Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet for English

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the International Phonetic Alphabet for English article. If you have comments about the usage of the IPA in Wikipedia articles, please direct them to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (pronunciation).

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Old talk, September 2003 through May 2005 June 2005 through November 2005 December 2005 through December 2006

Contents 1 Number of symbols? 2 Wikipedia:Pronunciation 3 IPA Pronunciation Guide and Hover 4 Syllabic /ɹ/ 5 Rhotic Diphthongs 6 flapped r 7 Voice velar stop phoneme symbol /ɡ/ instead of /g/?? 8 Chart in Help space

[edit] Number of symbols?

Might the article include in its introduction a statement of the number of IPA symbols used in English (and thus the number of "sounds" English has)? I counted 75, which is interestingly (IMO) 2.9 time larger than the English alphabet. I'm not sure if I should've counted multiple symbols in the same box, though, since I'm no IPA or language expert. RobertM525 22:53, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a good suggestion, but unfortunately not practical: Though it would be nice to be able to put up the number of sounds English has, this is not as simple as counting the number of IPA symbols on the page, for two reasons: first, the number of sounds varies from accent ot accent; and second, even within one accent, it is not always easy to tell what exactly a "sound" is.

To take the first point first. You say you counted 75 symbols on the page used for English: I have not checked, but let us assume that that is correct. Even so, this number does not take into account that a number of the symbols are "duplicates" of others. This is becaused the article is organized under three distinct headings: Received Pronunciation (English English), General American (American English), and Australian English. The vowel system of each standard accent is given separately under each heading, so that, e.g., the vowel "ah" as in "father" is listed three times, and so on with the other vowels common to all accents.

We could fix this problem by counting the symbols belonging to one accent only. Once we do this, the number of distinct "sounds" will, of course, turn out to be somewhat lower. Under "General American", for example, I counted a total of 51 symbols used. But even if this new number were entirely accurate for whatever "General American" accent it is meant to describe, it would still not be accurate for all American accents. For example, the section on General American mentions a separate vowel for "bought", but also notes that that word may have the same vowel as "pot": in some accents the two words rhyme, and in others they don't. Obviously, depending on which accent you speak, the "sound count" may be off by one.

But, setting aside the differences between accents, the "sound count" would still be too high, for the second reason given aove, namely, that it can be difficult to tell exactly what a "sound" is. To put it simply, the article lists all the sounds used within one accent without considering whether one of the sounds might be a duplicate of another sound already listed, or else a combination of two other sounds.

For example, in the section on General American vowels, the article separately lists the five vowels of "beer", "boor", "bear", "bore" and "bar", even though these are all repetitions of earlier-used vowels. Depending on your accent and preferred analysis, "beer" will be seen as having the same sound as either "bid" or as "bead": either way, it does not need to be counted as a separate sound merely because it comes before "r" (although there might be good reasons for listing it separately in the article, such as ease of comparison with the other accents listed).

Other analyses turn on more technical points. For example the "ng" sound of "bang" has been listed separately here, even though phonologists sometimes consider it to be "underlyingly" a combination of "n" and "g". So too with "wh" as in "whine", which, besides not existing in all American accents, might not count as a separate sound even in those accents in which it exists, since it can be analyzed as a combination of "h" and "w". So, too, the unstressed vowels of "bottle", "button" and "rhythm" might better be analyzed as a combination of the unstressed vowel "schwa" and the corresponding consonant. So should "ng", "wh", and the "vowels" "l", "n" and "m" be counted as separate sounds, or not? Depending on your answer, your "sound count" may decrease by 5.

Lastly, the sound "x" of Scotch "loch" is listed among the General American consonants, although this is really a foreign sound used only to render certain borrowings from foreign languages (such as the Scotch word mentioned above, or the name "Bach", etc.).

If all these doubtful cases were subtracted from the "official count", the total would drop from 51 to 40 "sounds" for English. But obviously, the count would still vary not only from accent to accent, but form theorist to theorist according to the method being employed to analyze the "sounds".

Of course, even 40 sounds is a good deal more than the 26 letters of our alphabet, but this should come as no surprise: some sounds (such as "th") can only be written as a combination of letters, while others share a letter (compare "hide" and "hid") or combination of letters (as in "chewed" and "chute", "great" and "beat" or "thy" and "thigh").

Hope this answers your question.--Gheuf 18:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Thanks. I asked because I, personally, wonder what our written language would look like if each letter corresponded to a unique "word part" rather than the system we have now—especially as it relates to English having five vowel characters and many, many more vowel sounds. The variability of the way letters can be represented seems illogical to me (that both consonants and vowels do not correspond to consistent sounds), but natural considering English is a "real" language rather than a constructed one. I thought this article might provide an insight into how many characters a hypothetical English alphabet might have, if none of the characters were redundant or reused for different sounds. RobertM525 02:38, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I would consider the number in my accent to be 41, but other people might come up with other numbers.--Gheuf 20:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Pronunciation

The "Wikipedia:Pronunciation" page should have entirely different material, touching on all efforts to render words correctly, whether they be textual, audible, tactile. etc.,. I came here hoping to see at least a paragraph on Wikipedia's use of digitally recorded speakers giving correct pronunciations, instead I get an entire involved page on IPA. I formally move that the redirect from "Wikipedia:Pronunciation" no longer point here, and that other general Pronunciation links which link here be changed to some other page that treats the topic in a practical way. If that page, or even the germ of it. currently exists, the move and link changes should be done immediately. If the article must be written from scatch, "Wikipedia:Pronunciation" redirect to a dab page. JDG 04:19, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Pronunciation doesn't redirect here; it redirects to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (pronunciation) and always has. —Angr 08:00, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, musta been half or even 3/4 asleep. Thx. JDG 12:31, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] IPA Pronunciation Guide and Hover

I have proposed an IPA pronunciation guide for English and a hover mechanism that would display part of it at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation). With it I attempt to find a more rational way to use the International Phonetic Alphabet for English.--Gheuf 20:55, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Syllabic /ɹ/

For the pronunciation of General American words like 'bird', the IPA symbol for the 'ir' is /ɝ/. It seems to me that it's closer to a syllabic /ɹ/ than a rhotic vowel, at least in my idiolect. Is there a reason it's considered a vowel instead of a syllabic consonant?

I'm not sure that there is any good reason why the vowel is used. After all "i" is just a syllabic "j", too. Similarly with "u" and "w". I think the vowel sign is used in imitation of the RP notation, where the backwards epsilon is NOT equivalent to a syllabic "r". If there is any real phonetic or theoretical distinction, I don't know it.--Gheuf 03:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

There is a phonetic difference between American English "r" in onset position in words like red and "r" in rhyme position in words like "bird" and "car"; and some people use [ɹ] for the former and non-syllabic [ɚ] for the latter. However, the difference is clearly subphonemic, so there would be no harm in using /ɹ/ in broad transcriptions for both. And in fact, many people do transcribe /ɝ/ as a syllabic /ɹ/. I think the main reason for using /ɝ/ (and for that matter /ɚ/ which is really hardly distinct from /ɝ/) is to make comparison of rhotic and non-rhotic dialects more transparent. —Angr 06:15, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm maybe that explains why "your eyes" doesn't really sound like "yaw ryes" although it seems like it should. But there doesn't seem to be much notational consistency here. The bright "l" of "lead" on the one hand is quite appreciably distinct from the dark "l" of "bottle" or "welt", but the difference is not usually indicated in transcription, and, if it is indicated, this is done through the addition of a wavy diacritic to show velarization and never through the use of a completely different sign for the syllabic variant.--Gheuf 22:51, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Since laterals involve actual contact of the tongue with the roof of the mouth, it's difficult if not impossible to have a "lateralized" vowel. With [ɹ]-like sounds, it is possible, so the IPA provides a diacritic that can be used with vowels to show that they are r-colored. These symbols are just a rhotacized ɜ and ə. As for "your eyes/yaw ryes", you're right. John McCarthy once made recordings of the phrases "Paint the loo for Ed" and "Paint the loofah red" to show the difference between the two r-sounds; maybe it's still up at his website. —Angr 05:57, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rhotic Diphthongs

For the General American section, I understand how /ɝ/ is a rhotacized vowel, but not so much how, for example, /ɪɹ/ is a rhotacized diphthong. It's a vowel plus /r/, no? Just because English /r/ is an approximant doesn't mean that it is part of a diphthong. I'd take it out but it's been there a while and I don't want to start a revert war if people feel passionately about it. Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 01:37, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It's not 100% settled, but there are various phonetic and phonological reasons to believe that things like /ɪɹ/, and even more so /ɑɹ/ and /ɔɹ/ are complex nuclei (i.e. diphthongs) in English. —Angr 04:25, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] flapped r

Isn't the use of flapped r in place of d's and t's in American English important enough to include here? Or are we keeping this strictly to phonemes?

This page is sticking to phonemes. But we do have an article on flapping. —Angr 17:51, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Voice velar stop phoneme symbol /ɡ/ instead of /g/??

Can anyone explain the reason for representing the English voiced velar stop phoneme as /ɡ/? This notation seems to be spreading all over Wikipedia, and yet I have never seen a rationale. Has there been a discussion of this somewhere on Wikipedia? Just curious. Maikxlx 18:05, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, strictly speaking, the IPA symbol for the voiced velar stop is the "open-tailed g" , rather than the "loop-tailed g" , although the IPA handbook does permit loop-tailed g as an alternative. Because many fonts implement the Unicode character LATIN SMALL LETTER G (U+0067) as a loop-tailed g, Unicode also provides the character LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G (U+0261) to be an unambiguous open-tailed g for use in phonetic transcriptions. So, even though most Wikipedia readers see U+0067 as an open-tailed g anyway, and even though a loop-tailed g isn't incorrect in IPA transcription, some pedantic editors feel the need to carefully replace every instance of U+0067 in a phonetic transcription with U+0261. —Angr 19:20, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the loop issue explains why there's a special Unicode character for the voiced velar stop. The reason for my confusion, though, is that my browser renders the character (U+0261)=/ɡ/ as a sort of uppercase 'Y' lowered a bit, or more accurately like a modified lowercase gamma with a straight descender instead of a loop, instead of the "open-tailed g" (sorry that I don't have a handy graphic - I can take a screen capture and crop it if you like). To be honest, I initially mistook this character I was seeing for the voiced velar fricative (lowercase gamma), even though it is different. The IPA 2005 chart image does not show a "Y"-like variant. It might be a problem with my computer. Thanks for the answer at any rate. Maikxlx 02:16, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's definitely a problem on your computer, namely that you have the font "MS Reference Sans Serif" installed on your computer, where the U+0261 glyph is rendered incorrectly. If you uninstall that font, it should appear correctly as an opentail g rather than a Y-like gamma. —Angr 06:05, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That explains it.

But I have the opposite problem on my Mac. All g's are rendered as open-tailed g in Safari, since Wikipedia is using a sans-serif font. But Firefox forces the U+0261 SCRIPT G to render as a loop-tailed g, so it is backwards. Any ideas? —Michael Z. 2007-10-19 18:18 Z

Well, that's just weird. There shouldn't be any font where the glyph for U+0261 is a looptail g. I can't imagine why Firefox on a Mac would take the U+0067 from some other font to render U+0261 here. Firefox on Windows shows it correctly. —Angr 19:21, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

It must be some Firefox weirdness, because in my system's character palette, U+0261 shows as an open g in every font. Just updated to 2.0.0.8, and it's still the same.

Firefox problem aside, is there a standard way to force a loop-tailed g, for example when your default display font has an open-tailed g? —Michael Z. 2007-10-19 21:47 Z

Hmm... all I can think of is to format that letter as belonging to a font like Times New Roman that has a loop-tail g and that practically everyone has installed, or to use the image Image:Looptail g.svg. —Angr 06:48, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Chart in Help space

You might want to check out Help:IPA English pronunciation key which some of us put together and which is linked to {{IPAEng}}. It's just a list of phonemes and sample words, so that RP, GA, and Oz speakers can all read a single transcription. There is some argument as to whether that's appropriate, or whether for every article we need separate transcriptions for each dialect. kwami 12:04, 19 October 2007 (UTC)