Help talk:IPA for Spanish

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Orignal Source : es:Transcripción fonética del español con el IPA

Please tell me if this page is worth translating. I translated the first few lines quickly, and im not sure if this page is needed. I looked at IPA and this seems to be the spanish equivalent page.

It was requested that this page be translated at : Wikipedia:Translation_into_English/Spanish#International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_Spanish

Please give me info on if this page is useful, if it is'nt I can stop translating and save myself the effort of doing the whole page.

Bearingbreaker92 03:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This page is useful, but right now it favors one dialect (not sure which). I think that it can mimic IPA chart for English in its presentation of alternate dialects. I think some of the examples would be incorrect for Castilian Spanish (like the uvular fricative in hijo). Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sound files

This page originally had sound files of lists of words, which made it difficult to add or remove words from the list. I've removed the sound files and revamped the page. I think newer sound files would be very helpful though, and if a Standard Spanish speaker would like to contribute, I think it's best to make sound files of individual words rather than lists of words. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] too many minor details

IMO, [ɱ] is too much phonetic detail. We don't give that kind of detail for the vowels, which aren't limited to [a e i o u] (i.e. tanque is [ã]), so why should we have it in the consonants?

If we're not going to distinguish [ʝ] from [j], do we really want to distinguish it from [ɟʝ]? Again, way too much detail, and too dialect specific. This is meant to be a guide for someone unfamiliar with Spanish; anyone who gets in deep enough to appreciate these points won't be coming to this key anyway.

[x, χ, ɴ] - again, too much. This would be better relegated to a footnote. The only reason I think [ŋ] should be left is that it's intuitive for an English speaker. The rest of this, though, is only going to be confusing for many of the people which come here. kwami (talk) 21:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, one way to look at this is to start from a phonemic representation and make allowances towards indicating phonetic aspects. Some phonological processes we should represent

1. intervocalic lenition of /b d g/
2. distinction between [r] and [ɾ] even where they are in complementary distribution
3. desyllabification of /i/ and /u/ to [j] and [w] to the onset (this is arguably a phonological process but note that I'm not advocating we do the same for when these sounds appear in the coda
4. Similarly, the phonemic distinction between [ʝ] and [j] is arguable, though we ought to indicate it, especially since the former is [ʒ] in some dialects
5. diphthongs formed from sequences of vowels in hiatus wherein one becomes non-syllabic (as in poeta)
6. fusing of identical vowels in hiatus
7. Nasal assimilation to velars.

I agree that indicating lenition (or affrication) of y might be too much, and although I think [ɱ] ought to be allowed I can see how it might be too confusing for English speakers.

Should we keep the dental markers on t and d?

BTW, I haven't found any information that talks about vowel allophony. For the purposes of our article on Spanish phonology, do you have any sources talking about this? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with keeping 1–7. The dental diacritics, not really. Anyone who goes to the phonology article will see it; here I think we should just have the basics. (As it is, we don't bother with the lowering diacritics on the approximants except in a footnote.) As for vowels, I haven't seen much. There was something in a small pub I have buried somewhere, but it was fairly intuitive. Spanish vowels are pretty boring. kwami (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, the Irish pub; home of phonetic information. So should we just represent instances of [ɱ] as [m]? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

That's probably best. We don't bother with it for English. The IPA's rather odd in even having a symbol for it, rather than using a diacritic [m̪]. kwami (talk) 06:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, here you go: Antonio Quilis, 1997. Principios do fonología y fonética españolas. Arco/Libros,S.L. The vowels are nasal between nasal stops, and at the beginning of an IU before a nasal stop. So the first two are nasal in mañana, and the first in entren said in citation. Nothing I can see on other allophones, though of course they exist. kwami (talk) 07:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, we still describe y as a "stop" after /#, l, n/, but no longer have a corresponding entry for the corresponding affricate allophone. I didn't want to delete it altogether without some discussion. kwami (talk) 07:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It's good to still have an accurate description in the footnote so that native speakers can understand that we're representing it as <ʝ> even in places that we know it's an affricate. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)