Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet

Tilde is missing?

The tilde ⟨~⟩ is often used for free variation, but it's not mentioned on this page. Should it be added, or is it not part of the IPA? I just checked the handbook and didn't see it listed, but I'm only an amateur.

Relatedly:

• Tilde § International Phonetic Alphabet covers this usage, but doesn't cite any sources
• Free variation also doesn't mention the tilde notation

— W.andrea (talk) 17:52, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

It's used for phonetics more broadly, not just for IPA, but the same for most of the other symbols. — kwami (talk) 05:08, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Is there an article that covers generic phonetic notation? — W.andrea (talk) 13:01, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

That would be Phonetic transcription. Remsense ‥ 论 13:03, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

We have a section for it here. I just haven't yet found a source for it.

BTW, at phonetic transcription, I don't know that we have a distinction between morphophonemic and diaphonemic delimiters. I've seen a double solidus for morpho. Not sure if all of the possibilities are used for both. — kwami (talk) 15:23, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

How to notate the Catalan l·l trigraph?

I've been cleaning up the markup at Diacritic, which has mainly been to replace italics with angle-brackets. But I'm not sure that I have done the right thing with ⟨l·l⟩ in Catalan. Any advice? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:16, 4 September 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it a diacritic. It's a punctuation mark intended to break up the digraph ll, much like the apostrophe in other languages, e.g. in pinyin Xi'an (disyllabic) vs xian (monosyllabic), or dang'an (dang-an) vs dangan (dan-gan). Or the hyphen in English co-op vs coop or un-ionized vs unionized. The only reason this is notable in Catalan is that it only occurs in this one sequence.

That said, I don't mind listing it among diacritics and digraphs, because that's where people might expect it. — kwami (talk) 10:08, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

What does this have to do with the IPA? Nardog (talk) 11:09, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Thank you both.

First, nothing to do with IPA as such, my question is about linguistics notation (which resides here at #Brackets and transcription delimiters).

Interpunct#Catalan documents its history and function, but doesn't give it any markup.

So coming back to linguistic markup, what is the appropriate Brackets and transcription delimiter to use? None? Italic?--𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 15:18, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

Depends on what you want to do. Angle brackets are good for something small like this that might be hard to see if it were just made italic, but typography is a matter of aesthetics and what works for the reader, not any particular rules. — kwami (talk) 15:22, 5 September 2024 (UTC)

What does Nörsk sound like?

Has anyone else noticed that there's no way to find anything on the Internet that can speak IPA aloud? 72.210.7.64 (talk) 20:12, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

You have http://ipa-reader.xyz/ which if you input the IPA transcription it will read it for you. If you want to transcribe 'Nörsk' into IPA, use https://unalengua.com/ipa-translate?hl=en&ttsLocale=en-GB-WLS&voiceId=Geraint&text= Nörsk in IPA is [nˈɜːsk] Saussure4661 (talk) 00:56, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

Unclear sentence

What does this mean? "An IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound in broad transcription, making articulatory descriptions such as "mid front rounded vowel" or "voiced velar stop" unreliable."

"...symbol is often distinguished from the sound..." Well, yes, a symbol is visual and a sound is sound. What is this intended to mean? It can surely be said more clearly.

Why are "articulatory descriptions such as "mid front rounded vowel" or "voiced velar stop" unreliable" in broad transcription? They are not precise (a mid front rounded vowel may be slightly lower or higher, more or less rounded, etc.) but within a broad transcription they are just as reliable as an IPA symbol, or more reliable.

"there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound in broad transcription": I can't even guess what this is supposed to mean. If it's broad transcription, we would not expect a 1-1 correspondence between symbol and fine-grained allophone, but there had better be a one-to-one correspondence between letter and phoneme (or unit at whatever level of abstraction is intended). That's what transcription is all about. Linguistatlunch (talk) 19:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

yeah, those descriptions aren't very clear.

the number of distinguished phones in broad phonetic transcription is very often different from those of phonemic transcription. especially in languages with small numbers of phonemes. but you also don't want to call 'e' a 'high-mid front unrounded vowel' if it's being used for a mid or low-mid vowel sound. There's reason people speak of 'schwa' rather than 'mid central vowel'. — kwami (talk) 19:18, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Lack of stress: " [aɪ̯ pʰiː eɪ̯]"

The current image and transcription shows no stress. Compare Wiktionary's entry for IPA , which shows /ˌaɪ.piːˈeɪ/, [ˌaɪ.pʰiːˈeɪ]. JMGN (talk) 22:37, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Wrong notation: [iː] is actually [ɪi̯]

(examples in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtnlGH055TA)

1. linking r is not applied right before closing diphtongs (FLEECE and GOOSE count as closing diphtongs for this rule)
2. the only type of hiatus allowed is if all the vowels involved that aren't the last one are closing diphtongs (FLEECE and GOOSE also count as closing diphtongs here)
3. pre-L breaking with a vowel before the L is only possible if a that vowel is a closing diphtong (ditto)
4. pre-fortis clipping is stronger before a closing diphtong (ditto)
5. glide insertion happens iff the first vowel is a closing diphtong and in a way that matches the end of that diphtong e.g. /əʊ̯ə/>/əʊ̯wə/ and /aɪ̯əʊ̯/>/aɪ̯jəʊ̯/ (ditto)
6. smoothing (the kind that removes the ə) only happens with closing diphtongs (ditto) (examples in https://www.englishspeechservices.com/blog/smoothing-then-and-now/ this time)

that's all the evidence i have! 2001:9E8:E1F9:EB00:57B7:F343:6D5C:DBA0 (talk) 06:29, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Template:IPA pulmonic consonants has an RfC

Template:IPA pulmonic consonants, which is transcluded by this page, has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Kanguole 21:42, 8 March 2025 (UTC)

Phonemic representation "for legibility often uses simple and 'familiar' letters rather than precise notation"

Oh oh. Time for reciting what many preach to students? "Mean what you say, say what you mean"? True enough that e.g. /n/ and /m/ are more legible to the uninitiated than /ɱ/. But assuming that [ɱ] is allophonic only in the language examined (thus */ɱ/), using /n/ or /m/ in the appropriate instances of reporting phonemes is accurate, not imprecise at all, not "for legibility". Claiming that it is -- conflating epiphenomenon with purpose -- misinforms readers fundamentally. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 18:23, 28 May 2025 (UTC)

@Barefoot through the chollas: Can you take a look at your comment again? I'm having a hard time understanding it and I think there's a mistake in the penultimate sentence. Nardog (talk) 08:39, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

@Nardog, maybe this will be clearer. IPA conventions dictate that the nasals as usually pronounced in Standard (North American) English sun and sunk are reported at the phonetic level [n] and [ŋ] respectively. Phonemically, the two are described as both containing /n/, not because /n/ is more familiar than /ŋ/, thus more easily legible, but because the phonetic [ŋ] of sunk is the result of a basic rule of partial assimilation /n/ → [ŋ]/_[k] (clearer across word boundaries, such as in Columbus, where either [n] or [ŋ] can result, depending on speed of speech, etc., and both are understood to be realizations of the same phoneme, /n/). On the other hand, sung leaves no choice. Normal standard pronunciation of the nasal in sung is [ŋ], and a version with [n] is a different word, sun, thus sung is analyzed as containing phoneme /ŋ/, pronounced [ŋ]. Those who established the IPA chose familiar graphemes whenever possible, but the selection of e.g. /n/ over /ŋ/ in IPA phonemic representation is in no way due to the analyst's preference for legibility, nor is /n/ in sun and sunk less precise than /ŋ/ in sung. (Hope this makes sense. I meant to answer your question re vocality today, but I've more than run out of time just now. Sorry; later.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 20:03, 6 June 2025 (UTC)

how does this apply to the article? — kwami (talk) 03:09, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I guess I misread "using..." as a dependent clause rather than as the subject and thought the verb never came. Nardog (talk) 14:15, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

the point is that authors will often use, say, /i e a o u/ even though phonetically the vowels are closer to [ɪ ɛ ɐ ɔ ʉ], or /ɪ ɛ ɐ ɔ ʊ/ rather than /i̙ e̙ a̙ o̙ u̙/ even though atr is phonemic, or tone numbers rather than ipa tone letters or diacritics. since phonemes are abstractions, not physical sounds, you can use dingbats if you like, and indeed people have.

do you have a better way to word this? — kwami (talk) 20:59, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

RfC notice

Template talk:IPA#RfC: add option to disable link to IPA help page?

Hello, above is a WP:Request for comment about the template {{IPA}} that may be of interest to users of this page. grapesurgeon (seefooddiet) (talk) 21:39, 4 July 2025 (UTC)