Help talk:IPA/English

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Question

Why is [ɹ] transcribed as [r]? JonathanHopeThisIsUnique (talk) 23:16, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

It isn't. Rather, the English phoneme that is pronounced [ɹ] in most accents is transcribed as /r/.

/r/ is the usual phonemic transcription in specialized literature. Moreover, IPA principle 4 (a) stipulates that "[o]rdinary roman letters should be used as far as practicable" (Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, p. 159). Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@JonathanHopeThisIsUnique: Actually, on English dialect articles (certainly American English dialect ones, following a discussion I had some months ago), [ɹ] is transcribed as [ɹ]. (See examples of that at American English, for example.) However, your concern is one that gets brought up from time to time (or should I say over and over again), most recently, in fact, by myself! See Help talk:IPA/English/Archive 24. So far, editors have agreed to let he English "r" sound be phonemically (which is different than phonetically) represented using /r/. Several editors, including myself, have voiced our reservations about this. Wolfdog (talk) 00:20, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Hey all, thanks for the quick replies! I just wanted to clarify that I don't have a strong opinion on how to transcribe the English rhotic phoneme, I really was just wondering about the reasoning. :) JonathanHopeThisIsUnique (talk) 01:45, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

The reasoning is WP:RS. If scholars were to create a phonemic orthography for English today, based on General American and contemporary Received Pronunciation, there's a higher probability that ⟨ɹ⟩ would be used instead. /r/ in traditional RP has a wider range of allophones, more like Scottish English. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:13, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Pretty sure the reasoning is readability. It's one fewer symbol to learn by those for whom the IPA is new. It certainly helps that it's common among reliable sources (and those probably do so for the same reason) and that the IPA makes explicit allowances for this practice. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:14, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Is 'lj' in the IPA

I'm new to learning IPA, and was looking through this page, often going to other pages for more words for pronunciation. One of the consonants representation, lj, with the pronunciation example of lute, I can not find on any other lists of IPA symbols. I was curious as to why this was.

--Paelias (talk) 15:26, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

The chances are you won't find any combination of consonant + /j/ on this guide on any other list of IPA symbols, because they don't represent single sounds. /lj/ represents a situation where it is pronounced as /lj/ in some accents and /l/ in others, before /uː/ or /ʊər/. See the "Dialect variation" section and the second footnote for more. Nardog (talk) 12:05, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

How to make this list more accessible

This list uses a variety of uncommon words that many English speakers have never heard of. Can we please use more common words? This list is supposed to help Wikipedia readers understand the basics of the IPA and what each character stands for. Using words like "caff" and "wye" won't really help them. Most readers on the English Wikipedia are not experts at phonetics (me included). I tried to edit the list to include more common words, but then my edits were reverted hours later. This list is supposed to be like the pronunciation key on a dictionary. I'm pretty sure that when we say that "f" is the sound of the "ff" in "off", anyone who knows English can understand what is meant. Sanjay7373 (talk) 18:31, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Common words are better than less-common ones insofar as their spelling and pronunciation are intuitive to readers. Although caff is not a common term, its pronunciation is intuitive, especially in regards to an example word with English /f/. Meanwhile, wye is possibly not so intuitive. Some of the word choices seem motivated by the desire to have a minimal pair. In the case of wye, you get a minimal pair with why We could probably pick a different pair (wine/whine for example). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:07, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response. The pronunciation of "caff" may be intuitive, but the use of an uncommon word instead of a common word may be confusing. People reading this may wonder: Why are we using the word "caff"? What in the world does "caff" mean? There are plenty of common English words with the sound "f". Most English speakers will have heard of the word "off". At the same time, many English speakers probably will not have heard of "caff". According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, "caff" is used only in British English. Being an American, I have never heard of the word until I read this page. Similarly, instead of using a not-very-common name like "Ernesto", we could use a word like "earn". I really don't know why we would need seven examples for a single sound. Sanjay7373 (talk) 19:43, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Can you explain to me the motivation for using words like "caff" as opposed to "off" and "if"? Using uncommon words instead of common words won't help our readers, it will just make them confused. Similarly, can you explain what "NURSE", "LETTER", and "COMMA" mean? I am not an expert at phonetics, I simply edited this page to remove confusing/uncommon words that some English speakers may not be familiar with. Can you explain the reason why there are seven examples for the ɜːr sound? What about "coir" - are there any more familiar examples for the ɔɪər sound? Sanjay7373 (talk) 02:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

That's not really a compelling reason to change it. Still, we could think about creating a minimal pair with /v/, like calf/calve, half/halve, leaf/leave, or surf/serve. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Editors keep slipping in alternative examples with different spelling of the sounds. These are extensively treated in English orthography and do not belong on this page. This page is meant not to deal with spelling, but only pronunciation. A few example words suffice, with phonetic variants as to the position of the sound, like initial, intervocal or final for consonants, and in an open or closed syllable for vowels. We should remove all additional examples that do not represent sound variants. −Woodstone (talk) 08:11, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Ernesto, justiciable, etc. are there not necessarily to illustrate the sounds per se but to help editors choose the right symbols. They prevent editors who merge /ɜːr/ and /ər/, and /ʌ/ and /ə/, from mistakenly choosing the latter, so those should stay. Nardog (talk) 08:17, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Sanjay7373 asked: Similarly, can you explain what "NURSE", "LETTER", and "COMMA" mean?

That is explained in the Notes section right below the tables. Follow the link. — This is not a social media forum; Wikipedia users are usually expected to read the entire page before starting a discussion. This page has subpages that are archives of previous discussions, but that's probably too much reading stuff. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:18, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

I have to agree with Sanjay7373. Trying to read this article or use it is impossible for a regular person ( lay person). Not only is it written really for some kind of academics in the field of language, but it is far too complicated. It needs simplified and streamlined and rewritten to the level of average readers not familiar with your field of study. Not only that, but i saw some obvious errors such as, some person claiming that we use o and au as the same sound in the usa and canada. NO we usually don't. So it needs corrected as well.
i am also strongly recommending a separate page for each different group, ie Brit english, American, Australian, etc. Because it is very confusing to have to read about all of these different pronunciation variations in some sort of big Linguist Academia convention DISCUSSION all in one page. We need our own pages for our different groups. so, please don't trouble us with having to sort thru your linguistic academic orgy, we just need to read it set out in an orderly fashion, for our own country's language group of english. Being such a far flung lot of colonies or former colonies, we hardly speak the same language any more. so unlike other languages, we need our own page for each continent or similar usage group at least. Linked from this article. Meat Eating Orchid (talk) 06:37, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

@Meat Eating Orchid: You can list the rest of those errors here. We're not saying that o and au are pronounced the same in USA and Canada but that the o in lot (not in code nor go) is often (though not always) the same as au in autoplay. In most of those dialects, the a in spa also has the same vowel. In England, Wales and Australia, lot, autoplay and spa all have different vowels. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:45, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Schwi merged into schwa and unstressed FLEECE merged into HAPPY

I just noticed Nardog did bot change of all schwis to schwa back in aug 2017, but we still present them as distinct in this key. I'm changing it to indicate that schwi may be written as either schwa or as the KIT vowel. — kwami (talk) 04:23, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Also unstressed FLEECE vowel (as in PEDIGREE) bot merged into the HAPPY vowel. So I've noted that the FLEECE vowel may be written either iː or i, and the RABBIT vowel either ə or ɪ. — kwami (talk) 04:40, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what you're talking about. Sounds like you're saying I did a blanket change from ⟨ᵻ, iː⟩ to ⟨ə, i⟩, which I never did.

If an unstressed preconsonantal vowel is pronounced with /ɪ/ in accents that contrast it with /ə/ (Lenin, rabbit, edition, valid), we should transcribe it with ⟨ɪ⟩. If it is pronounced with /ə/ in those accents (Lennon, abbot, addition, salad), we should transcribe it with ⟨ə⟩. North American accents indeed tend to realize both of these vowels with a quality higher than [ə], but that's irrelevant because they don't contrast /ɪ/ and /ə/ in this position (Flemming & Johnson 2007). Our key is diaphonemic.

Likewise, if a final or prevocalic unstressed vowel is tenser or longer than /i/ in accents that allow such a contrast, it should be transcribed with /iː/. If it is pronounced the same as /i/ in those accents, it should be transcribed with ⟨i⟩, regardless of the etymology. Nardog (talk) 09:32, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, and it would've been fine if you'd done that. You perhaps didn't change all instances of unstressed ⟨ᵻ, iː⟩ to ⟨ə, i⟩, but you changed many. You also messed up the hyphenation in the respellings, so they now often no longer correspond to syllabification. An example of FLEECE and hyphenation is here.[1] (You later fixed the mistake with the schwi.) — kwami (talk) 00:50, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

I completely agree with Nardog. Our guide includes “schwi”. It is spelled with [ɪ], exactly like the KIT vowel (as explained in a footnote). In our “diaphonemic” standard, it is alway spelled like that, so it is wrong to say that it can be “ə or ɪ”. Also, the FLEECE vowel is alway spelled as [iː], so it is wrong to say that it can be “iː or i”. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 11:50, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

No, not "always", just sometimes. Nardog used AWB back in 2017 to mass change unstressed FLEECE to ⟨i⟩ and often schwi to ⟨ə⟩, and those errors are still there. I've fixed some, but god knows how many there are. So it the meantime, FLEECE indeed is spelled either “iː or i” and schwi may be spelled “ə or ɪ”. — kwami (talk) 00:45, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

If there are erroneous transcriptions, then it is these transcriptions that should be changed, not this guide. This guide cannot describe erroneous transcriptions that might happen to be used in our articles. As per MOS:PRON, it is not only descriptive of what is being used out there, but also a practical guidance how to write English IPA transcriptions. Therefore, a wording like “iː or i” for the FLEECE vowel would be harmful. A person with a background in the American IPA tradition might take this as a license to transcribe the FLEECE vowel as /i/ (e.g. /flis/).

Maybe we could add a footnote to the HAPPY vowel /i/ that some editors use it for unstressed /iː/ as in “pedigree”, and to the COMMA vowel that some editors use it for unstressed /ɪ/ as in “rabbit”, due to dialect differences? But that might already go to far for the advocates of our “diaphonemic” system. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 19:59, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Separate pages for English Dialects?

I know I’ve brought this up before but it’s worth another try... Why don’t we leave this page, but add more pages for dialects? Maybe we could call this page “Broad English” or something to signify that it is there to reflect all the dialects in a certain way, but make more pages with more specific intent? I think this would be quite useful. Does anybody agree?