Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 20 March 2006. The result of the discussion was no consensus.


[edit] Is this page still here?

If there's no consensus to delete it, it should at least be moved to the Wikipedia: namespace, because it's not an encyclopedia article. —Keenan Pepper 14:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation respelling key → Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key … Rationale: It's not an encyclopedia article and it's full of self-references, so it should not be in the main namespace. … Please discuss/vote at Talk:Pronunciation respelling key —Keenan Pepper 14:12, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

True, it's not an article, but no, it's not full of self references (there were two, but they've been removed). kwami 00:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
  • Support: this is original research by the editors and therefor cannot be in the main namespace. Indefatigable 17:49, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
No, it's not original research. That term means a "novel interpretation" of material, and there is no interpretation involved here. It's simply a convention, the way the layout of an article is a convention. kwami 00:53, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Our conventions on the layout of articles are not documented in the main namespace; they are in the Wikipedia: namespace. This article also fails the verifiability criteria, so this is another reason it ought to be moved out of the main namespace. Indefatigable 03:17, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh for crying out loud, there's nothing to verify! It's a convention. The same as in any print encyclopedia. kwami 09:05, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Print encyclopedias also have a division between the actual articles and things like the index and pronunciation key. This is not an article, so it doesn't belong in the article namespace. —Keenan Pepper 10:42, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes, I agree with you there. kwami 10:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

We're not getting any votes, but I'll move it myself if I can get answers to the questions below. kwami 07:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Support, if reluctantly, re-spelling. While IPA notation may be more precise, and may have other advantages as well, I fear that most people (at least in the United States) simply will not make the effort to learn it sufficiently well to be able to use it in any practical manner. This must be the conclusion reached by American dictionary publishers as all (unlike British publishers) use some form of (slightly different) re-spelling schemes in their pronunciation keys. I suppose the underlying philosophy could be expressed by the old notion that the familiar is preferable to the ideal. dshep/07aug2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.154.111.221 (talk • contribs) 05:34, 7 August 2006 (UTC).

Would it be possible to devise some re-spelling scheme that does not require bold letters, nor for that matter (not that you have them), italics, capitals, underlines or any other modification of standard letter-forms? -- dshep/21aug/2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.154.121.107 (talk • contribs) 04:08, 22 August 2006 (UTC).

Support - reluctant and, yes, too late since it's already been done. No, it does not belong in the main namespace. The problem is that it doesn't belong in the helpspace either.

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments
If it's in namespace, can we still link to it from main Wikipedia articles? kwami 18:33, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
If anything, shouldn't it go in Wikipedia Help, the way WikiHiero syntax is? kwami 00:34, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
Support moving to Help namespace Ashibaka tock 02:48, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'll do that. However, I'll move it back if people start objecting to links within articles. kwami 07:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I commend your attitude. But I'm not sure whether or not it's a good idea to move it. Once it's moved, getting it back may will be difficult. On the other hand, it does seem a sensible way forward. The problem is, people are trying to use Wikipedia to promote IPA, and this isn't likely to stop, however much other Wikipedians show that they are not ready to adopt it as a policy.
So my advice is, let's be crystal-clear about the policy on wikilinks from articles to help pages first. Andrewa 16:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC) Andrewa 16:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
A little late now! :)
I also promote the IPA; I just don't see why we can't have both for English names, just as we have both IPA and sound files for foreign names. kwami 17:24, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I can even make a case for using IPA exclusively. But, IMO such a policy won't have any chance of adoption. So I must go with the community decision. Andrewa 18:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
If we could use only one system, it would be no contest. But since the whole point is to help as many people as possible ... kwami 00:19, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Of course you're not getting any votes. It's impossible to tell what proposal we're voting for or against. —Michael Z. 2006-08-07 06:09 Z

....

Readers of this page will probably be interested in the respelling scheme used by the BBC to assist its broadcast speakers. To quote from J. C. Wells' blogsite, "The BBC uses a special respelling system rather than IPA, since it is intended for native speakers of English (not phoneticians) addressing other native speakers of English." You may see it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/delivery/phonetic.pdf...--dshep/22aug2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 4.154.103.187 (talk • contribs) 03:06, 23 August 2006 (UTC).

....

I was too late to vote on the move to the help namespace but I voted to support it anyway because, as I mentioned, the page doesn't belong in the main namespace. The problem, as I also mentioned, is that it doesn't belong in the help namespace either.
Kwami is absolutely right: this is not original research but a convention and as such doesn't need varification. However, the problem is that it is not the convention agreed upon by the editors at Wikipedia. The agreed convention is to use the IPA. This page goes against accepted practice.
Now, going against accepted practice is fine, however, typing up a rival convention is not a productive way of going about it. The way it should be done is to discuss it at the Manual of Style (pronunciation) talk page.
It doesn't belong in the main namespace but it doesn't belong in the help namespace either. It just doesn't belong in Wikipedia. I appreciate that a lot of work has gone into it and I'm not suggesting that it's a particularly bad system, however, until it is accepted as an alternative transcription system for Wikipedia this page should not exist. I missed the vote for deletion too.
Jimp 08:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Happy to oblige, if you can come up with an alternative. (It should be obvious from the debate at Manual of Style (pronunciation) that the IPA is not a functional alternative, or at least wasn't the last time I checked.) kwami 16:04, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Functional or not, Kwami, what I'm saying is that it's the IPA which (at least currently) is the agreed-upon standard. It's your key which is an alternative. Yeah, I think that I could cover the discinctions you make here using an IPA-based system but it would be my version and would have no place here at Wikipedia without concensus. Anyhow I'm off to sleep. Jimp 18:22, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
See also

[edit] Overcomplicated key

If this is a key, why not just have "a as in cat" and leave it at that? What's the point of showing how the vowel in cat is pronounced in several dialects of English here? That information may belong in an encyclopedia article, but isn't it just superfluous clutter in this guide. —Michael Z. 2006-08-30 01:49 Z

[edit] Comments on the system itself

Questions of where the page should go and whether is should exist at all aside, I feel like making a few comments on the system itself.

1) The word "after" is transcribed as (af'-tər) whilst the word "fern" is transcribed as (fərn). These two (ər)s are quite different vowels to me. Now, I assume that stress marking is intended to take take care of this. However, this is not mentioned anywhere on the page and, indeed, there is no mention of the "er" of "after" in the table. - Jimp

True. Remedied easily enough; there's already a proposal to use er, ir, ur for the sounds in words like fern. However, I'm not competant to make the change, since I don't control these distinctions. - Kwami
Using er, ir & ur would be good for those who still make the distinction and would be fine for those of us who don't ... but how do you transcribe "word" and "work"? Jimp 01:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

2) Talking of stress marking, Kwami, why indicate it by an apostrophe after the stressed syllable? Why adopt an ad hoc convention contrary to the IPA system when neither would appear more intuitive? Indeed what might be most intuitive would perhaps be to use bold for stress but this would not be possible unless another way of distinguishing /ʊ/ & /uː/ were found. - Jimp

I was trying to keep the system as close as possible to the US dictionary systems that many people are already familiar with. (And Usonians, of course, are the main demographic that has trouble with the IPA.) Nearly all of these (at least that I've seen) have the opposite convention of the IPA. Bold for stress might be a good idea. (Easier on the eyes than ALL CAPS, at least.) - Kwami
I didn't know that US dictionaries used the opposite convention. I wonder why they do this. You could, of course, use SMALL CAPS but I'd prefer bold. SMALL CAPS could, however, be a nice way of avoiding the use of digraphs (e.g. "I might meet my mate." ==>> (I mIt mEt mI mAt)) but now we're moving away from a spelling-based system. Jimp 01:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

3) Which brings me to my third point. Why use bold this way? I'd prefer to use uu verses oo than oo verses oo. I would make for a more straight-forward system. Either way the reader would have to refer to the key to know the difference. Jimp 05:40, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I had a hard time with this. Most keys use diacritics for this. I even used ew instead of oo in places where there would be no confusion, just to avoid bolding the text. Uu would be okay, I guess, but would be unfamiliar to most people. (With oo at least they know it's going to be one "oo" sound or the other.) But then we've gotten rid of conventional ah and oh because a couple people made a fuss, so we might as well add one more. kwami 18:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
If this article is to be believed the number of places where using ew instead of oo would cause no confusion will be exactly zero ... at least for the Welsh. A number of spelling reform proposals I've seen use uu. I've even seen an Oxford dictionary which used uu in its pronunciation key. The question would remain, though, as to which digraph to use for which phoneme. The dictionary I mention used uu for /ʊ/ and oo for /uː/. This has the advantage of keeping the key for /ʊ/ similar to the symbol for /ʌ/ which will be nice for those of us lacking the foot-strut split. However here's a good counter argument (though this is in the context of spelling reform). Jimp 01:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive?

This page is getting a bit too long and I feel that it is time to archive this page. If there are no objections over this, I shall be doing this within the next 24 hours. --Siva1979Talk to me 04:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It is done now. If other editors have any issues regarding this, please inform and discuss it with me. Thank you for your patience! --Siva1979Talk to me 17:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tidy archive

I've moved #Is this page still here? back from the archive as #Discussion was an orphaned subsection left here. jnestorius(talk) 21:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Classical names

This section has several problems. For one thing, it makes generalizations about pronunciation that are not so, for instance that "r always closes a syllable" (and the incorrect stressing of Elara), or the speculation on the change in vowel quality before semivocalic i and e (which, if followed, would make people pronounce "Sirius" like "Cyrus"). For another, it omits a good deal of necessary information on the English pronunciation of classical names. I am reluctant to make corrections, however, since the information really doesn't belong in a help page about "pronunciation respelling", since the pronunciation is really a completely separate question from questions of spelling. It deserves its own page. RandomCritic 17:26, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's write that page. I've been longing to see it. As to the idea that "r always closes a syllable", you are right that this is incorrect: but the author obviously meant that "r colors the preceding vowel regardless of what syllable it is in." (Don't know about "Elara": what syllable is that properly stressed on?)
As to vowel tensing before "semivocalic" i: the rule as originally stated is generally correct, though you have identified the one big exception: the vowel "i" is not so tensed. (Compare "tibia" with "Boethius".)

--Gheuf 04:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Further comments

There was and is no great urgency with regard to this key -- which is now largely supplemented by IPA -- but I feel that a few comments are in order.

First, the concept of having an agreed-on phonemic spelling system to explain unfamiliar names is in principle sound. However, there are good and bad executions of such a system: the worst are those which require just about as much study of the system as other strictly phonetic transcription systems, like the IPA. This one is moderately badly executed: the spellings frequently suggest a pronunciation quite at odds with the one they are intended to represent. For instance:

  1. The distinction between ar and arr, ir and irr, or and orr, er and err -- in these contexts -- is far from intuitive.
  2. The spelling oe may to some readers suggest the sound of oe in Goethe
  3. The spelling ye may suggest the sound of the word "ye", or else IPA: [jɛ]
  4. ər is used to represent two sounds, while both ər and er can represent the same sound
  5. oo represents two distinct sounds
  6. or represents two distinct sounds (and the examples given, war and wore are distinct even in dialects that don't have the north/force distinction).

The system frequently doesn't reflect the phonemic unity of certain sounds. Moreover, while originally intended to represent the sounds of classical (especially astronomical) names, it includes a host of sounds that never appear in classical names: as follows

[edit] Vowel symbols

Vowel symbol Notes
a as in cat Classical
a as in sofa (unstressed open syllable)
(being replaced by ə)		 Classical, but an allophone of a
aa as in father Non-classical
air as in air Classical, but only as a heterosyllabic sequence of ay + r
ar as in car Classical, an allophone of a+ tautosyllabic r (which admittedly this adequately represents)
arr as in marry Classical, but simply a+ heterosyllabic r
aw as in raw Classical, but always spelled au (so why not use au?)
ay as in day Classical
ə as in sofa (unstressed neutral vowel) Classical, but redundant
ər as in her (stressed) Classical, but the sound representation is misleading
ər as in after (unstressed neutral rhotic vowel) Classical
e as in pet Classical
ee as in feet Classical
eer as in peer Non-classical; does not occur tautosyllabically, and heterosyllabically is simply ee+r
er as in fern
(generally replaced by ər)		 Classical, but redundant
err as in merry Classical
ew as in ewe, dew Classical
i as in bit Classical
ir as in fir
(generally replaced by ər)		 Non-classical as distinct from er
irr as in mirror Classical
o as in pot Classical
oe as in toe Classical
oo as in foot Non-classical except as a predictable allophone of ew
oo as in food Non-classical except as a predictable allophone of ew (and in such cases subject to a dialect variation that a system like this shouldn't define)
or as in wore or war Classical, but two different sounds! The first as in chorus, the second as in quartus, each being a different allophone.
orr as in orange Classical, but simply o+r (except in dialects where it merges with or above)
ow as in cow Non-classical
u as in bus Classical
ur as in fur
(generally replaced by ər)		 Classical, but rarely in a position to be distinguished from er
urr as in hurry Classical, but simply (close) u+r
-ye as in bye
(after a consonant, otherwise eye)		 Classical.

Now, to break this down: leaving aside the sounds that never appear in classical names, we have:

  • Simple short vowels a, e, i, o, u
  • r-colored short vowels:
    • tautosyllabic: ar, er, (ir), or, (ur) -- though tautosyllabic er and ir have not been distinguished in English for close to 400 years, and ur is no longer distinct from er/ir in major dialects of English
    • heterosyllabic: arr, err, irr, orr, urr -- given that we have symbols for the short vowels, and these occur across a syllable boundary, it's hard to see how these are necessary. (There's a case to be made for the dialectal American variation of arr, but this is of course a completely automatic substitution)
  • Simple "long" vowels and diphthongs ay, ee, ye, oe, ew, aw
  • r-colored long vowels: air, eer -- other long vowels+r, all of which exist and have some notable dialectal variations (particularly insertion of epenthetic [ə] before [ɹ]) -- omitted for some inexplicable reason, though of course if they're not necessary, then neither are air and eer.
  • Reduced vowels: a or ə and r-colored ər (with variants er, ir, ur). There are two British variants of ər, but these are completely predictable by position. The point of such a system should be to get the user of the system to employ to the fullest his intuitive knowledge of his own language, and not to try to impose a particular pronunciation.

Also missing from this list is one of the most common sounds in Classical names, which varies by dialect between ee and i, as in Kore, Prometheus, Harmonia. Substituting ee or i is again, an imposition of a particular sound-reading.

For classical names, especially, it seems appropriate to use the old grade-school system of "short and long vowels" distinguished by macrons -- which, after all, is derived from the old English pronunciation of Latin. Adding the symbols ə (oversimplified as it is) and some other symbol (say y) to represent the variable i/e sound, would cover all of the possibilities in Classical names, granted the allophonic distribution before r. Also desirable is a syllable separator -- for which I think a period looks better than the hyphen.

Vowel symbol Replacement symbol
a as in cat a
a as in sofa (unstressed open syllable)
(being replaced by ə)		 ə (although finally, a would do)
ə as in sofa (unstressed neutral vowel) as above
air as in air ā.r
ar as in car ar.+consonant
arr as in marry a.r+vowel
aw as in raw au
ay as in day ā
ər as in her (stressed) er.
ər as in after (unstressed neutral rhotic vowel) as above
er as in fern
(generally replaced by ər)		 as above
ir as in fir
(generally replaced by ər)		 as above
e as in pet e
ee as in feet ē
eer as in peer ē.r
err as in merry e.r
ew as in ewe, dew ū
i as in bit i
irr as in mirror i.r
o as in pot o
oe as in toe ō
or as in wore or war 1: ō.r; 2: or. (tautosyllabic ōr is not found in classical names)
orr as in orange o.r
u as in bus u
ur as in fur
(generally replaced by ər)		 ur., if it must be distinguished from er
urr as in hurry u.r
-ye as in bye
(after a consonant, otherwise eye)		 ī

Thus the names of the planets could be respelled as follows:

  • mer.kū.ry, vē.nus, erth, marz, jū.pi.ter, sa.tern, ū.rə.nus, nep.tūn (Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and of course Earth are not strictly classical in form)
  • Moons: ī.ō, ū.rō.pə, ga.ni.mēd, kə.lis.tō, tī.tən etc.
  • Asteroids: sē.rēz, pa.ləs, jū.nō, ves.tə, as.trē.ə etc.
  • Constellations: sen.tau.rus, skor.py.us, pī.sēz, vul.pe.kū.lə etc.

Stress could of course be marked in a number of ways. And of course this system, like the previous one, requires some mastery; but I think it is not quite as arbitrary (and, at times, bizarre) in structure as the current one. RandomCritic 00:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I consider my self to be an educated (college degree), well-read, detail-oriented person and most Americans (United States), I agree, would not know what IPA is. I even have trouble with it and I READ the dictionary. Also, the IPA pronunciations do not display on the computers I have used. What is wrong with spelling phonetically (in parentheses) in an entry? The IPA symbols look like gobbledygook to us. Secondly, on the topic of syllable stress, I routinely see the stressed syllable printed in all caps, such that "America" would be rendered

    (e-MARE-i-ke)  [that is, the vowels being: schwa - long "a" - short "i" - schwa]

75.179.5.126 19:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)WordPedia

[edit] OR?

If this is based on a system published somewhere, then there are bits that are new here? That would be OR and against Wikipedia policy, wouldn't it? --Kjoonlee 16:41, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

No, because it is a formatting key, that is, a convention, not an article. kwami 20:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
But it's used in at least some articles, so that would be OR in articles, wouldn't it? --Kjoonlee 21:06, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
It's still just a convention. We have certain arbitrary formatting conventions we use, but none of them are considered OR. Adding an unsourced pronunciation would be OR, how you indicate it is a convention. It doesn't make any claims about substance. kwami 20:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
That's evading the point. Those conventions can be sourced, in one way or another. --Kjoonlee 20:56, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
No, it is the point. It doesn't matter whether or not we can source the layout of Wikipedia. It's just a convention. What of coloring maps? If we assign countries or languages different colors, should that be flagged as OR unless we can provide a source that maps them with exactly the same colors? It doesn't matter, because the colors we assign don't affect the content of the articles. kwami 21:10, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
Bad analogy. We use IPA and SAMPA (to some extent) because they're sourced. --Kjoonlee 21:42, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
To make another analogy, layout styles and editing conventions are like suprasegmentals, but transcription conventions are like segmentals: you can't use OR for those. --Kjoonlee 04:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't understand why OR would be okay for suprasegmentals, nor why transcription conventions should be equated with one, but layout conventions with the other.
It's standard for dictionaries and encyclopedias to come up with their own transcription system, so there's nothing out of the ordinary in Wikipedia doing the same, though of course most are moving to the IPA. In any case, a convention isn't research, any more than chosing your user name, so by definition it can't be original research. kwami 05:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
Transcription conventions lead to transcriptions. Hence the OR connection is valid. --Kjoonlee 17:02, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
And formatting conventions lead to formatting. Should that be disallowed as well? kwami 00:34, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Bad analogy. Formatting conventions don't affect content. --Kjoonlee 01:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
Neither do transcription conventions. I really don't understand the distinction you keep trying to make. kwami 01:10, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

That is demonstratably false. Just look at Talk:Ötzi the Iceman#ur'-tsee to see evidence of conventions affecting content. --Kjoonlee 01:27, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

And your example is a straw man. This transcription was designed exclusively for English. It obviously won't work for non-English phonetics, any more than the IPA will work for languages with sounds that fall outside the IPA. kwami 04:45, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
You're taking my example out of context. I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm saying it affects content. You can't deny that. --Kjoonlee 12:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Examples

Some examples would be good. --Abdull 21:04, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to say that. If anyone is interested Kwamikagami (talk · contribs) gave mw this example: prə-NUN-see-AY-shən. +Hexagon1 (t) 04:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)