Help talk:IPA/Sanskrit
Sanskrit [c][ɟ] or [tʃ][d͡ʑ] [d͡ʒ] ?
Every single page about Sanskrit and Hindi in wiki and also different scientific resources use different sound transcriptions.
E.g. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%9A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca_%28Indic%29#Devanagari_script
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Consonants
What are the actual sound values of these letters? Is there more reliable resource on Sanskrit IPA than http://www.sanskritweb.net/deutsch/ipa_sans.pdf
Dental diacritic
I don't see any reason to have a dental diacritic for Sanskrit. Spanish dental plosives, for example, are transcribed at Wikipedia without them because it would be redundant. Is there some contrast between dental and alveolar that I'm not aware of? — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 12:44, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
- I'm not sure why I included them originally, as you are right. Note that WP:IPA for Hindi and Urdu has them, too. Actually, that's probably why—I think I copied the Hindi page as a framework for this one. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 02:51, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
- I have brought up the issue there, as well. If we do decide to remove the diacritic, it shouldn't be too difficult to remove them from the relevant articles. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 03:12, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Long E
eː ए, पे e between yell and Yale
Isn't the vowel in "steer" or "beer" much more accurate than the current explanation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.255.182.142 (talk) 13:04, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
- No, steer and beer have a vowel very close to see. I've changed the word use to approximate the sound. — Ƶ§œš¹ [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 14:26, 31 March 2013 (UTC)
Low vowel
Is the long low vowel really back [ɑː]? I would expect it to be central or even front. — Eru·tuon 02:22, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
- @Erutuon: Any of [a, ɐ, ɑ] are equally valid ways of transcribing the open central unrounded vowel, as there is no dedicated symbol for that sound. The first symbol is the most common way of transcribing this sound, the second symbol is often used when transcribing Australian English, and the third symbol is used in Danish, sometimes also in German. That said, I think it's central, as in Hindi. Or it depends on the speaker. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 23:33, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
- @Peter238: Given that, I'll switch the symbol to ⟨a⟩, which is after all the "unmarked" Latin character. I think ⟨ɑ⟩ should only be used in vowel systems where the vowel is clearly back or differentiated from a front open vowel. I don't think that's the case in Sanskrit. — Eru·tuon 00:33, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- @Erutuon: Right, but first we need to be sure that it indeed is central (I wouldn't expect it to be front TBH.) Zieba & Stiehl (2002) cited on this page transcribe this sound as /aː/. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 00:40, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- Remember that now that you have changed [ɑː] to [aː], you have to go through articles which have Sanskrit IPA transcriptions, and change every instance of [ɑː] to [aː]. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 00:44, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- Hmm, sounds like a lot of work. May be able to use AutoWikiBrowser, though. But first should confirm: do other sources use /ɑː/, or what was the origin of that transcriptional choice? — Eru·tuon 00:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- I actually just did an AWB search-and-replace, and didn't make any replacements. Either all Sanskrit transcriptions already use /aː/, or I messed up the regular expressions... — Eru·tuon 01:06, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- I don't know, but they probably do: @Xyzzyva: @Kwamikagami: @Aeusoes1:. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 01:00, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- AFAIK, since Sanskrit is not normally a native language, it generally inherits the phonetics of the L1 of its speakers. Even when it's been revived (if that's the right word for a language that might always have been an artificial construct), it will inherit the pronunciation of its speakers's ancestral language. So I doubt we can say what "the" pronunciation of ā is, other than generally being low. Since <a> is the default letter for a low vowel, I would support transcribing it [a:]. — kwami (talk) 01:09, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- Agreed. What is the trascription of [ɑː] based on? — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 03:45, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- AFAIK, since Sanskrit is not normally a native language, it generally inherits the phonetics of the L1 of its speakers. Even when it's been revived (if that's the right word for a language that might always have been an artificial construct), it will inherit the pronunciation of its speakers's ancestral language. So I doubt we can say what "the" pronunciation of ā is, other than generally being low. Since <a> is the default letter for a low vowel, I would support transcribing it [a:]. — kwami (talk) 01:09, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- Hmm, sounds like a lot of work. May be able to use AutoWikiBrowser, though. But first should confirm: do other sources use /ɑː/, or what was the origin of that transcriptional choice? — Eru·tuon 00:56, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- @Peter238: Given that, I'll switch the symbol to ⟨a⟩, which is after all the "unmarked" Latin character. I think ⟨ɑ⟩ should only be used in vowel systems where the vowel is clearly back or differentiated from a front open vowel. I don't think that's the case in Sanskrit. — Eru·tuon 00:33, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
Xyzzyva created the page way back in 2010, apparently based on Help:IPA for Hindi and Urdu. Strangely, the version of the Hindi-Urdu page that existed at the same time didn't have /ɑː/ in it, so I'm not sure where it came from. — Eru·tuon 07:37, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- AFAICS there's no reason to transcribe it [ɑː] then. I support the (already done) change to [aː]. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 14:14, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, it looks like I based it on the then-current version of the Sanskrit page, which had [ɑː]. I certainly claim no specialist knowledge of Sanskrit beyond what I know from here. Probably time to take out those dental diacritics, too. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 00:30, 11 March 2015 (UTC)