Help talk:IPA/Bulgarian and Macedonian/Archive 1

Is the reduced vowel really supposed to be [ɘ], rather than [ə] as in the Macedonian phonology article? If so, why is it linked to schwa rather than close-mid central unrounded vowel? — Emil J. 19:00, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

It varies through ʌ, ɤ, ɨ. <ə> is a common transcription. kwami (talk) 09:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding Bulgarian. No reason for a separate chart, as differences are minimal and can be handled through footnotes. kwami (talk) 09:06, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

If Bulgarian is included, then Bulgarian words should also be featured. Kostja (talk) 16:20, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Be my guest! Preferably, of course, we'd choose words that work equally well for both. It would also be nice to use the same word to illustrate M. /lj/ as we do for B. /ʎ/. kwami (talk) 23:30, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

ɤ and ə

According to Bulgarian phonology [ə] is often written as [ɤ] - could be worth mentioning here, in case there are any [ɤ]'s floating around on WP. Lfh (talk) 17:09, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Split

The purpose of these "IPA for [language]" pages (as I understand them) is to assist in the phonetic transcription of a language into IPA notation. Given the orthographic and phonological differences between these two languages it would be wiser to have two separate articles, anything else would just be an ugly sea of confusing (for many) footnotes and markings. Just my two cents. --124.150.51.238 (talk) 11:33, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to elaborate a little more:

• "дзифт, ѕвезда" — in this case the Bulgarian digraph дз represents an affricate, while in Macedonian this combination represents a [d.z] (for example одзема).
• джем, џем — same as above (надживее).
• There is no palatal lateral approximant in Macedonian.
• The case of the schwa is just too complex, which is why an "IPA for Macedonian" article should link to this and an "IPA for Bulgarian" article should link to this.
• The problem of differing orthographic traditions (morpho-etymological versus morpho-phonological) bring about all sorts of other problems.

Without getting into too many details, the differences far exceed those of Czech/Slovak, Estonian/Finnish, etc. There's no reason why Bulgarian or Macedonian shouldn't have separate articles (read: no good reason why they should be a single article), and it's the best solution to avoid any possible ambiguity. --124.150.51.238 (talk) 11:50, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Bulgarian and Macedonian are standard registers based on divergent dialects of the same language. The minor details you point out are less than those between the principal dialects of Irish, which only has one key. Bulgarian is often transcribed as ə, but if we want, we could certainly decide on ɤ instead. We can link regardless. The other details are likewise things we can cover in footnotes or even in the key itself.

There are 7000 languages in the world. It isn't practical to maintain IPA keys for very many of them. kwami (talk) 20:40, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the contributions by the anonymous IP are very much mistaken

• It's made perfectly clear that дз is used to write the Voiced alveolar affricate in Bulgarian, while s is used in Macedonian. That's why exactly those letters are bolded in the examples (which, as explained above, are listed in the order Bulgarian, Macedonian). Same is true about джем, џем.
• There is no [[Palatal lateral approximant in Standard Macedonian? Then what is љ for? And why does it says so in the article about the Macedonian language?
• Orthographic traditions are unimportant here, as this is about pronunciation. Kostja (talk) 14:07, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

"... the differences far exceed those of Czech/Slovak, Estonian/Finnish"? Particularly the second part shows little understanding of the subject. Other errors in the arguments by the anon were already pointed out above. The point about orthography makes no sense either, to give you an example Hindi and Urdu share the same "IPA for..." page and they use entirely different scripts. Given the other examples (Czech/Slovak, Dutch/Afrikaans, Estonian/Finnish, Hindi/Urdu, Serbo-Croatian, Swedish/Norwegian and Turkish/Azerbaijani), the page should remain as "Bulgarian and Macedonian". Todor→Bozhinov 21:38, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Split immediately. It was very good previously. --MacedonianBoy (talk) 22:54, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

---

Bulgarian and Macedonian are standard registers based on divergent dialects of the same language.

This isn't true. Perhaps you are thinking of Serbian/Croatian which are separate standards of shtokavian. Macedonian and Bulgarian have their own diasystem with their respective standards being based on one particular dialect area. The claim that Macedonian and Bulgarian are of the same diasystem is a political one popular in Bulgaria.

There are 7000 languages in the world. It isn't practical to maintain IPA keys for very many of them.

Then why have these articles at all? Are you going to pick and choose which languages are represented and which of those are to be grouped together into a single article?

It's made perfectly clear that дз..

My point was that these charts show how IPA represents a particular language's phonology with respect to its orthography (i.e. the bolding of letters).

There is no [[Palatal lateral approximant in Standard Macedonian? Then what is љ for? And why does it says so in the article about the Macedonian language?

That article is wrong. Please see Macedonian phonology which has references for there being no palatal lateral approximant.

Orthographic traditions are unimportant here, as this is about pronunciation.

Then why the bold letters? If you were right, then these articles would be duplicates of these.

to give you an example Hindi and Urdu

Hindi and Urdu differ in script. Macedonian and Bulgarian both use Cyrillic, however their respective spelling rules differ (the only significant difference with Hindi/Urdu is the representation of vowels). While it's easy to list дзифт, ѕвезда together, it's just misleading. "This particularly shows your little understanding of the subject".

If the registered users still brutishly insist on keeping the article as it is, many amendments need to be made. --203.206.87.138 (talk) 13:21, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Why not add Serbian and Croatian as well? --203.206.87.138 (talk) 13:31, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Another problem is Bulgarian vowel reduction and palatalization... can we now overcome our political biases and split these into two accurate articles? --124.169.79.79 (talk) 08:52, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any problem, nor any bias. — kwami (talk) 00:57, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Tables for Bulgarian

IPA Examples IPA Examples English equivalents Consonants b example bʲ example example d example dʲ example example d͡z example d͡zʲ example example d͡ʒ example example f example fʲ example example ɡ example gʲ ~ ɟ example example j example example k example kʲ ~ c example example l example lʲ ~ ʎ example example m example mʲ example example n example nʲ ~ ɲ example example p example pʲ example example r example rʲ example example s example sʲ example example ʃ example example t example tʲ example example t͡s example t͡sʲ example example v example vʲ example example x example xʲ ~ ç example example z example zʲ example example ʒ example example

IPA Examples English equivalent Stressed vowels a example example ɛ example example i example example ɔ example example u example example ɤ example example Unstressed vowels ɐ example example ɛ example example i example example o example example u example example ɤ example example

Tables for Macedonian

IPA Examples Nearest English equivalent Consonants b баба box v вода view ɡ гавран good d дом dust ɟ ѓон argue ʒ жолт pleasure z зима zoo d͡z ѕвезда birds j јаболко yes k куќа keep l лав list l̩ монокл little ɫ бела milk ʎ љубов million m море mocha ɱ трамвај symphony n нос North ŋ банка Hank ɲ бања onion p пет palm r работа robot (trilled) r̩ прст US: verb (trilled) s стол speak t тајна time c ќерка cue f филм fact x хартија Bach t͡s цар bats t͡ʃ чекан cheese d͡ʒ џем jab ʃ шума sugar IPA Examples Nearest English equivalent Vowels a брат father ɘ к‘смет pencil ɛ сè edge i сив happy ɔ слон more u убав book

Split

I am proposing a split for the following reasons:

• Macedonian and Bulgarian, while using variants of the same alphabet, have differing spelling rules:
  • Example: Bulgarian digraphs are pronounced differently than they would be in Macedonian. This is misleading in for a "IPA for X language" page which attempts to demonstrate correspondence between letterforms and phonemes for easy transcription.
• Bulgarian distinguishes "hard" and "soft" (palatalized) consonants. Macedonian does not.
• Bulgarian has vowel reduction. Macedonian does not.
• Bulgarian possesses < 10 phonemes not present in Macedonian.

Therefore I am proposing this page be split into 'IPA for Macedonian' and 'IPA for Bulgarian', and I have offered what I believe to be more accurate table layouts above. --124.169.79.79 (talk) 12:16, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

If merging these pages is a priority, then a merge to 'IPA for Serbo-Croatian' (for Macedonian) would be more sensible given the greater phonemic (and phonetic) similarities. --124.169.79.79 (talk) 12:18, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm sort of neutral on this, though leaning toward status quo. I disagree that this page is to demonstrate a correspondence between orthography and phonemes (that would be Bulgarian alphabet); instead it's a guide on how to read and produce pronunciation in the IPA. It's fairly easy to list both languages, as we do for Czech/Slovak, Dutch/Afrikaans, Estonian/Finnish, Swedish/Norwegian, Hindi-Urdu, and Portuguese/Galician. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:22, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Then perhaps for the sake of simplicity and clarity, we could have 'IPA for Macedonian and Serbo-Croatian'... or even include Bulgarian if someone has enough time and patience for adding footnotes. --124.169.79.79 (talk) 23:10, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

How would that look? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Obviously, a lot tidier. Are some users pushing to keep the current state of the page out of political bias? To test this, why not merge with Basque or Romanian? --124.169.79.79 (talk) 23:17, 28 December 2010 (UTC) So what exactly is covered in these pages that isn't in Bulgarian/Serbo-Croatian/Macedonian language/Serbo-Croatian/Macedonian phonology/Serbian/Macedonian orthography? --124.169.79.79 (talk) 23:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

This isn't an article, this is a pronunciation guide for the languages in question. This means that there will be overlap with article content.

Combining Macedonian with Serbian makes less sense than with Bulgarian as Macedonian dialects were considered to be part of the Bulgarian language until relatively recently. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:35, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

What significance does that have in the 21st century when trying to produce pronunciation guides for artificial standards? Should Belorussian, Ukrainian and Russian be merged and a mess made of the page as has happened with this one? The fact that a unified Bulgarian-Macedonian standard never came about in the 19th century if proof enough that these two languages are too divergent. Back to the point: it remains that the phonologies of these two languages and the conventions for their notations differ enough to warrant a split. --124.148.227.27 (talk) 08:52, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Quite the contrary. The fact that there have been no problems using a single key demonstrates that there's no problem using a single key. Give us an example of a word that would not be adequately handled by this key. — kwami (talk) 09:46, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Everyone seems to be quite confused as to the purpose of these pages. kwami, you're asking for a word but Aeusoes1 claims orthography is irrelevant. --124.148.227.27 (talk) 11:30, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

There's no contradiction. Word doesn't equal orthography. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:55, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

• /bʲas/
• /dʲadɔ/
• /ˈkʲɛlner/
• /mʲuɛzin/
• /ˈsʲanka/
• [svrakə]
• [bɤɫɡɐrski]
• [bajno]
• [bɛɫa] vs. /bɛɫa/ vs. /bɛla/
• дзифт/надзор
• джем/надживее

And now the differences to Serbian?

--124.148.227.27 (talk) 22:19, 29 December 2010 (UTC)