at Pronunciation respelling for English#International Phonetic Alphabet. The gist is that nearly all English dictionaries which use IPA use a standard method of phonemic transcription called the Gimson system.[3] It was developed for British Received Pronunciation, but is quite compatible with General American English, and in fact a number of dictionaries use five additional non-phonemic symbols to represent both British and American English with a single transcription.[4] Others use two transcriptions for British and General American, or use a combined system and supplement it with some American transcriptions. —Michael Z. 2006-08-17 05:08 Z

I like this idea. A consistent way of rendering IPA that doesn't need multiple versions for each dialect, and which doesn't rely on the personal transcription abilities of linguists, would be a boon. Ideally, it would be applicable by non-linguists by reference to a sound chart. It wouldn't be useful at all for non-English pronunciations, but for English terms it would make it more accessible to editors and readers both. — Saxifrage ✎ 07:42, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

It will never work. The various dialectal differences in English cannot be reduced to a single transcription system. (How would we possible capture the variation in words like "banana", "pasta", and "tomato"?) Nor would a Wikipedia-specific system ever be accepted by the linguists here; for one thing, it would be a form of original research. It would also ultimately be as ad-hoc as the pro-nun-see-AY-shun systems that are generally rejected here. Let's not waste our time trying to develop this further. User:Angr 15:52, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure myself it will work, but I'm more optimistic than Angr. Most of the differences between the major English dialects can be smoothed over by a suitable broad transcription, but not all. The [æ]/[ɑ] distinction in words like banana can't be; neither can unsystematic differences like [təˈmætoʊ]/[təˈmeɪtoʊ]/[təˈmɑtoʊ]. The solution for these rare cases is to provide multiple pronunciations. I think the original-research is a red herring; this isn't content, it's convention, like a hundred WP conventions. The pronunciation guideline already mandates a broad transcription for general purposes; all this proposal does is define what "broad transcription" means in the context of WP. --CJGB (Chris) 19:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I think Chris has it right. When the point is to describe three different pronunciations of a word, then three different, narrower transcriptions are needed, and they would be put in square brackets [...] to indicate that they are phonetic transcriptions. Likewise when comparing pronunciation in different English dialects. But just to demonstrate the general phonemes of a word which is recognizable in most or all dialects, we can use a simpler, broad phonemic transcription, which would appear in slashes /.../. This is the way IPA is intended to be used.

And this is not original research, whether that would be acceptable in this context or not. The whole point is that there already is the Gimson phonemic system which is widely used by other references. I'm suggesting that we investigate the details, and consider adopting a version of it.  —Michael Z. 2006-09-11 02:27 Z

Broad IPA for English (vowels)

This thread has been silent for a while, but I have made a table comparing the various IPA renderings for English dialects in wikipedia. I added one column under the name "broad", that could serve as braod transciption applicable to all dialects with only minor deviations. The proposal is based in the Gimson system mentioned above and the general understanding that in non-rhotic dialects a written /r/ is pronounced as a schwa or a lengthening of the vowel. Please have look. −Woodstone 12:16, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

word	RP	AmEng	AusEng	broad	after discussion	poss. rhotics
full vowels
bid	/ɪ/	/ɪ/	/ɪ/	/ɪ/	/ɪ/
bead	/iː/	/i/	/iː/	/iː/	/i/
bed	/ɛ/,/e/	/ɛ/	/e/	/ɛ/	/ɛ/
bad	/æ/,/a/	/æ/	/æː/	/æː/	/æ/
bath	/ɑː/	/æ/	/aː/	???	???
dance	/ɑː/	/æ/	/æ/	???	???
pasta	/æ/	/ɑ/	/aː/	???	???
carry	/æ/	/ɛ/	/æ/	???	???
pod	/ɒ/	/ɑ/	/ɔ/	/ɑ/	/ɒ/
cloth	/ɒ/	/ɔ/	/ɔ/	???	???
father	/ɑː/		/aː/	/ɑː/	/ɑ/
bud	/ʌ/	/ʌ/	/a/	/ʌ /	/ʌ /
hurry	/ʌ/	/ɜ/	/a/	???	???
bought	/ɔː/	/ɔ/	/oː/	/ɔː/	/ɔ/
toe	/əʊ/	/o/	/əʉ/	/oː/	/oʊ/
good	/ʊ/	/ʊ/	/ʊ/	/ʊ/	/ʊ/
booed	/uː/	/u/	/ʉː/	/uː/	/u/
diphthongs
bay	/eɪ/	/e/	/æɪ/	/eɪ/	/eɪ/
boy	/ɔɪ/	/ɔɪ/	/oɪ/	/ɔɪ/	/ɔɪ/
buy	/aɪ/,/ʌɪ/	/aɪ/	/ɑe/	/аɪ/	/аɪ/
cow	/aʊ/	/aʊ/	/æɔ/	/aʊ/	/aʊ/
idea					/iə/
rhotacised vowels (r silent in non-US)
bird	/ɜː/,/əː/	/ɝ/	/ɜː/	/ɜr/	/ɜr/	/ɝ/ or /ɜɹ/
beer	/ɪə/	/ɪɹ/	/ɪə/	/ir/	/ir/	/iɚ/ or /iɹ/
bear	/ɛə/,/ɛː/	/ɛɹ/	/eː/	/ɛr/	/ɛr/	/ɛɚ/ or /ɛɹ/
bar		/ɑɹ/		/ɑr/	/ɑr/	/ɑɚ/ or /ɑɹ/
bore		/ɔɹ/		/ɔr/	/ɔr/	/ɔɚ/ or /ɔɹ/
boor	/ʊə/,/ɔː/	/ʊɹ/	/ʊə/	/ʊr/	/ʊr/	/ʊɚ/ or /ʊɹ/
reduced vowels
roses	/ɪ/	/ɨ/	/ə/	/ə/	/ə/
rosa's					?
runner		/ɚ/		/ər/	/ər/	/ɚ/ or /əɹ/
bottle	/l̩/	/l̩/	/l̩/	/l̩/	/əl/
button	/n̩/	/n̩/	/n̩/	/n̩/	/ən/
rhythm	/m̩/	/m̩/	/m̩/	/m̩/	/əm/

Largely looks good, Woodstone, but I'd be in favor of maintaining the roses/Rosa's distinction that some people make by transcribing the reduced vowel in the former as barred-i (or maybe as ɪ). I also see no reason to merge the quality of "wasp" with that of "father"--for those whose dialects make the distinction, it will cause error, and for those whose dialects don't, it will end up being merged automatically, as is appropriate to that dialect. One question that the proponents of IPA have largely not addressed is whether we need several transcriptions, RP, GenAm, GenAus, etc., for every pronunciation. Something as bulky as "Tudor (IPA: RP: ['tjuːdə], GenAm: ['t(j)udɚ], GenAus: ['tʃʉːdə])" is completely unnecessary, and probably also harder to read, for those with a basic rather than advanced knowledge of IPA, than simply ['tjuːdɚ].--Atemperman 20:19, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I would argue for removing the diacritics. Partly this makes it easier for everyone to write the transcriptions, but in larger part because diacritics indicate a small deviation. I don't think we need to indicate small deviations in a broad-broad transcription such as this as they are either systematic (at least, systematic on the level we're looking at, in terms of how the broad-broad transcription translates to the broad transcription of the individual dialects), or they indicate unnecessary detail. So, I'd leave off the length indicators, and write the 'le' in 'bottle' as /əl/ (and so forth for N and M). You've taken this approach with the rhotics, using /r/ instead of diacritics or the inverted small-r. — Saxifrage ✎ 21:38, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I like the convention of using inverted r to represent "droppable" final [r], but I wonder how kosher it is for professional linguists. (The old OED used it.) Alternatively, you could use a superscripted r (again, is it kosher?) or place it in brackets.--CJGB (Chris) 21:59, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

In linguistics, /r/ and /ɹ/ mean different things: the first is the trilled "r" found in Spanish and other languages, the second is the sonorant "r" found in English and others. The reason I suspect Woodstone used the upright r is that, when the context is only English, there is a linguistic convention of convenience of using the normal r character to stand in for /ɹ/. This tends to be done in broad transcriptions, which makes it particularly well-suited for this scheme. It's not a bad idea to indicate droppable R somehow, but using normal r and inverted r to make the distinction would be confusing. If it was absolutely going to be done with those two characters, I'd suggest the inverse: use inverted r where the r is necessary, and the "less detailed" normal r in the "less detailed" position of droppable Rs. — Saxifrage ✎ 23:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I expect you're right about using turned r for droppable r. I'm not crazy about your "reverse" proposal -- I feel pretty strongly that /ɹ/ should be /r/ in broad transcription. Not that I'm boss. One approach might be to use /ɚ/ for the second element in the r diphthongs. Then we just regard /ɚ/ and /ə/ as merging in non-rhotic dialects. (Of course, that means not merging /ɜr/ and /ər/, as I suggested elsewhere.) I'll add a column to show what I mean. --CJGB (Chris) 19:18, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I must say that I’m sceptical that this can be pulled off. It will teach people a bad form of the IPA, because in a best-case scenario for many characters they’ll learn to associated symbol (a) with sound (b), and then when they see symbol (a) in the transcription of a foreign language, they’ll think it’s sound (b) when in fact it’s almost identical to their own sound (c). For that reason, I think that this task is better-off with a respelling pr’-NUN-see-AY-sh’n key. (My personal opinion is that an unambiguous respelling key should be used for English that is defined against the IPA for various English dialects (exclusively); and for every other language the IPA should be used (exclusively). This means we can avoid multiple pronunciation keys for words unless there’s authentically multiple pronunciations as with ‘glass’.)

In any case this is not a phonemic transcription (or any sort of underlying transcription), so /slashes/ shouldn’t be used. I’m using quotes here, but I could’ve used italics just as well.

However, assuming I am out-voted and this is accepted, I have some suggestions to make it a bit more useful. Firstly, I think the long o should be marked as ‘oʊ’ rather than ‘oː’. This makes it consistent with ‘eɪ’, is a transcription used for American English and in Australian English dictionaries and conservatively for RP, and in any case only Scottish and some other similar accents actually ever use [oː]: American English has (to my ears) usually [oʊ], sometimes [o]

Secondly, I think it should be unambiguous regardless of whether the colons are read. They should be kept for clarity, but this basically means that the vowel of pod should be ‘ɒ’, rather than ‘ɑ’. Ideally, no look-ahead should be necessary, but rhotic/non-rhotic differences makes it so. I also agree that no diacritics should be used, so that əl, əm etc. is sufficient as it was with əɹ.

There are cases of the ‘non-rhotic’ vowels that don’t correspond to the ‘rhoticised’ vowels of rhotic dialects, for instance, in ‘idea’, ‘theatre’ or ‘yeah’. I therefore suggest that the form for them should be more like ‘iːə’ (Ikea), ‘ɪə’ (idea), ‘ɪəɹ’ (beer); ‘eɪəɹ’ (player), ‘ɛə’ (yeah), ‘ɛəɹ’ (bear). Rhotic speakers will therefore understand to associate ‘ɪə’ with ‘iːə’, whereas non-rhotic speakers will understand to associate ‘ɪəɹ’ with ‘ɪə’. (Note also that the AusE vowel in boor isn’t /ʊə/, unlike the vowels in tour or pure which could be described as such. I suggest the key should be changed to tour, and that this should be considered a case when there’s legitimately two pronunciations.)

The ‘bad’ vowel shouldn’t be included. Although it’s phonemically relevant to Australian English, it’s also phonemically relevant to other dialects (and just doesn’t happen to be included). Between all these dialects the distribution varies (for instance, ‘bad’ has the short vowel in parts of the US that have a similar split). So long as it’s mentioned that ‘æ’ stands for both /æ/ and /æː/ in the respective dialects, I don’t see that it matters, and a guess will usually be relevant. When the pronunciation in a given dialect is relevant, a proper use of the IPA will need to be used anyway.

—Felix the Cassowary 12:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I have added a column with the above proposals worked in as far as I understand them. I dropped all diacritics, replacing the symbol for pod and using schwa before sonantic consonants. Using different symbols for droppable or firm r is tricky and would defeat the simplicity to a certain extent. I don't foresee many cases where it would be important. I do not quite understand the remark that the proposed system is not phonemic. To a very large extent it is phonemic within each dialect. How can bad be omitted? It is a clear phonemic distinction with a minimal pair bad/bed. Feel free to add your ideas in the last column. −Woodstone 18:38, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Is /ɜr/ really a phoneme? Couldn't it merged with /ər/?--CJGB (Chris) 18:56, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

It is a sound, but an uncommon one. In my own dialect it's similar enough to /ər/ that I think merging in the key would be appropriate, but I can't comment on that for other dialects. — Saxifrage ✎ 20:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

The proposal to use rhotacized schwa, might work for beer, bear and even boor, but I have some hesitation for bar. And it breaks the simplicity of no diacritics. I add the inverted r in the same column, just to see how it looks. Normal /r/ would stay for pure consonant r. I suppose /ɜ/ (always stressed) could be considered an allophone of /ə/ (never stressed) as suggested above. −Woodstone 21:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to comment, but please do not destroy earlier proposals. That makes it impossible to follow the discussion. If you have comments, add them here or in a new column. −Woodstone 11:54, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Adding new lines to the draft chart was not "destroying earlier proposals", but if you'd rather pretend the difficulties don't exist by deleting them, that's your prerogative. —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 13:49, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree almost entirely with Felix the Cassowary's comments.

The words bath, dance, cloth, pasta, carry have been raised as difficulties by Angr. For the first four, I would suggest simply giving two pronunciations, e.g. bath /bæθ/, /bɑθ/. The alternative option of coming up with a special symbol for trap-bath split words (/a/, maybe) seems to suffer from a couple of problems: that /a/ wouldn't be an actual phoneme anywhere, and if dance and calf were written /dans/ and /kaf/ (as suggested by their RP and GenAm pronunciations) then Australians and the northern English (respectively) might be confused. For carry, I don't know: the marry/merry/Mary merger is a regular process and so the GenAm pronunciation could be predicted from /kæri/, but that might be confusing. In the non-IPA Help:Pronunciation respelling key, arr ended up being used for words like carry, with a separate line in the key.

---JHJ 16:28, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

My 2 cents:

1. don't forget the horse-hoarse merger: I suggest /or/ for FORCE and /ɔr/ for NORTH.
2. for the weak vowel merger, I think there is precedent for barred i /ɨ/ for Roses, leaving schwa /ə/ for Rosa's
3. As Angr says, you need to accommodate Lexical sets BATH and CLOTH; I think one symbol is much better than two. I suggest TRAP /æ/, BATH /a/, PALM /ɑ/ and LOT /ɒ/, CLOTH /ɔ/, THOUGHT /ɔː/. Why bother handling some accent distinctions and then copping out and leaving others raw? I can't see how the fact that trap-bath split words are not a phoneme anywhere is relevant. The overall proposed trancription will not be 1-1 with any accent, so one more is not imposing any extra imperfection for any given speaker. The possibility of North English being confused by "dance" and "bad" having different representations is no worse than the already-allowed possibility of Americans confused by "father" and "bother".
4. You should also allow for happy tensing: if you use /i/ for happY you can use /iː/ for FLEECE.
5. Re "pasta" foreign A (and similarly "yoghurt" foreign O): maybe these are just the largest classes in the miscellaneous pronunciation differences which can't be grouped meaningfully.
6. In my rhotic accent, "idea" has no second diphthong: it's trisyllabic with second-syllable stress [aɪˈdiː.ə], like "Ikea". I think it's stress-related and can be put under happY-tensing, viz. /aɪdiə/.
7. in conclusion, I also agree with Mr Cassowary: the degree of departure from any kind of phonemic status means I think using IPA will be misleading. Why not just go with a respelling system? I've always liked Chambers'; a few augmentations and it would work. If the repselling is flexible enough it should be possible to do a little applet or something to translate its rendition into IPA for most accents: a future technical enhancement? Keep IPA for articles on accents, phonetics, and non-English languages. jnestorius^(talk) 17:56, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The horse-hoarse merger can be safely ignored, I think; the distinction is kept only in minority pronunciations everywhere except Scotland and Ireland, and we aren't even attempting to cover those accents here. As for BATH and CLOTH words, I don't think anyone will remember to use different symbols for them. Most Americans won't know whether a given word they pronounce with [æ] is to be transcribed with /æ/ or /a/ under this scheme, nor will most Brits know whether a given word they pronounce with [ɒ] is to be transcribed with /ɒ/ or /ɔ/. —The preceding signed comment was added by Angr (talk • contribs). 18:37, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Can I ask why you think we're not attempting to cover Scottish and Irish accents? Personally I'm reasonably relaxed about the NORTH/FORCE distinction because it's generally obvious (to those of us who make it) from the spelling, and the handful of exceptions like sport (and force itself) are mainly not the sort of words that are likely to need transcribing in Wikipedia, but I don't see why the Scots and Irish (and the rest of us who speak neither GenAm nor RP) should be left out. One of my biggest problems with the use of IPA-based systems of transcription is their tendency to be overly dialect-specific - remember that RP is only spoken by a fairly tiny proportion of the UK population. I would support a systematic respelling system whose key included notes for speakers of different accents. --JHJ 08:05, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

A few more points. When I said that they symbols should be unambiguous without a colon, I didn’t mean the colon should be removed. I was going for the system where a colon and a change of symbol are used.

When I said that ‘bad’ shouldn’t be included, I meant the vowel described as ‘[æː]’, not the vowel described as ‘[æ]’. That’s precisely the sort of confusion I expected would ensue from using a symbol for ‘[æː]’.

Merging ‘[əɹ]’ and ‘[ɜɹ]’ would be a bad idea. Not for any real reason, they just don’t seem/sound/feel anything alike. One’s a long stressed vowel, the other’s a short unstressed vowel—I think that’s enough reason to keep them apart!

I’m wholly against using a symbol for the trap/bath split. It’s just not doable for precisely the same reason that the bad vowel isn’t doable: The distribution varies. I say /dæːns/ and /baːθ/ and /kæsəl/ and /kaːnt/. It would be much clearer to just say “‘dæns’ or ‘dɑːns’” (or, better, “dans or daans”). This difference is not at all comparable to the difference between /kaː/ and /kɑɹ/: One is an automatic process that happens in all contexts that match a certain criteria; the second happens only sometimes (but is mostly well-established). It also means that when unknowing Americans write that can’t is pronounced ‘kænt’, they’re not wrong; they just haven’t included all the information.

I’m double against trying to use a single symbol for ‘pasta’ (fwiw, I say ‘pasta’ and ‘pastor’ exactly alike, as /paːstə/).

jnestorius, your point 6 is precisely what I was saying. You speak a rhotic dialect, so you merge ‘ɪə’ with ‘iːə’. I speak a non-rhotic dialect, so I merge ‘ɪə’ and ‘ɪəɹ’ (Q. What do you call a deer with no eyes? A. No eye deer! Q. What do you call a deer with neither eyes nor legs? A. Still no eye deer!) The table doesn’t go far enough in not including other cases like ‘ɛə’.

I re-iterate that I don’t think we should be using the IPA for this purpose. Using the IPA for a dictionary in a country like Australia where the pronunciation is largely homogeneous is fine; or in a language like German where there’s a standard; but for an international English-language encyclopædia where there’s no such standard it’s simply not going to work.

—Felix the Cassowary 14:28, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Felix: re idea: my bad, I thought you were handling people who stress the first syllable. Regarding trap-bath-pasta: I think the important point is to signal which pronunciation differences are accent-driven and which are free variations.

Angr: Probably more people distinguish force-north than speak AusE. Do we cut back to the Big 2, GAm and RP? I don't like the idea that we should avoid doing something because it's hard. Perhaps we could add some kind of verification/accent parameter to pronunciation templates: {{Eng-pron|IPA = ɪgzɑmpl|dialects = "RP:Aus:NZ"}} which signals "if you speak a different accent, your pronunciation may vary." Relevant speakers could trawl these and add dialects at leisure. This would not just be useful on IPA transcriptions, could work for the pseudo-IPA discussed in this section, or for respellings.

jnestorius^(talk) 17:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Fwiw, most Australians get by without feeling the need to use /a:/ in ‘example’. Regarding dialect vs free variation, thing is to some extent trap-bath is free variation. I say /kæsəl/, but I could say /kaːsəl/ if I wanted to. Sometimes I do. I think there’s also regions of variation in the border between the normally-splitting parts of England with the normally not-splitting parts? —Felix the Cassowary 14:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, a bit. That's why I mentioned calf: based on RP and GenAm it appears to be a classic trap/bath word, but in northern England it usually has the long vowel. So the northern English (like me) might be puzzled by a transcription that implies that it has the same vowel as staff, because for us it doesn't. There are a handful of other words where I have the short vowel but where I've heard the long vowel from speakers who don't normally have the split: examples include aunt, laugh, master. In particular I think Birmingham accents (just north of the main isogloss) tend to have the long vowel in aunt and laugh. All these variations would probably be best served by giving two pronunciations, along the lines of "dans or daans", as you suggested above.--JHJ 14:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Something needs to be done about yod-dropping. My accent is pretty close to GAm, and new is /nu/, not British-style /nju/. Same with Duke, tutor /tuɾɹ/, assume /ə'sum/, Zeus, and probably others that I can't think of now. So we need to find a 'standard'. Oh yeah, is tissue supposed to be /'tɪ ʃu/? Are we considering the whine-wine merger standard? Lock-Loch merger? Is baths /bæθs/ or /baðz/?Cameron Nedland 20:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

What are we trying to achieve?

I've pretty much stopped participating in this discussion. I was under the impression that the purpose of a very broad IPA transcription that could be used as a respelling key would be to ignore the distinctions of each dialect. We can't possibly presume to create a transcription system that can capture the distinctions between dialects with simple representations as people have been discussing—is a handful of Wikipedia volunteers really sufficient for an achievement that has been unattainable by all linguists combined to date?

In order to be successful, we have to aim at a much more modest goal: an inaccurate, very broad respelling key that is good enough to grossly indicate pronunciation, and which is easily implementable by non-experts without reference to a tangle of notes and first-hand or linguistics-grade level of familiarity with different dialects. Essentially, we need a respelling key that is to a broad transcription as a broad transcription is to a narrow one. Am I mistaken?

(Even if I am mistaken, I am right about this: we have failed to clearly and precisely describe the problem we are attempting to solve, and so our discussion is unfocused and unproductive. In the field of problem-solving, having a vaguely-specified problem is a very well-understood path to failing to solve that problem.) — Saxifrage ✎ 21:15, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree the aim is to come up with a respelling key that is good enough to grossly indicate pronunciation, and which is easily readable by non-experts. Whether it needs to be easily writable by non-experts is different. Ideally we need to allow anyone who knows how they pronounce a word to add that information, but at the same time ensure that a pronunciation specific to their dialect does not mislead a different reader with a different dialect.

• The reason we are arguing over finicky dialect details is to ensure the key is, as far as possible, not misleading for any accent. To rework my earlier suggestion, suppose a Surrey editor indicates the pronunciation of "force", as {{Eng-pron|key = fɔːs|dialects = "RP"}}; then a Nebraskan amends this to {{Eng-pron|key = fɔːrs|dialects = "RP;GAm"}}; then a Glaswegian changes it to {{Eng-pron|key = fors|dialects = "RP;GAm;Scot"}}. None of these representations is incorrect, but each is successively more precise (assuming the key given in the preceding section). On the other hand, "booth" would give {{Eng-pron|key = buːð|dialects = "RP"}}{{Eng-pron|key = buːθ|dialects = "GAm"}}, since this is a lexical difference.
• Because the respelling key is "very broad" or "inaccurate", some of us believe IPA is inappropriate. The difference between [djuː] and [duː] for due is a particularly tricky one; whereas [dū] for due and [doo] for do seems more versatile (to me).

jnestorius^(talk) 21:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

My experience with transliterations of Thai language to English characters makes me very wary about [dū] for due and [doo] for do: non-native speakers of English have no feeling for such (and even many native speakers might not find it practical). The seemingly understandable indication prevents a reader to look up "ū" or "oo" in a table, while he/she may well have (and thus 'learn') a completely wrong idea. Perhaps first of all determine whether the English Wikipedia is intended for native speakers only (as for many Wikipedia versions in other languages), or do you just as well wish to achieve a world version. — SomeHuman 11 Sep2006 01:49 (UTC)

Wow, I made a simple proposal and went away for a few days, and I find that many more knowledgeable editors find the idea interesting! After reading the resulting discussion, I do still think that phonemic IPA can be generalized enough to serve well for representing the "general English" pronunciation of many words. As a Canadian, I understand that I may have to have some understanding of my own accent to be able to fully use such a scheme, and the same may apply to, say, a Scot, East Indian, or South African reader. I would be content if a scheme would be able to represent a majority of words in RP and General American, as several dictionaries seem to have done—perhaps not perfectly, but well enough to go to press.

Remember, this applies only where the words are phonemically consistent in RP and GAm, and any time a word is "pronounced differently" in two dialects, we can provide two different broad transcriptions, and when there are important detailed differences, we could switch to a narrower phonetic IPA. I do appreciate all of the knowledgeable comments above which show how detached from reality my naïve "phonemically consistent" comment is.

As to whether such a scheme should use IPA symbols or not: I still think that a phonemic IPA scheme could be functionally equivalent to a respelling system—this is the intent of IPA's brackets [...] vs slashes /.../, and it applies perfectly to our case. Obviously it's not quite that simple, as shown by the example of [dū] for due implying palatalized of [dʲu:] for some readers. But couldn't a phonemic IPA system also encapsulate this? I mean, couldn't we simply say that [u:] implies that this palatalization occurs, in dialects which feature it. Essentially, that [u:] is equivalent to [ū]?  —Michael Z. 2006-09-11 03:16 Z

Not unless you have a different notation for /uː/ that doesn't cause palatalisation, as in do, noon, two (as opposed to due, new, tune). Again, I think a non-IPA system would be easier here, though I think the bold oo used for the former group (as against ew for the latter group) in Help: Pronunciation respelling key isn't the best choice. Note also that /dj/ and /tj/ have merged with /dʒ/ and /tʃ/ in many varieties, leading to due being a homophone of Jew, but this is predictable and probably doesn't make it much harder to come up with a system.--JHJ 11:13, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps this is one of the rare cases when two phonemic pronunciations must be offered. This effect is not applied the same way in all words: due = GAm [du:], RP [d^ju:]; schedule: [skedʒul], [ʃed^jul] (I think). When it's not necessary to discuss the regional differences in detail, perhaps a conditional notation would be sufficient: due: /d(^j)u:/.

If we were using one of the dictionary respelling systems, we'd have to offer two different pronunciations for some words anyway: do: {doo}; due: {doo, dū}; pure: {pūr}.

Of course there's no need to provide a pronunciation in the articles about the common words due and schedule, so the cases where this comes up in a phonemic pronunciation will be quite rare.  —Michael Z. 2006-09-12 18:53 Z

On the other hand, keep in mind the intended scope and anticipated context. Articles on the common words do and due do not need to show readers how to pronounce those words—that's a problem for Wiktionary editors to deal with. In a linguistics context, we would use a narrow phonetic transcription, for example, an article about English dialects may describe the British and American pronunciation of due as [dʲu:] and [du:]. Remember, the intent of this proposal is a scheme demonstrate the pronunciation of unfamiliar English words to readers of English—not to teach the English language.

Thanks for the thoughtful comments, everyone. —Michael Z. 2006-09-11 03:16 Z

Short question: couldn't we simply adopt a scheme like the one described in this review of the Collins COBUILD dictionary? Specific assumptions are listed here.  —Michael Z. 2006-09-11 03:22 Z

An excellent source for our efforts above here was given by user JHJ, to be found at IPA transcription systems for English. I will shortly work it into the table. −Woodstone 12:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's my proposal for a diaphonemic IPA scheme. Basically, it would show every distinction found in every major dialect. In this system, there would only be a handful of words (such as "idea") that would require multiple transcriptions. --The Lazar 20:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Word	Proposed System 1
Full Vowels
bid	/ɪ/
Sirius	/ɪ/
bead	/iː/
bed	/ɛ/
merry	/ɛ/
bad	/æ/
marry	/æ/
bath	/æː/
dance	/æˑ/
pasta	/ɑˑ/
father	/ɑː/
pod	/ɒ/
cloth	/ɒː/
bought	/ɔː/
bud	/ʌ/
hurry	/ʌ/
toe	/oʊ/
good	/ʊ/
booed	/uː/
Diphthongs
bay	/eɪ/
boy	/ɔɪ/
buy	/aɪ/
cow	/aʊ/
few	/ju:/
due	/ju:/
Rhotacized Vowels
bird	/ɜːr/
beer	/ɪər/
bear	/ɛər/
bar	/ɑːr/
border	/ɔːr/
boarder	/ɔːr/
boor	/ʊər/
Reduced Vowels
roses	/ɪ/
rosa's	/ə/
runner	/ər/
bottle	/l̩/
button	/n̩/
rhythm	/m̩/

I've taken the liberty of changing "bored" in the table to "boarder" and adding "border", to highlight that your scheme ignores the NORTH-FORCE split. Which I disagree with, by the way. jnestorius^(talk) 21:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Yep, my system does in fact ignore the NORTH-FORCE distinction (which isn't technically a split, but that's splitting hairs), and (although the table above only focuses on vowel phonemes) it would also ignore the WHICH-WITCH distinction. (And I must be derelict as a New Englander, seeing as how I actually know some people that maintain the NORTH-FORCE distinction!) I think we should only show features that are found in a) General American, b) RP, or c) mainstream Australian English. I think that nowadays, the NORTH-FORCE distinction isn't widespread enough to warrant inclusion in the pronunciation guide. There's a bunch of regional phonemic distinctions found in NYC, Ireland, Scotland, and Australia that arguably deserve as much recognition as NORTH-FORCE. --The Lazar 02:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, NORTH-FORCE is one of the Scottish and Irish features. You also haven't specified a transcription for borrow; I'm not going to second-guess you there. Looking at your 5 different symbols for bad-bath-dance-pasta-father, I'm surprised you bridle at FORCE. jnestorius^(talk) 02:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Here then is my proposal. Is anyone fundamentally opposed to attempting a one-transcription-fits-(nearly)-all-dialects standard? If not, let's quickly agree a first-draft policy, implement it soon, and fine-tune it later as needs be. We can all sit around arguing the fine details and nothing will get done. Let's start with a fairly minimal set of phonemes, so that where necessary we provide multiple transcriptions of a word or phrase. If, after review, it seems like adding an extra symbol will reduce this compromise, we can do so. As MZ points out, some distinctions for common words may not occur in the words we actually need to transcribe, so we will save time by not catering for such distinctions to begin with. The only thing that gives me pause is the question of revising existing transcriptions if our standard does change. Can anyone think of something clever with Templates / Whatlinkshere / Talkpage notes / Bots that might make this less painful? jnestorius^(talk) 02:32, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, Joestynes, but I actually tried to make an edit in which I was starting to sort of agree with you, but you had already posted this second new edit of yours, and my edit got lost in the confusion. I said that you could make the case that a) NORTH-FORCE should be included because it's the most widespread of all the regional phonemic distinctions, and b) my system makes way too much use of length marks and half-length marks (ie, maybe the "pasta" foreign words and the differing extents of the trap-bath split in RP and AusEng are just cases where two transcriptions should be given). As for "borrow", I would have thought it would be intuitive that my system would use /ɒ/ (cf "merry", "marry", "hurry"), but I guess you're right that it should have been included for comprehensiveness. In my aborted edit I proposed a second (Joestynesian) alternate system, which I'll kindly reproduce below. --The Lazar 02:43, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Word	Proposed System 2
Full Vowels
bid	/ɪ/
Sirius	/ɪ/
bead	/iː/
bed	/ɛ/
merry	/ɛ/
bad	/æ/
marry	/æ/
bath	/a/
dance	/a/, /æ/
pasta	/ɑ:/, /æ/
father	/ɑː/
pod	/ɒ/
bother	/ɒ/
cloth	/ɔ/
bought	/ɔː/
bud	/ʌ/
hurry	/ʌ/
toe	/oʊ/
good	/ʊ/
booed	/uː/
Diphthongs
bay	/eɪ/
boy	/ɔɪ/
buy	/aɪ/
cow	/aʊ/
few	/ju:/
due	/ju:/
Rhotacized Vowels
bird	/ɜːr/
beer	/ɪər/
bear	/ɛər/
bar	/ɑːr/
border	/ɔːr/
boarder	/oːr/
boor	/ʊər/
Reduced Vowels
roses	/ɪ/
rosa's	/ə/
runner	/ər/
bottle	/l̩/
button	/n̩/
rhythm	/m̩/