Template talk:ConvertIPA
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This template should be used to flag pages that have phonetic information given in SAMPA, X-SAMPA or pseudo-english transcription schemes. While Pseudo-english transcription is appropriate for the examples in Words and Common phrases sections, it is NOT for actual linguistic discussion of a language.
Once an article has been completely converted, drop the template altogether for {{IPA notice}} and add the {{IPA}} template around linguistic information to allow it to show up for everyone. Do NOT move the template to the talk page! It makes no sense and only clutter the list of page to be converted. --Circeus 05:02, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
This template contains a message to editors, not to readers. Therefore, please put it on talk pages, not on article pages (I'm, pro-IPA myself, but I was not aware there is an actual consensus in favour of IPA, btw). dab (ᛏ) 10:34, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
- mark sent me the exact same message I wasn't aware of the existence of that particular policy, and I am glad you told me about it. --Circeus 16:37, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)
I've modified the template to soften the recommendation to add the IPA notice template, which I think is excessive in most cases. See the discussion on Template talk:IPA notice. rossb 07:28, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Cleanup-ipa
This needs merging with Template:Cleanup-ipa. DopefishJustin (・∀・) 16:07, May 24, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Why not both?
Since many IPA characters don't display on at least 75% of computers accessing the internet, and require learning a whole new alphabet, why not leave pseudo-English forms alone when adding IPA forms? Isn't the goal of Wikipedia to exchange information as usably as possible, not cram pet standards down reader's throats? 24.19.145.84 22:04, 3 September 2005 (UTC) {User:Niteowlneils on the road and not logged in}
- Keeping them is fine as far as I'm concerned. However, if they are misleading or confusing (which is typical because what is sensible pseudo-English to one person could be totally useless to someone else), it's often better to just replace them with IPA. For example, a person with the caught-cot merger might write "baud (sounds like bod)", but that would be misleading to a great many speakers. Similarly, a British speaker might write "sought (sounds like sort)", which would be totally baffling to speakers of American English. In many cases these ad-hoc pronunciation guides are best just removed rather than left in to confuse many more people. Nohat 23:40, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
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- Do you have any idea what % of the general public actually know IPA? Since it's technically unavailable to at least 75%, and I suspect the % that know it is >10%, removing everything but IPA seems almost equivalent to no pronunciation guide at all. But I guess my biggest concern is that the way this template is currently worded it doesn't seem to allow for anything but IPA to be present, and {{[[:Template:Cleanup-ipa]]}}, which more explicitly proscribes complete replacement, and there doesn't seem to be a 'add IPA' template available for people to use. Also, maybe there should be better defined separation between articles describing language, language parts, and languages, which obviously need to be more rigorous, versus the "cityname is pronounced blah" type of casual reference, where 'close' is generally good enuf. Niteowlneils 08:43, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised by the statement that many IPA characters don't display correctly on 75% of computers. I presume this is referring to Internet Explorer, but the known difficulties with this are totally overcome by the use of the IPA template. As for many people being unfamiliar with IPA, I recently did a check of the English dictionaries on sale in a major bookshop in London and every one of them used IPA as its pronunciation guide, so anyone who uses dictionaries (at least in the UK, and I believe in most other countries apart perhaps from the USA) should have some familiarity with it. The only real disadvantage of IPA is that it needs a key for those unfamiliar with it. But this disadvantage is shared by every other pronunciation scheme you can think of, and there's absolutely no point in having more than one such scheme in use on Wikipeida (one reason whay I have been campaigning to get rid of the few remaining SAMPA entries). Yes for some English words you can use an equivalent in English spelling, but this is often ambiguous, and sometimes downright misleading, and I've seen a number of examples that clearly needed a key but where no key was offered, leading to total incomprehension — for instance the name of Berlin was it one time shown as pronunced something like "buhrlihn"! rossb 20:24, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
- Exactly, every dictionary has a set of pronunciation symbols, even if they aren't IPA, and a "pronunciation key" in the jacket explaining them. Wikipedia is no different, our set of symbols is IPA, and the pronuncation key is at IPA chart for English. You can make the argument that that page isn't easy enough to find (I just made Pronunciation key a redirect), but that's fixable by linking to it more, and once you find it the symbols are no harder to use than any other arbitrary pronunciation symbols, with the advantage that they're already used in linguistics and many other dictionaries and reference works so some people may already know a few. DopefishJustin (･∀･) 01:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Help with IPA
I have a few pages with pseudo-pronunciation issues, but I am quite uncomfortable composing IPA's given the lack of examples I have found in Wikipedia. Is there a community of folks who help out on such things? Or lists of lots of common American English words with their IPA equivalents? Thanks, Hal Jespersen 20:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
- See IPA chart for English. Also the individual sound pages usually have examples in English (when appliable) and other languages. Circeus 20:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
