Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet for English

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• Old talk, September 2003 through May 2005
• June 2005 through November 2005

Contents 1 A serious mistake 2 Sounds missing 3 Vowels before tautosyllabic /r/ 4 Request 5 Question 6 bought = board in RP? 7 Postnuclear r? 8 Broad IPA for international English 9 Proposed merger of a section from Pronunciation respelling for English 10 Proposed merger of IPA chart for English 11 Worldview 12 whats the aim of incomplete charts 13 IPA for bane and bone

[edit] A serious mistake

I don't know much about phonetics, but this page lists the phonemse for the British English "aw" sound in "bought" as the exact same as that in American English. Obviously, this sounds are completely different. Shouldn't they be represented with different symbols, then? 24.99.180.16 05:30, 18 December 2005 (UTC)Hrothgar15

By tradition, they are written using the same symbols, but the exact quality is different. If you're writing a narrow phonetic transcription of the speech of someone speaking RP (British English) versus someone speaking General American, you would use different symbols perhaps with various diacritics and the like. When you're just doing a phonemic transcription, this is generally considered unnecessary. I think the exact choice of symbols is based on the pronunciations used half a century to a century ago (but I could very well be completely wrong). —Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 05:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sounds missing

I think that the omission of the schwa from the vowel charts is curious, as is the omission of the rhotacized schwa from the AmE chart. These certainly qualify as phonemes. I think, and am looking for feedback on this, that the glottal stop is certainly coming into its own in the English language, and a discussion of it is certainly warranted on this page. I don't think that it is a phoneme (unless anyone can provide a minimal pair). In many accents of American English (for extreme example, think Minnesotan), any and every word-final stop is often realized as a glottal stop, or a glottal stop coarticulated with an unreleased stop, not to mention before syllabic /n/. I also wanted to get an impression from AmE-speaking wikipedians: are the 'long' vowels more typically diphthongs or monophthongs for you? I think that they are more commonly diphthongs, excepting certain accents (again Minnesotan), but what do I know? ColinKennedy 18:05, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The charts are labeled "full vowels", which by definition excludes reduced vowels like schwa. The other points you raise are interesting, but can only be added to the page if they are based on citeable sources, not original research. As for my "long" vowels, the first time I looked at spectrograms of my own General American speech I was quite surprised to see how very monophthongal they are. --Angr (tɔk) 18:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Point well taken. I do think it's curious though, while not 'full vowels', that these two vowels are not mentioned. (Edit--the schwa is mentioned at the bottom of the page, I didn't see that. Oops. Still no rhotacized schwa, though.) I also (in my speech, don't worry, I'm not going to add anything without citations) have a minimal pair between Rosa's and roses, the latter vowel in the second being akin to a barred I, yet another reduced vowel. In a language like English, allophony is a considerable force. Does that merit discussion here? Not much is to be found on the English phonology page. Perhaps my vowels are more diphthongal than most (Pittsburgh [ou] for long /o/--almost a raising diphthong). Thanks for your input. ColinKennedy 18:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

The rhotacized schwa is mentioned at the bottom of the section on American English. Don't go all the way to the bottom of the page, cuz that's Australian English, which is of course non-rhotic. The section on American English does include the possibility of a roses/Rosa's distinction, though for some reason it has /ɨ/ instead of /ɪ/ as the vowel of roses. --Angr (tɔk) 19:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vowels before tautosyllabic /r/

A question for you IPA addicts:

I've always seen the vowels before tautosyllabic /r/ given lax symbols, as they are on this page. I'm talking about words like "beer" and "pear". I've never understood this. Don't most people pronounce "beer" with the vowel of "fleece" (rather than "Kit"), and "pear" with the vowel of "face" (rather than "dress")? In my accent, at least, (though I know it's not the same for everyone) "Mary" has the vowel of "pear" (which, I think, is FACE), while "merry" has the vowel of DRESS. If we use epsilon in words like "pear" then how can we capture this distinction? Even in accents in which "Mary" and "marry" are homophones, doesn't the vowel of "pear" belong with FACE? 128.36.66.222 04:48, 20 April 2006 (UTC)jpb—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.36.66.222 (talk • contribs) 02:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Good question! I have often wondered this myself. This would make sense to me, as someone with the complete merger of non-high front vowels before /r/. In fact, in my idiolect, the only vowels that can occur before tautosyllabic /r/ are /i/ (peer), /e/ (pare), /a/ (par), /o/ (pore), and /u/ (poor). In fact, other than /ɚ/ and /ɝ/, these are the only vowels that occur before /r/ in my dialect. My system has a kind of symmetry that I find quite appealing—it seems to me to follow by analogy from the spelling:

• pee -> /pi/, peel -> /pil/, peer /pir/
• pay -> /pe/, pale -> /pel/, pare -> /per/
• Poe -> /po/, pole -> /pol/, pore -> /por/
• poo -> /pu/, pool -> /pul/, poor -> /pur/

The /a/ case is exceptional because "a" in closed syllables is typically /æ/ not /a/, but

• pa -> /pa/, pall -> /pal/, par -> /par/

Of course, this doesn't explain why they normally use the lax vowels. I think the reason has to do with historical distinctions and subsequent mergers. But I'll let someone who isn't baffled attempt to explain. Nohat 04:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but I think it's a matter of who laid claim to the symbols first. There are certainly accents where the pre-r portion of the vowel of peer is closer to that of pit than to that of peat, and it was probably speakers of those accents who started the custom. It also allows for parallelism with the transcription of RP, where peer is definitely [pɪə] and not *[piə]. In my own accent, I think the vowel of peer is about halfway between the two, so that a narrow transcription would be either [pʰɪ̝ɚ̯] or [pʰi̞ɚ̯]. Angr (talk • contribs) 05:22, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your answers. As far as I can tell, using the lax symbols before /r/ dates back to Kenyon and Knott's "Pronouncing Dictionary of American English" (1953), and they are basing it on Daniel Jones's "English Pronouncing Dictionary" which deals with RP. Angr, I agree with you about the phonetic quality of the vowels: in my accent, too, SQUARE seems to be somewhere between DRESS and FACE, NEAR between KIT and FLEECE, and FORCE between THOUGHT and GOAT. So insofar as the symbols are just transcriptional shorthand, the choice between them is entirely arbitrary. But the symbols are more than that: they also suggest which phonemes the sounds belong to, and my hunch is they make the wrong suggestions. -jpb 128.36.66.222 04:48, 20 April 2006 (UTC)jpb—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.36.66.222 (talk • contribs) 06:16, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

That's quite possible, although it can be difficult to find evidence either way about what phoneme they belong to. From your statement that FORCE is between THOUGHT and GOAT I assume you don't merge cot and caught, right? Because there are Americans whose THOUGHT vowel is much closer to the pre-r portion of START than the pre-r portion of FORCE. (Also, it would be great if you could sign your posts with ~~~~, even if you don't sign up for a username; it helps us keep track of who wrote what when.) Angr (talk • contribs) 07:31, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I am just as baffled as you all seem to be, but just the opposite way. In my ear there is no resemblance between a in "pare" and "face" and I would say /ɛ/ is a fair representation of the vowel in pare. Similarly I clearly hear /ʊ/ in poor and /ɔ/ in pore. Only for /i/ peer I tend to agree. −Woodstone 20:02, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I definitely agree with you about SQUARE. For me the pre-r portion of that vowel is unambiguously the DRESS vowel. But my "halfway between" remarks above do hold for poor and pore. Angr (talk • contribs) 20:37, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

This is an interesting discussion, and there probably is no one right answer given differences in accents. But here are some arguments for considering that the vowels preceding tautosyllabic /r/ belong with the tense vowels.

In accents that distinguish "merry" and "Mary", "merry" clearly has DRESS: /mɛri/. The SQUARE vowel in "Mary" therefore has to be indicated with a different symbol. Kenyon and Knott offer /mɛːri/, noting "Some speakers distinguish Mary from merry by a longer ɛ." They do not suggest which phoneme this long epsilon belongs to, but it would make sense to class it with FACE. Of course, this argument is only valid for a few accents.

Another perhaps accent-specific argument. In my accent, as I've already noted, pre-/r/ vowels have a quality somewhere between tense and lax. (I'll indicate this quality by using a lax symbol followed by a long mark, after Kenyon and Knott.) Now, this intermediate sound occurs in my speech only in front of /r/.... and /l/. When it is in front of /l/, it clearly belongs to FACE and not DRESS. For example, I say "pace" [pes]"pear" [pɛːr] "pale" [pɛːl], where the vowel of "pale" clearly belongs with FACE (and contrasts with DRESS in "pele(-mele)" /pɛl/), and has the exact same phonetic quality as "pear". This implies that the vowel of "pear" is, in fact, an allophone of FACE. (This sound also occurs in the one word "yeah".) It is the same with peace-peel-peer: the vowel in "peel" sounds like the vowel in "peer" but clearly belongs with "peace", since it contrasts with "pill". (This sound occurs only before /r/ and /l/ and in the one word "idea".)

A more theoretical argument. In pairs like sane-sanity, serene-serenity, the first member of the pair has a tense vowel, /sen/ and /sərin/ not /sɛn/ and /sərɪn/. Well, compare these alternations with compare-comparison, and severe-severity, and you will conclude that these are (underlyingly at least) /kəmper/ and /səvir/ not /kəmpɛr/ and /səvɪr/. (I am implying the pronunciations comp/æ/rison (with TRAP) and sev/ɛ/rity (with DRESS, not SQUARE). In accents that have merged all the front mid vowels before intervocalic /r/, these vowels would have their quality changed by a later phonetic rule.)

128.36.66.222 06:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)jpb

[edit] Request

I want someone to transcribe the following phonemically as they would in natural speed, mark the stressed syllables, transcribe in their weak forms and strong forms.

This is one of your new classmates. Nobody told me what to do. Some help would be appreciated.

• [pliz du jɚ on ˈhomˌwɝk]. User:Angr 14:49, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Tee hee. --Yossarian 04:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

/tiː hiː/ OK, this is getting addictive... -- THE GREAT GAVINI {T|C|#} 18:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

What does this symbol mean: " ː "? It just redirected to this article (which, ironically enough, I'd already been looking at). --Yossarian 04:16, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

It lengthens the preceeding sound. I changed the redirect to Colon (punctuation)#Phonetics. —Keenan Pepper 04:39, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[θæŋks]! --Yossarian 04:54, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...my accent sounds more like [θeɪŋks]Cameron Nedland 20:08, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] bought = board in RP?

Is /ɔː/ really both the ough in bought and the oar in board in RP? -- THE GREAT GAVINI {T|C|#} 18:40, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

According to my CD version Oxford Dictionary, they are indeed the same. It all depends of course on how wide or narow you look at it. On the phonemic level they are surely the same. A following r however always influences the preceding vowel. −Woodstone 19:27, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

RP is a non-rhotic accent, though; neither "bought" nor "board" has an /r/. User:Angr 11:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is non-rhotic in the sense that there is no consonant r in such positions, but the influence on the vowel quality is still present. So there would actually be a minimal pair between bawd and board. −Woodstone 12:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Those aren't a minimal pair in RP; they're homophones. User:Angr 14:54, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Surely there would at least be /ɹ/ in board, even if it was non-rhotic? -- THE GREAT GAVINI {T|C|#} 19:49, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

You mean underlyingly? Why? User:Angr 07:11, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

There would at least be a faintest trace of an "r" in there somewhere (even if it's just influencing the previous vowel like Woodstone suggested). What (or whose pronunciation) are we basing Received Pronunciation on anyway? -- THE GREAT GAVINI {T|C|#} 08:39, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that if you look at a typical British dictionary (with RP pronunciations) or a linguistic description of RP you will see that there is no difference between bawd and board. Two qualifications, though: (a) Some very conservative RP doesn't (or didn't, probably) have the horse-hoarse merger, and would pronounce board with the vowel of hoarse. This is more to do with the <oa> than the <r>, though. (b) In pairs like law/lore, where the vowel in question is at the end of the word, some RP speakers will pronounce an [ɹ] in lore, but not law, if the next word begins with a vowel. (Most non-rhotic speakers probably have [ɹ] in both.)--JHJ 09:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Some very conservative RP (speakers) don't (or didn't, probably) have the horse-hoarse merger and would pronounce board with the vowel of hoarse. There are a lot of us still alive and well, thank you very much. --dshep/24aug2006

Really? You're an RP speaker who pronounces "horse" and "hoarse" differently? That's definitely rare. User:Angr 08:59, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Postnuclear r?

When I studied phonetics, we differentiated between regular approximate r (/ɹ/) and postnuclear retroflex r (/ɻ/). Peter Ladefoged mentions that in rhoticizing dialects, the r-coloring is produced either by bunching or retroflex. Obviously, it would still be [bɚ] for burr, but we were taught to transcribe car as [kʰaɻ] rather than [kʰaɹ]. Is this a more narrow transcription than the scope of this page/Wikipedia? It seems like most transcriptions around WP do not denote the /ɻ/. Any thoughts? JordeeBec 19:02, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to know myself which pronunciation is used for RP and GA. A lot of these symbols don't appear anywhere. --THE GREAT GAVINI {T|C|#} 08:43, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Both are based on the transcriptions found in various pronouncing dictionaries. A. C. Gimson's gives pretty standard RP, Kenyon and Knott is a good source for GenAm (though somewhat out of date and often needing supplementing by Webster's Third New International, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, or American Heritage). J. C. Wells's Longman Pronunciation Dictionary gives both RP and a British perception of GenAm. The symbols used here, though, aren't necessarily the same as the ones the dictionaries use, though, because every system has its own idiosyncrasies. User:Angr 09:48, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Broad IPA for international English

There is a discussion to determine a generic, broad application of IPA for international English. If reasonable consensus can be reached, it could become a guideline for writing an IPA pronunciation of English words in wikipedia, without having to worry about the various dialects spoken in different parts of the world. Anyone wanting to comment is welcome at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (pronunciation). −Woodstone 14:47, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merger of a section from Pronunciation respelling for English

The relevant section Pronunciation respelling for English#International Phonetic Alphabet clearly has much more in common with this page than that one. However, this page here appears to be caught between two stools:

1. providing a quick-key wikilink for pronunciation guides in other articles
2. serving as an expository article in its own right.

Adding the relevant section would enhance the latter at the expense of obscuring the former. IMO the quick-key page should be a separate page be in the Wikipedia: namespace, leaving this one to get as technical as needs be; the material in the mergeto section would be a useful enhancement. jnestorius^(talk) 23:51, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this should be an article, and not just a list of charts or a how-to.

The section over there was written to be a history of the use of IPA in English dictionaries, a counterpart to an anticipated article section about the other respelling schemes, to make that more of an article and not just a table. It should stay in that article.

Some of that info would be useful here as a minor part of a full history of IPA for English, but this article doesn't need all of the dictionary detail—it can refer to that article. And this one would require much more to be complete: IPA is also used to teach English, in linguistics, and in speech therapists. —Michael Z. 2006-09-11 01:20 Z

Given the current state of the two articles, the information in the relevant section goes better with what's here than what's there. For now what we have are two articles consisting largely of tables, and one new section describing the development of one set of tables but in the same article as the other set. I agree that, whichever one it is in, there will be a pointer from the other one and some content overlap. You envisage future expansions to both articles, and I look forward to that, and when it happens perhaps further refactoring will be appropriate. jnestorius^(talk) 02:42, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed merger of IPA chart for English

I see there's now a proposal to merge IPA chart for English into this. Looks like that's the the quick-key page that should be in the Wikipedia: namespace. And (most of) the links at w:Special:whatlinkshere/International Phonetic Alphabet for English then changed to link there. So my vote is: don't merge but do move. jnestorius^(talk) 18:49, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Worldview

I have tagged this because it talks about the American and Australian dialects, but no others - A bit selective don't you think?--Hamedog_Talk|^@ 14:16, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

It also talks about RP British English. It isn’t intended to provide a detailed phonology of all Engilsh dialects (for which individual dialect articles would be better suited), but merely to provide a chart for the IPA characters used frequently for English IPA transcriptions. I don’t think the world view tag is appropriate. —Felix the Cassowary 00:17, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree and am removing the tag. I'm also removing the merge tags since no one's discussing it and there doesn't seem to be any support for the mergers. —Angr 05:16, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] whats the aim of incomplete charts

I don't understand why people change correct charts to incorrect charts. If you want a phonemic chart and a chart of complete alophones just make it, but please stop deleting valid additions.

The chart seems to lack a labiodental nasal, which I added but is no longer there. Maybe we should creat a chart of // and one of []?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Soyloquequieres (talk • contribs) 06:08, 23 October 2006.

Please see my comment to Hamedog in the section ‘Worldview’ down below above. This page is not intended to provide a detailed phonology of all of or any English dialects, but merely to provide a chart for the IPA characters used frequently for English IPA transcriptions. Therefore it only makes sense for the charts to be of phonemes. Trying to list every single phone used in the three dialects described on this page would get unwieldly very quickly. As the labiodental nasal is not an English phoneme, it should not be included on this page. —Felix the Cassowary 23:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] IPA for bane and bone

(copied from the language reference desk) According to the articles IPA for English and General American, the vowels in "bayed" and "bode" are transcribed as e and o, but may sometimes be rendered as /ei/ and /oʊ/, because they are pronounced as diphthongs by "many" speakers of general American. Now, I am absolutely unable to imagine any speaker of General American who doesn't pronounce them as these diphthongs. Thoughts? --194.145.161.227 18:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Have you met them all? There are quite a few. When describing accent, it's usually best to "never say never" since, no one has ever studied the language of every speaker unless there are only a handful of speakers. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:48, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

We're talking about general American, which would be what CNN newscasters usually speak - not some obscure dialects. If you can imagine a pronunciation of "bayed" and "bode" which is both non-diphthongal and can be described as "general American", then ... well, then you can imagine more than I can. My guess is that this is just some US transcription convention which doesn't even pretend to express phonetic reality - the phonetic reality being that these vowels are always diphthongal. --194.145.161.227 02:07, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree with you on this one. The article may be a bit weak on the words because it doesn't have references to back up such statements. Then again, native speakers of diphthong heavy languages often argue that they don't exist as diphthongs in fast speech, so there might be references supporting the opposite.  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  12:36, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that I suspect that the wording in the article is very misleading for the reader (implying that these vowels are frequently, even normally monophthongal) without clear support in literature. Th' prunseaysh'n in fa:s speech isn' normly regardd 's th' "real" un. Anyway, I think this should be researched and fixed (I don't have an English book about phonetics at home right now, so I prefer somebody else to do it :)).

Yeah, I know you mean GA and I still stand by my above statement. There are many speakers of General American and there just happens to be idiolectal variation among speakers. Although I sometimes question the analysis of always-diphthongal [eɪ]. It's just as easy to imagine that there is one /e/ and is more open when a monophthong and more close when part of a rising diphthong. Phonemic and underlying representations can get pretty scary. I once read an analysis of French that stated that there were no underlying front vowels. I also hear that Chomsky and Halle (in Sound Pattern of English) analyze English /ɔɪ/ as an underlying |ø| .Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 14:06, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, innovative phonological analyses of what is "underlying" can be very weird; I prefer to discuss the phonetic side of it. But I'm not sure I understood your questioning of the "always-diphthongal [eɪ]" Aren't you talking about a diphthong, too? --194.145.161.227 15:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm saying that in speakers/dialects in which it is always a diphthong, I see three plausible underlying representations:

1. two vowels: |e| → [eɪ] and |ɛ| → [ɛ]
2. two vowels: |ej| → [eɪ] and |ɛ| → [ɛ]
3. one vowel, raised before /j/: |ɛj| → [eɪ]

To a certain extent, what you choose for the underlying representation is sort of arbitrary, but I think it ought to make sense. Otherwise, you could do something like this |☺| → [eɪ]. |♥| → [ɛ]. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:14, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. In other words, it's a matter of taste; you simply like e, it kind of appeals to your aesthetic sense. That's fine with me. --194.145.161.227 17:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

It's not that I like e, that is what is apparantly used in the scholarship. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:32, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's obviously used in American scholarship (note that the British transcription of IP is quite different, even though RP itself is hardly very different phonetically in these respects, but this can be interpreted in different ways:

1.It can be just a traditional notation in American scholarship (as I suspect).

2.It could supposed to reflect an underlying form rather than the actual phonetic realization (as you suggest)

3.It could actually be supposed to mean that either the dominant pronunciation is non-diphthongal (as some wordings in the article currently imply).

Your interpretation is based on your opinion that an underlying analysis of that sort is plausible, although it's not rationally clear what is so plausible about it - hence my comment about aesthetic taste. In any case, that ought to be checked. --194.145.161.227 21:08, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

(Responded at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2006 November 11.) —Angr 06:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)