Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet/Archive 13

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Archive 10 Archive 11 Archive 12 Archive 13 Archive 14

GOOD Article

Judging by the size of the 'This is a good article icon', I expected the best article in the entire wiki universe. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 06:39, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

The page was transcluding so many templates it failed to process the good article template. Perhaps we should reduce the number of transclusions in the IPA templates. Nardog (talk) 08:44, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
Maybe it's just my XP fossil of a laptop, but the icon took up half the corner of the page. Mighty impressive it was. I wouldn'tr be to concerned about it though. It is a very good article and seems to be helping a lot of people, just don't let the small stuff bring you down. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 09:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
This was actually the case on the article Vowel too so they had to remove the {{IPA navigation}} template (see Talk:Vowel#IPA navigation template). I've reduced transclusions and reinstated the template there. Nardog (talk) 07:44, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

New Changes

@Sweyn78: It seems some radical alterations to this article have just been made by Sweyn78. No explanation is given for why these changes were thought necessary (apart from the comment "Many section had the wrong charts"), and I am unable to see the full extent of what has been altered. There should have been a proposal on this Talk page before going ahead with this rewriting. I propose to revert all the recent changes by this person unless I see on this page a comprehensive explanation of what s/he has done. RoachPeter (talk) 21:03, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

I fully agree. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:01, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
I have asked the Help Desk to advise me on this. RoachPeter (talk) 15:45, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
@RoachPeter: I hope I haven't caused any trouble. This was my first major edit to Wikipedia (although I have been using MediaWiki markup for 7 years now, and am also a junior web developer), and I spent two entire days trying to get everything just right. Maybe I don't understand how things are done here; I figured you just rolled up your sleeves and got to work improving things.
Wikipedia was a huge help to me when I first started getting into Linguistics 7 years ago. I wanted to give something back to it. I love phonetics, but the phonetics templates were poorly written, visually inconsistent with the rest of Wikipedia, and some even had incorrect information (Template:IPA chart/table co-articulated consonants, for example, had the alveolo-palatal fricatives listed as co-articulated; Template:IPA consonant chart, on the other hand, not only had a more complete listing, but did not have this error (although it *did* have an error of its own: /ɧ/ was listed as an occlusive).). I saw also that there was an enormous reduplication of effort, with every consonant table at Template:IPA chart being separately implemented at Template:IPA consonant chart.
So, I got to work. I rewrote everything from scratch, making sure to preserve the template variables, such as making it possible to hide non-IPA. I went through the articles of every sound in the various tables, and verified that it was phonemic in at least one language (or that it at least had significant para/extra-linguistic use), and that it was correctly written. The retroflex clicks, for example, were unnecessarily using a non-IPA symbol in Template:IPA chart/table non-pulmonic consonants. And now, instead of having to edit two completely different templates whenever something needs changing, everything can be changed at one place, and propogated throughout the site.
The templates I made are a huge improvement over the originals in design and coding, and are far more easily extensible. The originals were littered with invalid CSS (such as "width" parameters being placed in "style=" instead of on their own). The vowel chart didn't even line up with the heights! The originals were also unminified, and Template:IPA consonant chart wasn't even using Template:IPA link.
I'm happy to fix whatever problems there may be with the templates I wrote, but they are absolutely an improvement, and the user-facing changes are almost entirely cosmetic.
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 20:21, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Here are some links that will help you compare the different versions:
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 21:24, 5 September 2017 (UTC)
Given that it has been over a week since an explanation was requested, and given that no concerns have been raised since my explanation, it would appear that the changes I made (which again were almost entirely cosmetic) are acceptable to the community. I'm going to reapply the edits. If any problems are found with the edits, please post about them here (or attempt to fix them yourselves). /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 22:48, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
@Sweyn78:I like the changes for the most part. Two things seem a little off. The first is that the co-articulated consonants table looks messy, like someone goofed somewhere in the coding. The second is that the non-pulmonic consonants table has a lot of extra space that wasn't there before. I get the logic for the most part, but I don't like that the scheme chosen is one that necessitates so much unused space. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:24, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
@Aeusoes1: Sure!
The co-articulated table is actually two separate tables in one, and it's a little bit hacky as a result. I did it that way because a full place-manner chart would be weird to do for co-articulated consonants, and because the two groups of co-articulated consonants shown in the table don't quite correspond. I'll try to cook up something a little more reasonable. The most obvious immediate "patch" would be to set each subtable to the same width.
The non-pulmonic table was originally rather haphazardly constructed, but it *was* more space-efficient. I'll remove the unused places; that will condense it some. I could also do something like the co-articulated table, where I use several different tables (this would make the ejectives a lot smaller, since I wouldn't need to have a square for voiced versions. I'll remove the unused places first, though, and see where that leaves us.
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 23:33, 11 September 2017 (UTC)
Okay, I've made the changes. Here are some links to help you get there faster: co-articulated, non-pulmonic. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 23:49, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

@Sweyn78: I don't understand the decision to take out the affricates from the main consonants table. Please move them back. Nardog (talk) 16:25, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

@Sweyn78 and Nardog: I second this. For me and probably many other editors, that table is the only way to get to articles about affricates. Plus, I can see more mistakes:
  • The articles about [ɸ, β, ð, ʁ, ʕ] cover both fricatives and approximants and so they should be placed in-between fricatives and approximants, as in the old table.
  • The article about [θ] doesn't cover the approximant variant and so there should be a vertical line below it (I don't know how else I can call that) as it is the case with [χ] and [ħ] in the table.
  • Retroflex trills are possible and so the background color of the cell with [ɽ͡r̥, ɽ͡r] in it should not be grey but white.
Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:13, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Nardog and Mr KEBAB:I followed the originals[1][2] relatively closely.
[ɸ], [β], [ð], [ʁ], and [ʕ] are still merged with the cells below them in the new chart, just as in original chart #1. The difference is that these characters are now located where they would be located in their strictest sense (half a cell higher). I had a couple reasons for this:
  • Template:IPA_chart/table_vowels was (and is) using double-bracket (literal) IPA. We know this, because ⟨a⟩ was/is used to represent [a̟] and not ⟦ä⟧.
  • The articles about these consonants use no diacritics when describing their strictest sense, while they do use diacritics when describing their additional sense(s).
In light of these points, I would ask you to reconsider whether it is best to move the letters a half-cell down, or whether it is best to leave them where they are most strictly correct.
Original chart #1 actually had [θ] merged with the cell below it, so that's an error that my chart inherited. I'll add a line.
The articles about the retroflex trills say "Although the tongue starts out in a subapical retroflex position, trilling involves the tip of the tongue and causes it to move forward to the alveolar ridge. Thus, the retroflex trill gives a preceding vowel retroflex coloration, like other retroflex consonants, but the vibration itself is not much different from an alveolar trill. Thus, the narrower transcription ⟨ɽ͡r⟩ is also appropriate.". According to these articles, retroflex trills are consonant clusters consisting of a retroflex tap and an alveolar trill (which is why I greyed the cell). I'll degrey it, but I'd like some more discussion on the matter.
I'm mostly okay with adding the affricates to the pulmonic table. The reasons I didn't include them to begin with, are:
Given these facts, I figured that it was probably an accident to include them in the pulmonic consonant chart (original chart #1) in the first place. So when I rewrote it, I planned to add them to their own chart. I haven't had a chance to write the affricate chart yet, but I will try to do so tonight. Once it's written, let's revisit whether the affricates should be included in the non-affricate charts.
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 20:38, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Nardog and Mr KEBAB: I hacked together an affricate chart using the affricate rows at the old Template:IPA consonant chart. I still need to include non-pulmonic affricates, and I need to redo DePiep's linking (his doesn't use Template:IPA link; this means his template is quite a bit larger (and its code quite a bit less wieldly) than it should be); but at least the new chart contains the vast majority of the missing information. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 06:26, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
@Nardog and Mr KEBAB: I've finished migrating the data from the old charts[3][4] to the new affricate chart. I'm not opposed to merging the affricates with their respective main tables[1][2] (In fact, I'm slightly in favour of it.), but something will in that case need to be done regarding the affricate section of the article and the affricate chart itself. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 21:01, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@Sweyn78: I like the labels on the new vowel chart, but the vowel symbols are bit too small and the dots aren't where they should be (AFAIK that can't be fixed). Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:08, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: For me (on both Linux Mint 18.2 (Serena) and Windows 10), the dots are perfectly centered. The font *is* small though, and I also don't like it. I'm unsure as to why that is the case, though, and I have looked through the relevant templates and wasn't able to find anything that seemed to deal with font size. For whatever reason, when the infobox wrapper is used (instead of the navbox wrapper), it shrinks everything down. I'll try to find a way to fix that. Previously, the vowel chart used a workaround, but that workaround didn't solve the problem at its source. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 20:53, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Mr KEBAB: Okay, I was able to reset the font size by adding "font-size:initial;" to tablestyle at Template:IPA chart. However, there are other formatting quirks that shouldn't be happening; and because of this, fixing the font size issue creates additional problems. I'm undoing the change I made. I'll have to look at all the upstream templates to find what the cause is, so that I know exactly what to patch here. I'll do that tonight. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 21:44, 13 September 2017 (UTC)
@Mr KEBAB: I drastically cleaned up the code at Template:IPA chart/core1 and Template:IPA chart/core2. It looks like a fair amount of core2 is probably unused, and if core2 is never directly transcluded outside of core1, it'd be best to merge the templates.
Anyway, I wasn't able to fix or even identify the problem upstream (I even read through Module:Infobox, but it didn't seem to contain any relevant styling information.), and was only halfways able to fix the problem downstream (text is still not centered or middled). Although my solution is a bit hacky, it's still less hacky than what was done before (DePiep's solution was done in each IPA chart/table template, which made these templates unnecessarily large when used directly. His/her solution also took up marginally more space.).
It may be possible to get the templates working without using Template:Infobox. This would fix this issue, and improve the styling in general.
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 06:26, 14 September 2017 (UTC)
It's even less of an issue now (and a total non-issue for this article), since the International Phonetic Alphabet article now uses the "navbox" wrapper instead of the default "infobox" wrapper. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 21:01, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

I can't understand why the pulmonic consonant chart has a [◌̬] symbol described as a glottal trill. The physiology and aerodynamics of (modal) voice production are very unlike those of trill production, nor does voice by itself ever constitute a consonant. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:43, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie: Good points -- I've removed it, as well as added a comment in the code explaining this at its point in the chart. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 19:12, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

@Sweyn78: The originals were littered with invalid CSS (such as "width" parameters being placed in "style=" instead of on their own). (Redacted) It is the HTML width that's obsolete, not the CSS one – see WP:HTML5. In my eyes, the previous versions are far more legible and neatly coded (compare e.g. [5][6]). All values of HTML attributes should be enclosed in double quotes. That is standard in Wikipedia (and elsewhere), partly because MediaWiki used to show in XHTML. Spaces should be inserted between CSS declarations.

I still think the affricates should be included in the first table at least in {{IPA navigation}}. After all they are "pulmonic" as well, and they are often included in the same table in the IPA illustrations of consonant inventories. It makes little sense to list them below the non-pulmonics, which are far less common, as you did to the templates and to this article. If we include the ejective affricates at all, it only makes sense for them to be grouped with other ejectives, not with the pulmonic affricates, since the larger classification is pulmonic vs. non-pulmonic. Nardog (talk) 03:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea how anyone could think the originals were on the whole neatly coded[7][8]. Even in the one you just mentioned, you can see duplicated documentation calls at the bottom; and the spacing throughout the code is arbitrary (line 4 vs line 5, for example), and semicolons are missing after several CSS statements (these are necessary in the strict compliance you're advocating) (lines 5-8 are the first instances of this in that page). In the one I just mentioned, notice how the original (and this was after heavy cleanup by Erutuon) had <span><span></span></span> with duplicate CSS parameters. Additionally, the comparison you gave was with a template that was barely used -- Template:IPA consonant chart was the king before my edits, and it was way worse. Now, it doesn't even need to exist anymore.
The originals *did* try to conform more strictly to W3C, but that increased their size without a good reason, and W3C itself will still validate properly minified code[9][10]. Leaving out the quotes doesn't break any compatibility (so long as there are no spaces required within any used CSS statements -- hence why quotes are important in ie templates) -- just as leaving out the / from <br/> doesn't break anything (apart from WP's beta syntax highlighter; but this is a bug with that highlighter, as again, W3C validates <br>.). And even in WP:HTML5, spaces are inconsistent after colons. You're correct that width is also a CSS property, and it's true that CSS is preferrable to static HTML; but the original CSS width statements weren't working for me in Firefox (I didn't express myself properly in my initial statement; this is what I'd meant by "invalid" -- I should have used a different word, such as "broken". The syntax was fine.).
I agree that the affricates should be merged with their respective tables; thank you for going ahead and doing that. What should be done with the separate affricate table? Like all the other tables, it existed before I made any changes. Should it be forgone? Or should it be left as-is?
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 15:45, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
Sweyn78 wrote: "Template:IPA consonant chart ... doesn't even need to exist anymore."
Please note that hundreds of pages need this template for transclusions or redirects. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 17:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
@LiliCharlie: I have not -- and don't plan on -- moving these templates, deleting these templates, or redirecting these templates; and all edits I have made have preserved existing variables. I was trying to give a nod to Nardog's erasure of the article; I figured it were the result of some discussion, but given the lack of that here, I'm guessing it was just out of the blue. I'll make a new subheader for that. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 06:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
@LiliCharlie: Special:WhatLinksHere is never a useful tool when ascertaining how many pages are actually invoking a template because it includes every occasion of transclusion such as templates within templates, including pages whose server cache has not been refreshed. To find out you'd have to make a search e.g. hastemplate:"IPA consonant chart" insource:"IPA consonant chart", and you can see that no article is in fact invoking the template and thus it can be safely turned into a redirect. @Sweyn78: I'll reply to your new comments later. Nardog (talk) 07:44, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

New new changes

@Nardog: Some of your recent changes need discussion and reversion.

  • Template:IPA consonant chart should probably be reverted into being its own template, rather than a redirect. It doesn't make sense for a chart about consonants to include vowels and more. I've reverted it until further discussion has ocurred.
  • You removed the templates' use of their wrapper templates. These templates were useful, because they contained links to the audio tables, as well as footnotes. Now, all of these links are gone. I will re-add the links. I understand why you did this, as the wrappers took up unnecessary server CPU usage; but please be more thorough in avoiding breaking existing functionality. Worse, you've broken every instance where the wrappers are still used, and you didn't even preserve variable names.
  • You moved all the templates. Their naming scheme was standardized years ago per community discussion.
  • You degreyed some very weird cells in Template:IPA chart/table non-pulmonic consonants.
    • Velar and further-back clicks are impossible given a velar or uvular airstream; see Back-released_velar_click#IPA_symbol_withdrawn.
    • Glottalized consonants are not primarily glottal in articulation; if we degreyed every glottalizable place in the main table, there would be white space along the entire column, and this would contradict the official IPA chart.
    • Glottal ejectives are impossible. An ejective is an ejective because it uses the air trapped between its primary articulator and the glottis. Air can't get trapped between the glottis and the glottis.
  • You degreyed weird cells in Template:IPA chart/table pulmonic consonants.
    • Strictly pharyngeal stops, along with some other strictly pharyngeal manners, are not possible.
    • Linguolabials cannot be sibilant.
    • You have confused strict pharyngeals with non-strict pharyngeals. In a general sense, "pharyngeal" can be used to mean "pharyngeal" or "epiglottal". Since there is an epiglottal column on this chart, the two should be considered separately.
    • Pulmonic epiglottal consonants are capable of voicing, just like anything else north of the glottis.
    • Non-lateral palatal taps are unattested, per Flap_consonant#Types of flaps; but I'll leave these ungreyed, since there *are* lateral taps.
    • Non-uvular dorsal trills aren't possible, with the possible exception of nasal trills.
    • Sibilant palatal fricatives were greyed out in the original chart, and for good reason.
  • You made a single, generic contour click take up an entire row in Template:IPA chart/table non-pulmonic consonants.
  • You removed the invisible spacing columns. I already explained that these are necessary, because they give each cell equal width. Without these columns (or a workaround), columns without letters become weirdly sized. These cannot be supplemented by the header itself, since it has colspans of greater than 1.
  • You are hardly writing any edit summaries. Please start writing edit summaries, per Help:Edit_summary#Always_provide_an_edit_summary.
  • You have syntax errors in your CSS (for example, you're missing a closing quote at | style="border-left:0;| in Template:IPA chart/table non-pulmonic consonants), and you didn't even follow your own rules (for example, you left several inline CSS bits without trailing semicolons). Please use a validator, like the one I posted earlier. I'm re-minifying the code, after my explanation above. Minified CSS is still valid CSS. However, in an effort to meet in the middle, I'm leaving CSS enclosed in quotes, and I'm leaving spaces after semicolons.
  • You should not capitalize after a colon, per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters#Initial_letters_in_sentences_and_list_items.
  • You messed up all the comments in Template:IPA chart/table non-pulmonic consonants, carelessly leaving them on the fronts and ends of lines, and haphazardly deleting only some of the commented-out places' lines.
  • You removed rowspans, and replaced them with individual cells. This is bad, because using rowspan allows for vertical centering between cells. Not using rowspan increases the size of the table, does not allow centering with an even number of rows, and requires manual adjustment whenever the rowcount is changed.

The templates were a sleek piece of engineering, and more importantly had valid phonetic data; and you came in with a sledgehammer and messed everything up. Fixing your mistakes is costing me several hours that I don't have. Please read about the different airstreams, places, and manners before editing IPA table contents. We all make small mistakes; but these are beyond that.
Regardless, thank you for adding the affricates, and for doing it in a way that allows them to be turned on and off.
You guys are on your own from here-on-out; I have to focus on real life.
/ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 06:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Sweyn78: Before I begin I'd like to apologize for using some strong language in the comment above. My opinion still stands, but the way I put it was totally unnecessary. I'm sorry.
I understand that your edits were made with sheer intention to help improve Wikipedia as a website and as an encyclopedia, but they genuinely made my browsing experience on the site considerably worse, particularly the nested boxes, increased empty space, separated affricates and reduced font size in {{IPA navigation}}; I'd be shocked to find anybody who thinks your version of the template looked better than how it was before. In fact, you have perfectly articulated how I felt when you made those edits. For me the templates were perfectly fine, even though I thought they needed some minor tweaks, until you suddenly ruined them. So that made me try to undo some of them, but I see that's how you felt about my edits too.
So you have every right to revert my edits as I did yours, but I for one would much prefer the versions before your changes (which isn't to say your edits didn't include any improvements, it's just my overall preference).
I also think you could have at least waited for RoachPeter to reply before you put your changes back, especially when the only editor who endorsed them as a whole was Aeusoes1, while the two who had expressed concerns (RoachPeter and LiliCharlie) hadn't got around to reply to your explanation. One week is not nearly enough for people to review such an overhaul, in fact I was just about to put a request-for-comment notice at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics etc. and start looking into your codes when you got them back.
Now on my edits:
  • I concede you are way more acquainted with articulatory phonetics than me, I was simply following the IPA chart. So I'm more than happy to follow your judgments about (im)possible articulations, so long as they can be explained. The decision to separate pharyngeal and epiglottal, though, I think needs consensus.
  • I removed the width for each column because the first column (manner) became twice as wide as it should be on my Chrome, but I should have implemented an additional solution for that without compromising the other columns. My mistake.
  • Wikicodes do not need to be minified, but be legible. That's the reason we use MediaWiki over other markup languages in the first place, so everybody can edit. Your  | and  ! at the beginning of each cell despite the dominant convention (| , ! ) strikes me as bizarre, as do the commented-out hyphens before each row.
  • I omitted the spaces after colons and the semicolons before closing quotes simply because that used to be prevalent at least at some point on Wikipedia, but now I look around this practice seems to have fallen out of favor. I'll add them, which is the way I prefer outside Wikipedia anyway.
  • The wrapper template was an overly elaborate and complicated solution whose most options were barely used. Simple templates such as these should be written simply so more people can easily edit. I ditched the backward compatibility with the intention of deprecating the wrapper down the road, but of course we can still discuss if that's a good idea at a relevant talk. I thought the moves were okay since consensus can change, but you may apply WP:BRD to this as well.
  • Links to the audio tables can be re-added directly to the tables just like the footnotes. I left them out because I thought they also needed amendment, but I don't mind either way.
  • I'm not so sure if what's written in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Capital letters#Initial letters in sentences and list items applies here. "IPA: Vowels" makes far more sense to me than "IPA: vowels", but that could be just me.
  • Single, generic contour click taking up an entire row was at least better than the way you placed it, if you ask me.
  • I'm sorry but I'm not sure which rowspan you're referring to. If it's about "Clicks", I removed it to realize the "taking up the entire row" thing, but now that I think about it I could have used rowspan anyway in that situation, so you're right, my bad.
  • You have a point about errors and summaries. I'll try to pay more attention from here on out.
Your changes included aesthetic, internal (coding), and phonetic ones. While I didn't particularly have a problem with the last, I had problems with the first two (especially the former), and that clouded my judgment about the phonetic aspects of your changes. For that I apologize. Nardog (talk) 11:11, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Errors

@Sweyn78: The recent (16 September 2017‎) changes have flooded the error transclusion list with false-positive errors. If you don't want {{error}}-checking in IPA articles, that's fine with me, as these can be difficult to track and fix for non-IPA experts. But If you want to continue monitorng for errors, I suggest reverting to the way it's been done before the recent changes. Yes, that probably means you should use #if-statements. wbm1058 (talk) 21:05, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

My apologies; I didn't realize there was an error-tracker. I've re-added the #if: statements to Template:IPA chart/table vowels/vowelpair, re-added an error-message to Template:IPA link, and started a discussion at Template talk:IPA link#Error. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 21:46, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

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3d interactive plot of IPA vowels

Using the formants F1, f2 and f3, it would be great to add a 3d interactive plot object of the IPA vowels. I have read R software could make it, but I am afraid I have never used it. --Backinstadiums (talk) 18:50, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Palatal Merge

Who, actually, why did the alveolo-palatal consonants merge with palatal consonants? Just curious. I didn't find anything on this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 191.251.102.43 (talk) 17:12, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Pinging Mr KEBAB. His rationale for the merger was that the alveolo-palatals are the sibilant equivalents of the palatals. I personally would favor abandoning the sibilant rows entirely and placing the alveolo-palatals either in a dedicated column or outside the table, because the IPA doesn't officially define the acoustic characteristics or specific tongue shapes of the symbols, but that might be just me. Nardog (talk) 09:23, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Syllables in IPA

Anyone ever compose a diglyph-form or triglyph-form syllabary chart in IPA? -Inowen (talk) 08:41, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Add link to Interactive IPA Chart with Audio?

Hi guys, (I searched the archives of this talk page and haven't seen any previous mention of the following, so bringing it up here):

While trying to figure out how to pronounce some Latin word, I came across a website that looks useful: http://www.ipachart.com It offers an interactive chart that lets you click an IPA character/phonetic symbol and hear how it is supposed to be pronounced. I have no expertise to judge how reliable/trustworthy it is, but it does claim to be based on work from the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive which is likely trustworthy.

I later noticed that that page I'm referencing links back to the General Phonetics page on Wikimedia Commons, which seems to have somewhat similar contents, and may perhaps be even better, as users can also figure out licensing issues regarding the audio files.

Either way, I think at least one of these pages (http://www.ipachart.com or https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_phonetics should appear as a clear external reference (i.e. under the External References section) with an explanation that there the reader can find out what sounds IPA symbols represent, by actually hearing them, not just reading about them.

agree? Ynagar (talk) 14:04, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

The external links section of this article included links to interactive charts including the one you mentioned, and other resources not maintained by the International Phonetic Association, but they had to be removed because the list grew and less-than-reliable resources clearly not meeting the standard of WP:EL were creeping in (some were moved to Help:IPA#External links). The site you mentioned is using files from Commons so it's kind of a WP:CIRCULAR source, which clearly falls into WP:ELNO #1.
If you're looking for a reliable interactive chart, I recommend [11] and [12], which are overseen by John Esling, former IPA President. There are also interactive charts produced as supplements to Peter Ladefoged's books and released online: [13] [14]; but they are old and may not work properly on your browser. There are also [15] and [16], which are nonetheless hosted by universities, but I don't find them to be as reliable as Esling's or Ladefoged's. Wikipedia also has its own interactive charts, but they are scattered across articles so they may be better accumulated in a single page à la the IPA chart article. Nardog (talk) 10:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Nardog,
first, thanks for your elaborate answer. I've read it a couple of times, and went chasing the links you provided... pheeww... there certainly is lots of stuff there (found the seeingspeech one particularly helpful indeed).
But I'm afraid that's also what can get people more confused.
Look, I honestly am not at all an expert on this subject matter. Just a person who sometimes encounters an unfamiliar word, from an unfamiliar language, and wants to know how to pronounce it. So in this specific case, I found my solution. But my bottom line is, right now, if someone else like me is looking for a guide to pronounciation that uses actual audio (rather than phonetic symbols that require prior knowledge/learning/deciphering), this article does not provide a clear reference to such a place (even though I expected it to).
So I think that it would be great if someone more knowledgeable than me on this matter would add (a) link/s to at least one reliable source - whether it's on Wikipedia commons or one of the others you mentioned (Esling's or Ladefoged's, etc.). I'm not qualified to know which one is better/best, perhaps its worth linking to more than one. I don't know. But the bottom line is I think other folks would benefit from this. Instead of having an answer to this need here in the talk page, currently addressed to one person (me), possibly seen by a few others who happen to read here, and potentially/eventually disappearing down the talk archives, it will be much better to have something in the article itself. Just my 2 cents. Ynagar (talk) 16:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
The first line in the article refers to page help:IPA where almost all symbols are linked to an audio file. −Woodstone (talk) 16:49, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Woodstone. I missed it somehow. I suspect its because the line says: "For usage of IPA in Wikipedia, see Help:IPA", and I didn't take "usage in Wikipedia" to also imply that it would include audio help.
I don't think that it's necessarily obvious from this line of text. So perhaps the best thing would be to change the sentence at the top of the page to something like: "For usage of IPA in Wikipedia, and for a pronunciation guide including audio, see Help:IPA", or a similar sentence in that spirit? Ynagar (talk) 18:03, 3 March 2018 (UTC)
Actually the page help:IPA is not specific for the usage of IPA in WP. Perhaps it's time again to discuss moving it to the main space. Anyway we could give it a separate hatnote like "for an extensive list of IPA symbols and their pronunciation including audio see ..."— Preceding unsigned comment added by Woodstone (talk • contribs) 06:43, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
Agree. (Went to implement the change on the page, saw you just did it... thanks!)(re: moving to main space - I assume that means Wikimedia commons, I agree with that too but don't know how to do it, so I'll leave that for someone more savvy. I'm just going to fix a typo now (link=links). Thanks for your help! Ynagar (talk) 09:38, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
No, our main namespace isn't Wikimedia Commons, see Wikipedia:Namespace#Subject namespaces. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 09:53, 4 March 2018 (UTC)
I think it should stay in the Help namespace. Remember Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a manual, guidebook, or textbook, although, as I alluded to earlier, a page like IPA chart but with audio, merging the existing IPA vowel chart with audio etc., may be worth considering. Nardog (talk) 22:28, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:IPA (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 01:44, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

Deprecated in Unicode

Today User:Nardog removed a remark on the U+0334 ̴ COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY being deprecated in Unicode with the following summary: what's that even mean, "deprecated in Unicode"? U+0334 is present in the latest code charts

This is the answer their question: The term deprecated character is definined as D13 in section Characters and Encoding of the published Unicode standard itself ("A coded character whose use is strongly discouraged.", followed by four notes). Cf. Unicode Standard Annex #44 for the formal definition of the Unicode character property deprecated as used in file PropList.txt, as well as the recent subbmission Deprecation Inconsistencies in Code Chart Annotations by Charlotte Buff.

I am in favour of providing our readers with the information that using this character is strongly discouraged. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:45, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie: Thank you for your explanation about the term "deprecated", but I can't confirm U+0334 is in fact discouraged in either the code chart or PropList.txt. Could you point to a source that confirms the diacritic is deprecated? If so, we should indeed note that with a reference to it and with better wording. Nardog (talk) 18:57, 26 September 2018 (UTC)
Sorry I didn't check and took it for granted that this piece of information in the article was correct.
However this still leaves the fact that the simple Unicode charcters ⟨ɫ ᵬ ᵭ ᵮ ᵯ ᵰ ᵱ ᵲ ᵳ ᵴ ᵵ ᵶ Ɫ ꭞ⟩ are not canonically equivalent to the sequences ⟨l̴ b̴ d̴ f̴ m̴ n̴ p̴ r̴ ɾ̴ s̴ t̴ z̴ L̴ ˡ̴⟩ composed of base characters plus U+0334 ̴ COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY. Neither font designers nor search engines, rendering engines or any other software is required to treat them the same, and only [ɫ] (U+026B ɫ LATIN SMALL LETTER L WITH MIDDLE TILDE) is the a correct Unicode representation for IPA while [l̴] (U+006C l LATIN SMALL LETTER L plus U+0334 ̴ COMBINING TILDE OVERLAY) isn't, no matter if they display identically on your device/system or not. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:39, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

More and less rounded?

Section Diacritics and prosodic notation has the example ɔ̜ x̜ʷ for "less rounded". I'm confused by that, since the superscript ◌ʷ stands for labialization, which, as the lede for that article clearly states, means that the sound “involve[s] the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. ... When vowels involve the lips, they are called rounded.” Aside from the distinction between vowels and consonants (which can be circumvented with the ◌̩ diacritic), this amounts to a contradiction. Which languages use the example sound, and why has it been selected as an example here? ◄ Sebastian 12:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Update: In investigating the history, I found that our most venerable editor, Kwamikagami, defended this example in 2005 (Denelson83: “I don't know how that errant ʷ got in there”(*) — kwami: “rv: the [ʷ] belongs: "less rounded" than labialized [xʷ] (you can't get any less rounded than plain [x])” (*) ), but in 2015 he removed the diacritic himself (*) and it was Pxhayes who added it back in 2017: (2017). Seeing how even our best editors are repeatedly confused by the example, I'm therefore removing it altogether. ◄ Sebastian 13:49, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Since x and χ both are no good examples because of what kwami wrote, and since, according to our article Labialization we prefer that term for consonants, I decided to remove all examples using x or χ from the roundedness row. If someone feels we still need a consonant, let's think of a better set of examples which each are actually relevant at least for some language. ◄ Sebastian 14:06, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

I didn't contradict myself with that edit (at least, not that I can see) because I didn't "remove the diacritic". Rather, I moved it from the ⟨x⟩ to the ⟨ʷ⟩. I don't recall whether that was because it's the labialization that's 'less rounded' (if we were accepting VoQS, we could write it ⟨xꟹ⟩), that is, because I thought it was more accurate that way, or whether it was to head off another misunderstanding like Denelson's.
That example, BTW, is from Hupa, which has been described (by Matt Gordon, maybe? I forget -- not in our Hupa article) as having contrasting more- and less-rounded labialized velar fricatives. The point of these illustrations is to show that the rounding diacritics are not restricted to vowels. Regardless of whether we call consonants 'labialized' rather than 'rounded', the articulation is the same.
Anyway, the history is: ⟨x̜ʷ⟩ ('less rounded' under the x), which Denelson changed to ⟨x̜⟩ (removing the ʷ that indicated the rounding that was lessened), which I reverted, and which I later changed to ⟨xʷ̜⟩ (putting the 'less rounded' diacritic under the rounded element, making it clear that the ⟨ʷ⟩ is required), which Pxhayes reverted to the original ⟨x̜ʷ⟩. So, apart from the initial misunderstanding, the debate was about where to place the diacritic, which is essentially an esthetic question.
If you want voiceless prenasalization, say, or bidental aspiration, then you place the diacritics on the superscript modifier letter: ⟨ᵑ̊ǂh, tʰ̪͆⟩. That's because there's a timing difference from the main letter. But since ⟨xʷ⟩ indicates that the [x] is simultaneously rounded throughout, rather than having a labialized off-glide, I suspect there's no difference between ⟨x̜ʷ⟩ and ⟨xʷ̜⟩. I was perhaps being overly pedantic in placing the diacritic under the ⟨ʷ⟩, though if an author intended it to be an off-glide (as iconicity would suggest), then they would presumably want the diacritic there. — kwami (talk) 21:59, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, kwami, for the detailed and interesting explanation. I didn't even know it was acceptable to modify a diacritic with its own diacritic. But I don't think it overly pedantic even with zero timing difference: For one, in the particular case of roundedness and labialization it prevents them from cancelling each other out. (In other words, if applied to a consonant other than plain [x]: Is the labialization less rounded or the unrounding more labialized?) Also, I can see it being useful for such things as an advanced-root velarization. Is this only done for co-articulation diacritics or also for others?
Sorry, since the sub-diacritic didn't display on my computer, it looked to me as if you had removed it. It would have prevented my error if you had written an edit summary. Better yet, why not write the gist of it in a footnote? That's the best way to head off misunderstandings, and I think your explanation is worth being included in the article. ◄ Sebastian 23:42, 8 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Sebastian. The IPA doesn't regulate things to any great precision. For example, they only give a sample of compound tone letters in the chart, without stating that they're only a sample, which has mislead people into thinking that only those combinations are official. (You can concatenate as many tone letters together as you like, in any combination, though it's quite rare to see more than three and I don't know of any font that supports more than three.) That's more the purpose of the Handbook - phoneticians apply the IPA to their language, so you can see how they approach it and overcome any difficulties. But those illustrations aren't official - e.g., [c] and [ɟ] are not officially affricates, despite being used as such in the Handbook, though it's common to make such substitutions for phonemic transcription, which is outside the purview of the IPA that officially limits itself to phonetic transcription. (They removed the old 'syllabic' nasal letter with the argument that it was a phonemic symbol with no fixed phonetic value and therefor didn't belong in a phonetic alphabet, for example.)

So, re. your question, you can do anything that makes sense. If you need to indicate ATR velarization, then that's how you could transcribe it: ⟨tˠ̘⟩. The problem is when you think your transcription is obvious but it leaves others scratching their heads, which is why it's always a good idea to define your terms in publications. IMO, even if you're using IPA symbols with their cardinal values, it's important to tell your readers that you mean for them to have their cardinal values. And even to define what those are, since 50 years from now conventions might be different.

Good point about seeming to cancel each other out. I'll go ahead and add a footnote. Feel free to fix if you don't agree. — kwami (talk) 01:14, 9 April 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:22, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

Vowel vs Consonant

In the section about vowels, it is said that a vowel is "defined" as a sound which occurs at a syllable center. This definition is problematic in two senses. Firstly, it is ambiguous because it does not specify whether vowels are whichever sounds occur at least once at a syllable center for a given language (sonant sounds as a sound type) or whichever sound functions as the syllable's core for a given syllable (core sound as a sound function). Secondly, it is also false because there are syllabic consonants which occur at a syllable center. I would rather define vowels as unobstructed sounds whose quality is determined by the tongue position and lip shape, which is what they are according to the IPA schema. So I suggest this change for the ones controlling the page. Daniel Couto Vale (talk) 10:48, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

No trace of "eI"

I surfed in from another page, trying to find out how "eI" [letter e, then letter u.c. i] was pronounced. Nowhere on page; neither was /eI/ or <eI> following a search. Not apparrent in the official IPA chart either. But it is present top-right in the illustration/logo for the page. Perhaps I needed to search using a small-caps i instead. Anyway ... frustrating.

This is an example of what I call "blood mining", i.e. when you search for something that should be fairly accessible to a non-specialist, but the experience turns out to be like getting blood out of a stone. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.85.112 (talk) 13:25, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

CfD on categories for pages including recorded pronunciations

There is a discussion on categories named "Pages including recorded pronunciations" or "Articles...", which editors here may be interested in. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:56, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

IPA engine

I have seen some website including IPA audios, using a machine (IPA text-to-speech). Can be included more info here or in the article. It also could be a good idea for Wiktionary, when human pronunciation it is not possible or lacks it in Wikimedia Commons. Thanks in advance.BoldLuis (talk) 17:36, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

What website? We can't possibly discuss whether to include it in the article if you don't link to it. Nardog (talk) 13:21, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Placement of stress marks

Nardog recently commented somewhere that there's no requirement to place stress marks in front of the stressed syllable and therefore they do not indicate a syllable break, and he gave the transcription style of Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch as an example. Now today I stumbled upon the following on zh:国际音标#超音段成分 (I cite the simplified character version, and the external link to Payne (2005) is mine):

重音符号通常置于重音节前，并有分隔音节的效果。一些有长辅音的语言（如意大利语）使用重音符号来分隔长辅音，此时就不应使用长音符号。例如意大利语单词“avvolse”，其音标应写成⟨avˈvɔlse⟩，而非⟨aˈvvɔlse⟩、⟨aˈvːɔlse⟩或⟨avˈːɔlse⟩。然而，重音符号偶尔可以直接置于元音前，如⟨avvˈɔlse⟩或⟨avːˈɔlse⟩[1]。当使用这种记音方式时，重音符号就不应该视为音节边界的标记。

Is this something we should elaborate on, or should we restrict ourselves to what the Handbook says? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:15, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

What I said at Talk:Spanish phonology#Phonemic transcription was: "The stress mark need not necessarily signify a syllable division simultaneously" (emphasis added). Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch's scheme is indeed a heretical one (see e.g. Wells). The passage you quoted seems to be a direct translation from our (= English Wikipedia's) Suprasegmentals section, and it says "A stress mark typically appears before the stressed syllable ..." (emphasis added) and "In such transcriptions ...", so I don't see anything wrong with it. What do you mean by "something we should elaborate on"? I also don't understand what you mean by "restrict to ourselves what the Handbook says". Nardog (talk) 00:03, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
What I mean is: Is this something we should elaborate on at all? I.e., should we mention such transcription styles at all? To me this looks like original research that has pervaded several Wikipedias, but is not supported by anything found in the Handbook. Is there a source that says *⟨aˈvːɔlse⟩ is not okay while ⟨avvˈɔlse⟩ and ⟨avːˈɔlse⟩ are? So if Canepari transcribes Ganda kkula as ⟨ˈkːu.la⟩ with syllable-initial ⟨ˈCːV⟩ this is less acceptable that Payne's ⟨CːˈV⟩? And on the other hand: Who ever used ⟨C₁C₁ˈV⟩ as in ⟨avvˈɔlse⟩, which we say occasionally occurs? Payne (2005) is not a source for that, as far as I can see. — There are so many transcriptions around that are not 100% IPA, so why do we pick this particular deviation? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 01:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
P.S.: Of course I know that Canepari doesn't pretend to use standard IPA. (It even was me who produced the SVG that illustrates Canepari's 60 basic vocoid symbols.) — Article Luganda does use word-initial ⟨CːV⟩, but without stress marks, and I was too lazy to search for another author who uses both.
P.P.S.: Although I am discussing this here the outcome of this discussion may have an inpact on the article on zh.WP I was citing from, and maybe other Wikipedias as well. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:54, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
But does the Handbook explicitly say a stress mark should demarcate syllables? At least that the stress marks are almost always, but not without exceptions, placed at a syllable boundary is noteworthy IMO, and Payne looks like an ideal source for that statement. Nardog (talk) 13:41, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
What the Handbook says on page 15 is that [s]ymbols are provided for indicating the relative prominence or stress of syllables. So stress marks indicate a property of syllables, not of part of them such as nuclei. — The situation is parallelled by diacritics/modifiers following the base letter. These operate on the segmental level and therefore mark segment boundaries. Consequently [tʰs] indicates a sequence of an aspirated plosive and a fricative, and it cannot indicate an aspirated affricate. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 14:58, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
So it doesn't, then. That stress is a property of the syllable does not entail the stress mark should be placed before the entire syllable. Placing it before the nucleus can be a pretty defensible choice especially when dealing with ambisyllabicity. Nardog (talk) 16:22, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes. And the Handbook doesn't explicitly say that stress marks have to precede what is stressed, either. Which can be seen as evidence that the tradition of American dictionary makers of putting the stress mark immediately after the stressed syllable certainly has to be regarded as IPA-conformant as well; there is no evidence to the contrary in the Handbook. (This is off-topic, but only slightly so: German lawyers have seen the use of German for writing the Basic Law that serves as the country's constitution as evidence that German is the official language of the country, even though that law doesn't explicitly stipulate a language to be used by federal authorities. Exemplification can be compelling legal evidence.)
Let me repeat the question I posed above: "Is there a source that says *⟨aˈvːɔlse⟩ is not okay while ⟨avvˈɔlse⟩ and ⟨avːˈɔlse⟩ are?" And let me now add: What about ⟨avvɔˈlse⟩, ⟨avvɔlˈse⟩ et sim.?
I still think we should stick to the Handbook and not elaborate on transcription styles that it doesn't mention or exemplify. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 18:16, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I don't disagree the paragraph contained statements that weren't supported by the source. I've edited them out. However, I don't see reason to remove the mention of the occasional practice of placing the stress mark before the nucleus rather than before the onset. Nardog (talk) 19:05, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
All right, but at this point it looks like some Wikipedian's original research, so we had better cite Esling (²2013) as a reliable secondary source.[2] Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 19:46, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
@LiliCharlie: That's indeed a much better source. Be bold. Nardog (talk) 03:03, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie and Nardog: On p. 75 of the 'Report on the 1989 Kiel Convention', it says, It was re-affirmed that : [ˈ] placed before the relevant syllable indicates primary stress in a given domain. And indeed in all the illustrations in the Handbook, the stress marks appear before the syllable onset. I think therefore we can take that as both official and the norm. Check e.g. Tukang Besi for stress marks before onsets like [nm] and [mt], and Czech for [kt] and [svl]. In Tukang Besi, they even have [βaˈnden̩saˈŋia] (where [nd] is evidently a prenasalized stop).

However, in all illustrations where "geminates" might complicate things, they're written as double consonants rather than with a length sign. Italian isn't in the Handbook. (And anyway, Italian doesn't really have geminates, it's just restricted to homorganic C sequences. It's not like Ganda that can start a word with [Cː], where you would of course put the stress mark before the C, for ⟨ˈkːula⟩.) A similar complication would occur with the liaison mark. Where would you put the stress mark in [at‿elo], if [te] were the stressed syllable?

But if we're going to take the IPA at its word, then the Italian example above would have to be either ⟨avˈvɔlse⟩ or ⟨avˈːɔlse⟩. The latter is a bit weird, but it would be inaccurate anyway, since [vː] is not a segment.

As for whether the stress mark replaces the syllabicity mark, apparently no, or at least not necessarily so. On p. 23 of the Handbook, as examples of how to use the ⟨.⟩, they transcribe prepaired as [pɹə.ˈpɛəd], and in the next line, where they mark prosodic marks but not syllables, prepairing as [pɹəˈpɛəɹɪŋ]. But those are such minimal examples that I wouldn't want to say the stress marks can't act as syllable breaks either, since the syllabicity mark will always be redundant.

Downstep also only appears before the syllable onset in the illustrations. In the Report, it says they should be placed "before other pitch symbols" ("pitch" includes tone). In the Handbook illustrations, I think they only co-occur with stress marks, and they are placed before those. But if the Chao tone letters are placed after the syllable, as they usually are, would downstep really occur between the syllable coda and the tone letter?

Tone letters can go before the syllable (Portuguese in the illustrations) or after (Cantonese). That's consistent with the Report, which says there are six acceptable ways to mark tone! Again, though, they come before the onset or after the coda in the illustrations, not before or after the nucleus. That convention would seem to have zero support. In the Report, it says they're "to be placed before or after the segmental material," but I don't know what that means -- just an obscure way to say "syllable"? — kwami (talk) 05:47, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Payne, E. M. (2005) "Phonetic variation in Italian consonant gemination", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35: 153–181.
  2. ^ John H. Esling: Phonetic Notation. in: William Hardcastle et al: The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences. Blackwell. Citation from page 691: Typically, the stress mark is placed at the beginning of the stressed syllable, i.e., before the initial consonant. However, Payne (2005) has used an alternative formula to mark stress in Italian by focussing on the main stress-bearing unit — the vowel — rather than on the consonantal onset element of the syllable. In this interpretation, the stress mark appears immediately before the vowel symbol... (another half dozen lines on this transcription style follow).

typefaces

I tested the typefaces we listed, and the only ones with full IPA support (e.g. Hokkien with its tone sandhi) were the SIL fonts. No pre-installed MS font seems to have full support. The best among those we had listed here was Calibri, which was the only one that properly rendered the diacritics I tested. Brill was comparable to Calibri. But Arial, TNR etc. all failed rather badly. I trimmed the section to reflect that. It would be nice if we could find something to list for full support other than the SIL fonts, just for a little variety. Anyone know of anything? — kwami (talk) 22:47, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. If you have a test file: Do the Noto fonts (Noto Serif, Noto Sans, Noto Sans Mono) offer full IPA support (apart from a scaling problem concerning alphabetical spacing modifier letters in the hinted version of Noto Sans which is absent from the unhinted version and will be cleared in all future versions)? And if not: What exactly are the bugs to report to the developer team? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 23:38, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

@LiliCharlie: I see the following problems with Noto. I'm only testing Noto Sans, but I assume they're all similar.

  • ꜒ ꜓ ꜔ ꜕ ꜖ have individual support but don't combine into contour tones as they should.
  • <s͢θ> -- the diacritic should span the two letters rather than appearing under the 's'
  • there are a few cases when interdental (a bridge above and below a letter) are offset, and so look odd. E.g. on 'h'. <ᶑ̥> doesn't align, and placing the diacritic on top doesn't help.
  • the combining parentheses do not enclose the diacritic they modify as they should, but instead are stacked over or under it. (SIL is deficient here as well.)
  • diacritics seem to work on modifier letters, at least common ones, but e.g. <ʰ̪͆> doesn't work. I suspect that Noto only supports anticipated combinations rather than providing general support.
  • the tie bar often doesn't work well, e.g. <t͜ʃ>. This seems to be a problem when the second letter has an ascender or descender but the first doesn't -- an oversight in Brill as well.
  • ⟦...⟧ and ⟨...⟩ aren’t supported. I don't know if ⫽...⫽ is needed.
  • There are a few symbols that are only now being annotated as having phonetic use, such as double !, but that shouldn't be an issue if Noto is keeping track of Unicode updates.

— kwami (talk) 08:39, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

Update: someone added a bunch more typefaces. I didn't test all of them, but the only one I found with good support was Linux Biolinum. It doesn't place the breve and rhotic diacritic properly. It supports sequences of the common tone letters but not of the reversed tone letters. It does not place diacritics on modifier letters at all, and a number of diacritics and the tie-bar overstrike letters with ascenders. So that's good enough for most purposes, and the mis-aligned breve isn't awful. (I see publications with worse.) But Linux Libertine, FiraGO, Lato and EB Garamond provide poor support.

Make this usable by ordinary readers

A quick note-- I went to this article and am departing immediately because all I want is to know things like what an overline on top of an "a" means. Having a technical article is good,but this topic needs an article useful to people who just want to look up simple things too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Editeur24 (talk • contribs) 21:11, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I, by the way, have a PhD from MIT in economics, so I'm not the simplest sort of reader we can expect. We need to think about who the average reader is, though, and try to write the article so it is useful to people at all levels, from grade school students to those with graduate training in linguistics. editeur24 (talk) 21:15, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

The first two sentences point users to help pages. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 21:28, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

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The problem with the International Phonetic Alphabet is the fact it is more a way of expressing the pronunciation of different accents than it is a way to express how to pronounce letters (sounds of the letters) in any sort of fundamental sense, and it gives no indication whatsoever of which of the multiple pronunciations for each letter match up to which language. What I mean by this is, if you listen to various persons from around the world pronounce the letters (such audio recordings are often included with IPA charts), you hear their versions of those pronunciations with their respective accents, and their pronunciations can sound significantly different from each other. For example, a Frenchman pronouncing a letter with a French accent, a Russian pronouncing the same letter with a Russian accent, an American of the Midwest USA pronouncing it with a different accent, and so forth. This causes great confusion for many people because they all sound different due to the accents and because the IPA gives multiple ways to pronounce the same letter (sound of the letter). Such a way of expressing pronunciations is a useful tool for learning to pronounce letters as they are pronounced with the accent of a language different than your own (IF it tells you what the native language of the speaker is), but really not useful for learning which IPA symbol represents which fundamental sound. An American, or Frenchman, or Indian would know the sounds of the letter 'a' in their respective languages, but in some languages different than their own 'a' can sound nothing like an 'a' to them. The purpose of the IPA was to be a way for everyone on Earth to understand every letter's sound regardless of their language, but instead, it really just confuses most people. Such a thing as the International Phonetic Alphabet is, for the most part, useless.

Thibeinn (talk) 18:24, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

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It might help if you see that we have language-specific IPA guides (such as Help:IPA/Russian, Help:IPA/French) for each language. Or are you saying that, e.g. [s] is pronounced differently for different languages such that the IPA letters aren't precise enough? — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 20:48, 31 October 2020 (UTC)

Backslashes as delimiters

I've frequently seen backslashes \ ... \ used as delimiters of phonetic transcriptions in French dictionaries. The French Wiktionary uses them extensively, for example in article wikt:fr:phonétique, and their use is defined on wikt:fr:Aide:Prononciation#Trois notations as follows: "les \\ indiquent la représentation phonétique usuelle, forme simple pour chaque langue, que les locuteurs vont reconnaître" ('the \\ indicate the usual phonetic representation, a simple form for each language, that speakers will recognize'); in the table below the definitions they are labelled "prononciation usuelle". I believe backslashes are quite common in the French-speaking world, and worth mentioning in this article. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 12:38, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Makes sense provided that it is clearly identified as a French notation. It would need an RS of course, not wiki.fr. Doesn't exist in English conventions, I assume, otherwise {{respell}} could use it. Put at end of third table? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:05, 28 February 2021‎ (UTC)
Merriam-Webster uses backslashes for its own notation, which is a compromise between the traditional lexicographic notation and the IPA. Using them in our respelling would be too confusing. Nardog (talk) 13:24, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
I didn't intend a suggestion that respell be changed but rather to observe that if the notation existed in anglophone usage, respell would already be using it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:55, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
I have been unable to find a reliable source that treats backslashes as a general convention for "layperson-friendly phonetic notation", so we have no basis to mention it here at this point. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 09:37, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

That's been the MW convention since the 3rd International of 1961, and it's what I learned in elementary school. The back-slashes may well have been adopted to avoid confusion with the IPA, but I've never seen that stated that I recall. The IPA was considered for the 3rd but ultimately rejected, so there could easily be some influence like that.

I think if we can figure out the French usage elsewhere than on WP-fr, it would be worth adding a footnote to this article, that readers may see back-slashes but that they are not IPA usage. — kwami (talk) 11:15, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The Petit Larousse used paretheses around respellings in italics up until at least 1959, like early MW. By 1983 they used IPA in square brackets.

The story of Webster's third discusses the system briefly but makes no mention that I can see of the back-slashes. I'll add a fn mentioning MW use but not of French until we can attest to it in publication. — kwami (talk) 19:42, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

no mention of [w] ?!

Why is there no mention of the voiced labio-velar approximant on this page or in its consonant chart or on IPA pulmonic consonant chart with audio, or in consonant? --Espoo (talk) 11:20, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

It is mentioned under co-articulated consonants.--Megaman en m (talk) 11:30, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
OK, thanks. The browser search found nothing because it's called labial-velar instead of labio-velar. In fact, even searching for labial-velar with a hyphen finds nothing because it's spelled with an en dash, but the links go to voiced labio-velar approximant with a hyphen and voiceless labialIZED velar approximant. Chaotic and very confusing. --Espoo (talk) 01:46, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, I had same question. In addition to making the term used for this phoneme uniform with the other articles, it would be good if it were noted here in this article, as stated in the article Voiced labialized-velar approximant, that "in inventory charts of languages with other labialized velar consonants, /w/ will be placed in the same column as those consonants", which explains why we find /w/ in the place of the velar consonant in the English language phonology section. -lethe talk + contribs 16:31, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
It's not typically labial-velar. That needs to be fixed. — kwami (talk) 21:39, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

⟨a⟩

“Among vowels, ⟨a⟩ is officially a front vowel, but is more commonly treated as a central vowel. The difference, to the extent it is even possible, is not phonemic in any language.” This statement is contradicted in the article for this phoneme - “The Hamont-Achel dialect of Limburgish has been reported to contrast long open front, central and back unrounded vowels. This is extremely unusual.” I’m not sure how to fix this, as I don’t know a ton about it, but I thought I’d point it out. ssk109 (talk) 02:16, 7 October 2021 (UTC)

Interesting. I wonder how the Hamont /a/ fits in the [a]~[ɐ] space. What they transcribe ⟨a⟩ may be closer to IPA [ɐ], just as what they transcribe ⟨ɪ⟩ is closer to IPA [e]. — kwami (talk) 04:39, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
It's not clear what is meant here. In Dutch there are lots of minimal pairs between /a/ and /ɑ/. −Woodstone (talk) 15:53, 7 October 2021 (UTC)
If they're truly flat in F space, that would be unusual. AFAICT, in Dutch as in most languages, /a/ is more open than /ɑ/. Near-open to open [æ a ɑ] wouldn't be all that unusual, nor would near-open [æ ɐ ɑ]. But open [a̟ ä ɑ̞] would be remarkable. I'm not sure it's possible. Jones and Ladefoged couldn't pronounce those vowels. — kwami (talk) 00:18, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
And let's not forget that the alleged three-way contrast between [aː äː ɑː] has not been independently verified to occur in Hamont (tho [ɑː] is entirely uncontroversial, of course). The auditory vowel chart can't be trusted as the positioning of /y/ is way off and too far away from /ø/ (Verhoeven's /ʏ/, which is an inaccurate symbol), so the same could be true for /æː/. And I have no idea how to read the formant vowel chart, and whether you can reliably distinguish open and near-open vowels on it. I bet you can't. Sol505000 (talk) 11:02, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

The placement of [ʜ] and [ʢ] is not standard

There is some problem in the consonants table.

In the standard IPA table,/ʜ/ should be voiceless epiglottal fricative and /ʢ/ should be the same place and manner with voiced. I understand the necessity that using it to express trill. But it is better to show their basic and standard definition that IPA association first?

This problem also in the article Voiceless epiglottal trill and Voiced epiglottal trill.

悽悽慘慘戚戚 (talk) 18:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The current arrangement of laryngeal sounds in the IPA chart was made in 1989 based on the understanding of the time. John Esling and colleagues have since made significant advancements in the field, and he regards [ʜ, ʢ] to be better described as trills at the same place of articulation as [ħ, ʕ]. Note added. Nardog (talk) 19:44, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I know John Esling was the president of IPA As.. But why the IPA chart in 2020 still show [ʜ] and [ʢ] is a fricative. Is it trill is an official usage of [ħ, ʕ]?悽悽慘慘戚戚 (talk) 07:30, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Official changes to the chart require voting, which requires sufficient members to be sufficiently informed to form an opinion. I doubt many have Esling's expertise. There are several places where the chart is inaccurate or misleading, for example in the coverage of tone, where the Chart is insufficient to parse the transcriptions in the Handbook and omits conventions adopted at the Kiel Convention. — kwami (talk) 20:09, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes it required voting to change the table...It seems already have it about 10 years ago, but I can't find the voting post. IPA could not be accurate for all a linguist, it only a greatest common divisor for the linguist. All linguist have their own elaboration for the symbol. Someone may think all back round vowel is near-back at real... some may think that [ɧ] is not a "simultaneous /ʃ/ and /x/"...We can't put all elaboration of IPA on a small table, it should only be discussed in that article in Voiceless epiglottal trill. It is mean that we need to change the table again if anyone has new idea of /\H/?
In my option, At least we should separate the fricative and trill base of the recorder idea in Voiceless epiglottal trill page. For an example of Berber language, Ridouane(2014) think [\H] is a fricative in Berber, so just count it as a fricative. Treated it as a trill is a misunderstanding for Ridouane's idea.悽悽慘慘戚戚 (talk) 07:14, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
That may be best. The advantage of the current setup is that it obviates an additional column. Regardless, it would be good to have a section on letters with disputed values and utility (e.g. ɱ ɲ c ɟ ʜ ʢ ɧ ʎ and the fricative/approx distinction). — kwami (talk) 20:03, 9 April 2021 (UTC)
I don't think obviated a column is a good idea (ɕ and ʑ also). But the section on letters in disputed should be added in the article. 悽悽慘慘戚戚 (talk) 07:30, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

@悽悽慘慘戚戚: Could you give the full ref to Ridouane (incl. page number)? I'd like to verify and add it to this article. I found something similar in Ridouane (2003) Suite de consonnes en berbere chleuh, p. 162-163.

Sorry for my laziness. Reference is : Ridouane, R. (2014). Tashlhiyt Berber. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 44(2), 207-221. doi:10.1017/s0025100313000388 悽悽慘慘戚戚 (talk) 07:13, 11 April 2021 (UTC)
@悽悽慘慘戚戚: Thanks, but I'm not finding anything about them not being trilled, so that doesn't seem to be good evidence that Elsing got it wrong. — kwami (talk) 11:26, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Also, wouldn't your argument mean that ⟨ʍ⟩ needs to go into the fricative row, as a labialized [xʷ] rather than a voiceless [w̥]? Does anyone use it that way? — kwami (talk) 04:21, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

ː Separate them base on their real phonene as we do as Voiceless alveolar affricate significant perceptual differences will be the best, but I am not sure besides of [ʜ] [ʢ] and [ʍ], how many article have the same problem. 悽悽慘慘戚戚 (talk) 07:30, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, ⟨χ⟩ can stand for a trill as well (or at least a simultaneous trill and a fricative). This is further complicated by the fact that frication can be (post)velar instead of uvular, but the trilling has to be uvular. So even ⟨x⟩ can stand for a fricated trill, which sounds very, very different from the canonical [x]. Sol505000 (talk) 12:25, 8 October 2021 (UTC)
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