Wikipedia talk:IPA for French

W in oi digraph

It's important to note all the common cases where a sound occurs, so I noted the oi digraph as an occurrence of the w sound. Unfortunately neither of the letters really represents the sound, so it's a little misleading to bold either one of them. I bolded o, as the first in orthography as w is the first in pronunciation, and since it likely gave rise to the sound in the history of the language. What do others think: should we include this example, or should we not bold it at all? — Eru·tuon 00:58, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

That seems fine to me. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:04, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Made some modification

• Added few more examples.
• Perhaps someone could add final consonants are elided in many instances, but as already indicated here liaison "recovers" some of those omitted consonants when followed by a vowel sound in the same phrase, much like non-rhotic English dialects do with "r".
• How could we use the syllable marker in French? Jɑυмe (xarrades) 21:47, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't know whether the syllable marker is ever relevant for French. Does French ever distinguish sequences like [u.i] vs. [wi], [i.e] vs. [je], or [u.a] vs. [wa]? I can't think of a case where it would, but my French is kinda rusty. —Angr (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

French phonology mentions pays [pɛi] and paye [pɛj] as a minimal pair for full vowel vs. glide, so in transcribing pays you could use the syllable separator if you wanted to be extra disambiguatory. — Eru·tuon 23:22, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Is [pɛi] disyllabic? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:22, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

If it is dissyllabic this example might work for French where stress is a bit different, but not for other languages that contrast different types of stressed hiatuses, compare Portuguese pais [ˈpajʃ] (diphthong) with país [pɐˈiʃ] (hiatus) and pias [ˈpi.ɐʃ] (hiatus). Nonetheless, i wouldn't oppose to use it in French to ease the reader to see some possible hiatuses.Jɑυмe (xarrades) 01:20, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Pays is disyllabic. Dictionaries give four different pronunciations, all of them with two full vowels: [pei], [peji], [pɛi], [pɛji]. The one given more weight currently is [pei], which is also what I hear when I listen to natives. See here. — AdiJapan 03:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Phrasal stress

I think moyen could be replaced by a phrase or short sentence... Something like tout est beau [tut.ɛˈbo]. What do you reckon? —Jɑυмe (xarrades) 15:44, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Dental or alveolar /n/?

According to Fougeron & Smith (1993) French /n/ is dental. Why French is listed twice; with an alveolar nasal nous [nu] and dental nasal connexion [kɔn̪ɛksjɔ̃]? Shouldn't French be deleted from the alveolar nasal article like Portuguese? Jɑυмe (xarrades) 15:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Looks like someone added it to alveolar nasal last year. I've removed it. (comment added 01:20 GMT, 31 March 2011 by User:Aeusoes1)

I'd like to suggest/remind that widest transcription be preferable for articles on a language like French and leave the dental marker as perhaps what is listed for "standard" phonology, but not in word or syllable transcriptions. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:24, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Voiceless uvular fricative rhotic

Doesn't the voiceless fricative variant of the rhotic [χ] appear quite often in spoken French, particularly at the end of a voiceless syllable (vaincre, etre). It seemed particularly common in francophone Switzerland where I spent a lot of time as a kid, and I seem to only have heard the voiced trill in France. I feel like it's marked enough to be relevant, again at least in the Swiss dialect, but I wonder if you think it's marked in Parisian France and/or if you think it would be worth adding in the notes as a variant here. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:45, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

If it's an allophone of a normally voiced consonant that occurs in a voiceless environment, I wouldn't say it's particularly notable to mention here, though French phonology would be a good place for that kind of information. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I guess the difference between a phoneme and an allophone, for a general language, would be defined by the phonotactics of the dialect itself. In this case, I am thinking that [χ] would be the dominant phoneme of at least this Swiss dialect, with the voiced form being the allophone. An example, a good determiner of this trait, would be the word raclette, which was distinctly [χaklɛt]. But honestly, this is a good thing to bring up against a published source. However, that can get messy - I read an essay on transcribing spoken versus musical French, and how the two would properly translate for singers of different languages, and the author there chose to transcribe both the spoken and sung rhotic as a flap [ɾ], presumably to emphasize the quickness of actual articulation. So... I don't know... is there a good standard or convention? SamuelRiv (talk) 01:49, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I think the convention is what we're using right now. What you're talking about, by the way, is probably more accurately described as distribution of phones rather than phonotactics, since the latter refers to rules regarding phoneme placement, not that of allophones. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 02:40, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

english equivalent for "i" is wrong

on the actual page for this vowel the example given is "free", here the example is "bitter". I'm no expert, so I hesitate to edit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.85.83.139 (talk) 02:26, October 14, 2011 (UTC)

The example for i was changed recently, and you're right, it's incorrect: French i is [i], but bitter has [ɪ]. I've corrected the example. — Eru·tuon 04:48, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Add x

Title. And add uy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.40.180.138 (talk) 10:21, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

AFAIK, neither /x/ nor /uy/ are phonemes of French. Angr (talk) 12:46, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Should non-distinctive vowel length be shown in transcriptions?

It was pointed out to me elsewhere that the transcriptions are intended for people who have perhaps little knowledge of French. These readers can hardly be relied on to supply vowel lengths automatically. Older French-English dictionaries did include vowel lengths systematically. Perhaps that's less common now, though. 96.46.204.126 (talk) 06:17, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

We do that for Italian, so I don't have a problem with that. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)