Talk:Sound correspondences between English accents

Table is wrong

In Australian English, the o in no is pronounced very differently to the o in cold.

The vowel sound in soul, roll, cold, fold, mould is very different to the vowel sound in no, toe, hoe, soap, goat, wrote.

Someone should note this in the table. Also, folk and soak rhyme in Australian English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.171.228.189 (talk) 07:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's [ɔ] in much of the US. It was overlooked in the table. kwami (talk) 09:00, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Halt

Halt has the same vowel as hold in New Zealand English, the two words only differ in the voicing of the final consonant.

If I understand correctly, hold is pronounced something like [hɒɯd] in New Zealand English as a result of l-vocalisation. This would seem to imply that halt should be transcribed phonemically as /hoʊlt/, with /oʊl/ pronounced by New Zealanders as [ɒɯ] like gold or mold. This is not the way RP speakers would transcribe it. What I don't know is whether this makes halt a special-case with two pronunciations or whether halt is an example of a lexical set that is pronounced differently by RP speakers and New Zealanders. If it's a special case then it makes a bad choice for the table. If it's part of a lexical set then we should add a new row to the table.

Ben Arnold (talk) 07:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

What's up with the gaps?

There are gaps in the Irish English column, and the entire South African English column is blank. Why? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:58, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Because no one has found (possibly, no one has looked for) reliable sources on which to base the information. —Angr 19:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the SAE column altogether until such a source is found, then? (As for IrE, which source mentions some sounds and not others?) -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 20:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, leaving the gap is a good way to "invite" someone to fill it. If you remove the column the information will probably never be added. I'll post a request for help over on the South Africa Project page. Roger (talk) 16:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Should we add a column for Indian English, Caribbean English, and any other dialect of English we can think of, then? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 13:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

If it is a "standardised" dialect with at least one widely accepted authorotative dictionary - Yes. Roger (talk) 14:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Is South African pronunciation reflected by at least one widely accepted authoritative dictionary? —Angr 14:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. The Oxford Dictionary of South African English [1] It is compiled by the The Dictionary Unit for South African English at Rhodes University in Grahamstown.[2] Unfortunately I don't own a copy, nor do I know IPA well enough, otherwise I could have made a start at filling in the "offending" column. Roger (talk) 16:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately neither Amazon nor Google Books has a preview of the inside contents. I'd be interested to see if it even contains pronunciation information (I notice Amazon's product description says nothing about pronunciation), and if it does, to what extent it differs from RP - because while South African English differs phonetically from RP considerably, the phonemic differences (which is what would be shown in a dictionary, and on this page), are I believe very slight. —Angr 16:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

(<-) ...the key difference being the South African bit-kit split. This article has more serious issues, however. It clearly violates WP:OR, since

• Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources. This article attempts to do something that has never been done before. There has never been such a thing as an "IPA chart for English dialects."
• Much of the content is actually flat-out OR. For instance, no previously published IPA transcription for American English allows for Canadian raising of PRICE. And Irish /r/ is in most cases a retroflex approximant and not a flap.
• Some columns, such as Irish, Canadian, and Welsh, are unsourced and will always be. Does Irish English have an authoritative dictionary? I think not. Is Irish English standardized? Not at all; there's a lot of regional and social variation. Is Irish English worth studying? Absolutely! As far as dictionaries are concerned, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary does use IPA, but its IPA scheme is not intended to be an accurate phonetic representation of the sounds of Canadian English. Likewise, the Australian scheme devised by Harrington, Cox, and Evans is not used in the Macquarie Dictionary, which sticks to the more traditional (and phonetically inaccurate) RP transcription. Therefore, for the purpose of this article, what dictionaries do is irrelevant.
• Last but not least, the table is difficult to read.

I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 01:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, while I agree with you that there's no single set of rules that will apply to every English speaker within a given population, I believe that there are certain trends that make, say, New Zealand English different from General American English. On my desk right now is Handbook of Varieties of English, edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004). It is a thousand-page book, very informative, that phonologically analyzes all the dialects in this chart and many more. I think it's a fine resource for this chart, and I'm planning to add South African English and fact-check the other dialects when I have time, if that's all right with everyone else. Hopefully you'll agree with me, because I think this is a VERY valuable chart (and, by the way, I don't find it difficult to read at all).66.71.70.66 (talk) 01:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, Handbook of Varieties of English is a wonderful book. I was thinking about using it too. You can view a lot of it online. Thegryseone (talk) 02:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Then again, the HOVOE features detailed phonetic charts for every single dialect, while the purpose of this page was to show phonemic transcriptions for English. I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 00:14, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, according to Phonetics, HOVOE would be considered a phonological description (or "phonemic" to use the old school term). Phonology deals with abstract systems of sounds and gestural units and their allophones. In addition, the first book has "Phonology" written on the side. What's confusing is that allophones are written using what's called "narrow phonetic" transcription. However, showing the different allophones of a phoneme is a part of phonology and not the study of phonetics. Thegryseone (talk) 11:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

True, that's what I was thinking too. It seems that South African English (White South African English) isn't very well-studied. This makes sense if you think about it, because very few people speak it compared to say, American English. Thegryseone (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the Handbook has lengthy articles as well as IPA charts for several North American dialects, including New England, the South, Newfoundland and so forth. I assume your "this makes since" was actually supposed to read "this makes sense." It makes sense, since you have the pin-pen merger. :) I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 02:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

LOL...you cot me or should I say...caught me. Very clever indeed, Jack. I always enjoy a bit of linguistics humor. See that's proof that I wasn't lying to you. That damn merger screws up my spelling quite often. Immigrate and emigrate are the worst. On a related note, I read on some science Web site that people with the pin-pen merger and people without it have different patterns of brain activity. Ah, here it is. Thegryseone (talk) 03:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

But people with the kit-bit split are the brainiest of all. LOL! I don't agree that South African English is not well studied, there are several South African universities with very active English departments and don't forget the dictionary unit at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. I think the problem we have/had in this article is that IPA is not very well known or widely used in South Africa. (I for example had never heard of it until I found Wikipedia!) Roger (talk) 13:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected. What the problem is is that no one knows how to transcribe South African English phonemically. It seems that no one has ever done it before. That's what I was getting at. So while it may be well-studied, we don't know how to transcribe its vowel phonemes. Thegryseone (talk) 18:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

John C. Wells has, in Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. He uses all the same symbols as for RP, except for /ə/ for the words like bit, and /əɪ/ rather than /eɪ/ for the FACE vowel. —Angr 19:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Why can't we use that as a source then? Thegryseone (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(<-) Well, Wells's tables are not really intended to give an account of what the various dialects sound like, which is what our article is supposed to do, I guess. I mean, we basically have Wells and the HOVOE at opposite ends of the spectrum, and what we have to do is figure out an intermediate approach--but that would be original research. This means we're stuck in a rut. I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 02:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sort by similarity

Is there any way to order the table columns by related dialect, or number of shared features? This would help clarify similarities and contrasts in related dialects.

I imagine that RP and US English would be the two major poles, dialects with transitional features between them, and outliers beyond RP. I realize this is not a 1-axis range, and the relationships are complex, but there are obviously dialects with more shared features, and putting these next to each other will help the reader.

I'm no expert, but here's a start for discussion. —Michael Z. 2009-02-09 22:41 z

1. SAE
2. NZE
3. AuE
4. WaE
5. RP
6. IrE
7. ScE
8. CaE
9. GA

For example, Trudgill (in International English) says we basically have two major types of accents, an "English" type (England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), and an "American" type (U.S., Canada), with Ireland being somewhat intermediate and Scotland being by itself. I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 02:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Indian English

I have been somewhat concerned that Indian English has not been included in the chart, seeing as a significant amount of Anglophones are from India and of these, the majority speak the national dialect and have an accent that suits. Would it be necessary to include a separate chart for consonants, because I am aware letters like /d/ and /t/ are retroflexed if Indian English is to be included?

R. John Lloyd (talk) 21:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Is there a large enough (and sufficiently "connected") population of mother-tongue English speaking Indians for there to be a reasonably consistent "standard" phonology? Roger (talk) 21:31, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, surely Indian English is a well-established dialect, and I agree that we need to include it. Other important omissions are northern English, southern rural English and Estuary English/Cockney – all very distinct and spoken by large numbers of people. I think the dialect columns should cover both consonants and vowels in one chart, as consonants do vary too (for example, th/t/d in Irish English, f/v for th in Estuary/Cockney, the differences in use of dark l). Some earlier discussion on related points in Talk:IPA chart for English dialects/Archive 5#English regional English Richard New Forest (talk) 22:33, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Northern Irish

Seeing as England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland (judged by the flag) are all on here, shall we add Northern Ireland as well? There is a description of it in Wells, Accents of English.

By the way, what is the evidence that most people in the Republic of Ireland use /ɔɪ/ in the PRICE words? Wells gives /ai/ here (page 419), and I think that he's right. Epa101 (talk) 19:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

There is an argument for including it, but aren't there are other, more distinct dialects to include first? Perhaps if there is room after some of those discussed above? Richard New Forest (talk) 20:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Indian English sounds more important, although I can't say that I know a thing about it. As for the "regional" dialects of England, I'd say that they are less important and are changing with age very rapidly. Northern Ireland is much more different from RP than any region of England: also, it is constitutionally distinct as well. Epa101 (talk) 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Note also that the dialect boundary between Northern Irish English and Southern Irish English does not correspond to the political boundary. People from Counties Donegal and Monaghan, and maybe Cavan as well, speak with a Northern accent although they're from the Republic. —Angr 22:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

That's interesting, although it's the same thing for the boundary between England and Scotland; people from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and the surrounding area sound Scottish (Wells, p.351). Does anyone know of any other comprehensive descriptions of Northern Irish English other than that in Wells? Epa101 (talk) 15:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree that Northern Irish is "much more different" from RP than English regional dialects – perhaps somewhat more than most. Anyway, surely it's quite a bit closer to standard Scots than, say, Liverpudlian or Cockney is to RP. There are those who'd say it is Scots not English, so would not belong on this page at all... Richard New Forest (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, there is no official marker between English and Scots as languages. English is an official language in Northern Ireland, and no linguist claims that RP is spoken in Northern Ireland by anyone, so it seems justified to include it as an English dialect. I agree with you that it is quite similar to most Scottish accents, but I don't think that's an argument against its inclusion. I can't see how it can be justified to give every nation in the British Isles a column except Northern Ireland.

As regards Scouse or Cockney, what are the sources for the modern accents? I am a bit worried with English regional dialects that the information will be descriptions of very old dialects, as most of the sources that I've read have been. For example, on Britannica's article for the English language, it claims that Northerners use /i/ in blind, find, mind and replace initial /tʃ/ with /k/, both of which died out forty years ago. Epa101 (talk) 13:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally I'd agree that English and Scots are dialects of the same language. However, many Scots speakers regard their vernacular as a true language, and object to calling it a dialect of English – their (quite logical) reasoning is that it developed continuously in parallel with English, but (unlike all other dialects of English) at no stage was it spoken in England itself. However you look at it, Scots proper is a lot more than a mere accent, being pretty much incomprehensible to many standard English speakers, having a considerable separate lexicon and an established orthography (not to mention its own Wiki: Scots Wikipædia). It's probably as different as many recognised languages are from each other, and I suspect that the reasons that it's not generally regarded as such are largely political. It reminds me of that well-known definition of a language as "a dialect with an army".

As to the age of sources, I think that's something we just have to work with, as with all other Wikipedia sources. If all we have is early 20th century sources, then that's what we'll have to give. In any case, though regional English accents have certainly changed over the last century or so, surely they remain at least as distinct as GA, New York, Australian, South African etc. Richard New Forest (talk) 19:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether Ulster Scots is a dialect of Scots or of English (or a separate language altogether) is sort of beside the point - both Ulster and Scotland have, in addition to Scots, local accents of Standard English (Northern Irish English and Scottish English respectively), which is presumably what this page would be reporting on anyway. —Angr 13:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Richard New Forest (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Leaving aside the dialects within England for a moment, does anyone object to the creation of a Northern Irish column based on Wells' description of it? I'll wait for at least a week before proceeding.

Another problem with having English regional dialects is whether there will be enough space. If we are to add Indian English and Northern Irish English, the table would be quite big already. Perhaps a separate table would be needed or perhaps even a separate page. Epa101 (talk) 19:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

If we had consonants and vowels in one table, there would be plenty of width available for half a dozen more accents at least. Richard New Forest (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather than put them in the same table, I think we should arrange the consonant table and vowel table vertically rather than horizontally. That way both of them have room for horizontal growth (though the consonant table presumably doesn't need much). —Angr 06:20, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made an effort to add NI English to the table, but the format has become very difficult now. When I pressed preview, I realised that it had all gone wrong as soon as merged cells came into it. I'll try again tomorrow. Epa101 (talk) 21:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Possible source for some references

I think that this book might be quite useful in providing citations. In addition, I think that the IPA table for the North of England in this book demonstrates why it would not be practical to include a Northern English column on this article's table.

At the time of writing, the phonetics for Indian English is not included in the book preview, which is unfortunate as that would have been a useful addition to the table. Epa101 (talk) 14:09, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Links

One of the external links: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(C)2005.pdf Has been moved or removed. 82.181.193.196 (talk) 08:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Corrected link to [3], from the new IPA site. Drydic guy (talk) 10:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)