Template talk:IPAc-en/Archive 3
This is an archive of past discussions about Template:IPAc-en. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 |
Removing the parens
I have a suggestion to make following a discussion at Talk:ʻOumuamua#First bold subject of the lead (near the bottom of that section).
Pronunciations are usually placed in the lead section directly after the name of the article within parentheses, along with other information such as etymologies. At the moment the template also renders the audio link in parens ( listen) which creates a parenthesis within a parenthesis. It doesn't really bother me much since I'm used to writing computer code, but it's not something you normally see in English prose. It becomes jarring even to me when the pronunciation is the only thing within parentheses, creating a double close parens at the end, such as: ʻOumuamua (/[invalid input: 'oh']ˈm[invalid input: 'oo']əˈm[invalid input: 'oo']ə/ )...
Would anybody object to dropping the parens around the listen part? Or is there some reason to keep them that escapes me? nagualdesign 06:20, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nagualdesign: I don't see a convincing reason to keep them. Then again, maybe I'm missing something too? Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:08, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you for the feedback. Since I'm unable to make the edit myself I've attached an {{edit protected}} template to this section. I have no idea if that's what's expected, or what the proper protocol is. Hopefully that should summon the wiki elves. nagualdesign 19:28, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- {{IPA audio link}} is where it's at, which is only semi-protected, so you don't need an edit-protected template. But do we really want to simply remove the parens? That would look like this:
- /ˌæləˈbæmə/
- which I find kinda silly. How about we use square brackets instead? Nardog (talk) 19:50, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- Actually it would look like this: Alabama (/ˌæləˈbæmə/ ) is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. Which I think looks okay. Don't you? nagualdesign 21:35, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- Not all uses of IPAc-en are enclosed by parentheses though. Also note that a change at {{IPA audio link}} would affect not only IPAc-en but all IPA-xx templates. Nardog (talk) 15:17, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
- Actually it would look like this: Alabama (/ˌæləˈbæmə/ ) is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. Which I think looks okay. Don't you? nagualdesign 21:35, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- Thank you for the feedback. Since I'm unable to make the edit myself I've attached an {{edit protected}} template to this section. I have no idea if that's what's expected, or what the proper protocol is. Hopefully that should summon the wiki elves. nagualdesign 19:28, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
/ɪə, ɛə, ʊə/ before stress
There exist words like spheroidal, aeration, and uranium, where a centering diphthong, /ɪə/, /ɛə/, or /ʊə/, occurs before a stressed syllable. Right now it's impossible to transcribe them accurately using this template because it doesn't allow /ɪə, ɛə, ʊə/ to be separated from /r/. A workaround is to write like /ɪərˈV, ɛərˈV, ʊərˈV/, but this would be simply inaccurate in terms of syllabification. /ɪˈrV, ɛˈrV, ʊˈrV/ would be inaccurate in RP. /iːˈrV, eɪˈrV, uːˈrV/ would be inaccurate in GA (if not in both). So this clearly needs to be fixed, but how?
One option is to add /ɪə, ɛə, ʊə/ as diaphonemes. But this could easily lead untrained editors to choose e.g. /ɪə/ where it should be /ɪər/ or /iə/ according to our diaphonemic principle, because, let's face it, most editors instating IPA notations must have little idea what a diaphoneme is.
Another is to add /ɪəˈr/, /ɛəˈr/, /ʊəˈr/, /ɪəˌr/, /ɛəˌr/, and /ʊəˌr/. This would certainly prevent misuse, but choosing words for the tooltips must prove difficult.
So I'm torn. I'd choose the first if I had to right now, but first I'd like to hear others' opinions. Nardog (talk) 18:00, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: The last option is the best one. IMO it's the only reasonable choice. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:04, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
- Done with the second solution, though the same sets of words are given for combinations with both primary and secondary stress because there were almost no words with the right combinations of segments and secondary stress, and on the assumption that readers are not going to be confused because usually there would be the primary stress later within the word. (Finding the word for /ɪəˈr/ was the most difficult. Candidates included xerography and Shiraz, but I assume spheroidal is the least variable.) Nardog (talk) 15:18, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: Should we add them to Help:IPA/English? Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Mr KEBAB: I don't think so. We added them for technical reasons, not because there's dialectal variation or phonemic status to warrant them to be listed as full-fledged diaphonemes. I think a footnote will do. Nardog (talk) 17:22, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: That's good enough for me. Are you sure though that we should remove CURE as an example word? Wells chose that word to represent /ʊər/, not /jʊər/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:44, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Mr KEBAB: I know, but even some of those who contributed to A Handbook of Varieties of English didn't get that right. Nardog (talk) 22:10, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: So let's mention that in a footnote. Not listing CURE when we list all other words used as names of lexical sets is a bit inconsistent. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Mr KEBAB: A footnote would be an overkill. I think this will do for the moment. Nardog (talk) 23:54, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: So let's mention that in a footnote. Not listing CURE when we list all other words used as names of lexical sets is a bit inconsistent. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Mr KEBAB: I know, but even some of those who contributed to A Handbook of Varieties of English didn't get that right. Nardog (talk) 22:10, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: That's good enough for me. Are you sure though that we should remove CURE as an example word? Wells chose that word to represent /ʊər/, not /jʊər/. Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:44, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Mr KEBAB: I don't think so. We added them for technical reasons, not because there's dialectal variation or phonemic status to warrant them to be listed as full-fledged diaphonemes. I think a footnote will do. Nardog (talk) 17:22, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- @Nardog: Should we add them to Help:IPA/English? Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:51, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
- Done with the second solution, though the same sets of words are given for combinations with both primary and secondary stress because there were almost no words with the right combinations of segments and secondary stress, and on the assumption that readers are not going to be confused because usually there would be the primary stress later within the word. (Finding the word for /ɪəˈr/ was the most difficult. Candidates included xerography and Shiraz, but I assume spheroidal is the least variable.) Nardog (talk) 15:18, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
Speak IPA on MS Edge
User:Glrx/Phoneme.js uses SSML and Web Speech to speak the phoneme strings produced by IPAc-en.
It works on MS Windows Edge, but not on other browsers. Chrome skips SSML markup, and Firefox speaks entire markup.
Some strings mess up.
/ar/
I've just removed an incorrect transcription */ˈkɑːrən/ from Charon. The first vowel was transcribed ar
and, clearly, what was meant was our /ær/ (so /ˈkærən/, including it was inappropriate anyway since it's just a phonetic variant of our /ˈkɛərən/). I don't know whether we should keep ar
or not, but if we do, it needs to be used for the marry vowel, not for START (which, if anything, should be /aːr/). As we know, /a/ is a common transcription of modern RP TRAP and (AFAIK) that symbol is not used for any other vowel, maybe save for some regional dialects.
Maybe we should just remove /ar/ after all. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:30, 12 May 2018 (UTC)
ar
converts to /ɑːr/ only because it's our respelling form of /ɑːr/. I think the aliases that are based on our respelling or the AHD notation are simply confusing and should be removed. Nardog (talk) 17:19, 12 May 2018 (UTC)- @Nardog: The respelling system used on dictionary.com uses
ar
for /ær/. I also think it's better to remove them. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:07, 12 May 2018 (UTC)- It is only being used 57 times currently (see hastemplate:"IPAc-en" insource:/\{\{IPAc-en[^\}]*\|ar/), so cleaning up all instances of
ar
should not be too difficult for anybody who wishes to discontinue it. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:26, 13 May 2018 (UTC)- Done. --maczkopeti (talk) 13:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
- @Maczkopeti: Thanks. But if we wanted to eliminate all respelling and AHD aliases, we would have to fix a couple hundred more articles. Nardog (talk) 13:30, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
- Removed the respelling/AHD-based aliases. I believe I took all necessary precautions, but I'll be checking the tracking category just in case. Nardog (talk) 15:57, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
- I noticed that you left
sh
,ô
,oi
,ou
,oy
,oyr
anduu
in. Was it on purpose? --maczkopeti (talk) 13:40, 14 June 2018 (UTC)- Maczkopeti, thank you for pointing this out.
sh
should have been removed along withch
,zh
, etc., but given the conversation below I'm going to keep it and restore the latter ones.ô
anduu
should have been removed so I just did.oi
,ou
,oy
, andoyr
are more or less legitimate IPA combinations (particularlyou
, which is the Jonesian notation) so I'd rather not touch them. Nardog (talk) 16:59, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
- Maczkopeti, thank you for pointing this out.
- I noticed that you left
- Removed the respelling/AHD-based aliases. I believe I took all necessary precautions, but I'll be checking the tracking category just in case. Nardog (talk) 15:57, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
- @Maczkopeti: Thanks. But if we wanted to eliminate all respelling and AHD aliases, we would have to fix a couple hundred more articles. Nardog (talk) 13:30, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
- Done. --maczkopeti (talk) 13:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
- It is only being used 57 times currently (see hastemplate:"IPAc-en" insource:/\{\{IPAc-en[^\}]*\|ar/), so cleaning up all instances of
- @Nardog: The respelling system used on dictionary.com uses
Drastic removal of aliases
A large number of aliases of the symbols were removed. I really wonder if this does not make it much more difficult to use. For example "ch" and "ng" seem very useful shortcuts for the average editor. And I have a hard time believing no pages were broken by this removal. −Woodstone (talk) 16:26, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
- No pages are broken unless you go back to old revisions of the pages that used them. For the reason for the removal, see the section above. The problem with the aliases based on respelling or American dictionaries is that, like discussed above, they may coincide the IPA for a different value. They also invite inappropriate uses of /i/, for example, where it should be /ɪ/, instated by those who didn't realize they could use only some respelling combinations but not all. So I'd be very much opposed to reintroducing them as far as the vowels are concerned. But those kinds of collisions are less likely to happen when it comes to consonants, so perhaps we could reintroduce
ch
,ng
,wh
,zh
, andkh
, which are unlikely to cause confusion. But I don't think we should reintroduceth
ordh
because /θ/ and /ð/ are both represented by th in orthography and many publications use ⟨TH⟩, ⟨th⟩, etc. to represent /ð/. I thinkJ
,dzh
, andC
are also confusing at best and shouldn't be reintroduced either. Nardog (talk) 16:56, 12 June 2018 (UTC)- Can we also remove the instances of
y
? I see potential for it to be mistaken for [y] in the future. --maczkopeti (talk) 10:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)- That's neither here nor there IMHO, especially compared to the potential outcry against a removal. Even some (particularly American) linguists use ⟨y⟩ in place of ⟨j⟩ while otherwise adhering to the IPA. Nardog (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- We could remove it once it becomes a common phonemic symbol for the GOOSE vowel (which is already [yː] or [ʏy] in Australia). For now, I think it can stay. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 14:30, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- @Maczkopeti: I never said dh was useless in respellings, just as an alias for /ð/ in IPAc-en. Nardog (talk) 14:40, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- Dh is rarely used in respellings anyway. I'm not saying we should remove it from the key, but we shouldn't encourage its use either, like with ow. --maczkopeti (talk) 14:55, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- Just because a respelling combination may not be readily intuitive doesn't mean it should never be used categorically. Such combinations may nonetheless be useful in longer words, for example. In any case, if you believe we shouldn't encourage some combination, please don't go ahead and change the respellings directly but bring it up at Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key first. Nardog (talk) 15:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- In my view, as a matter of principle, the template should never obscure any single valid IPA symbol. There may always crop up a loanword that needs it. That includes single latin letters used as IPA symbols. Consequently "y" should retain its IPA value. On the other hand combinations of latin letters are valuable shortcuts to type pronunciations. Prime examples are ch ng th dh (and perhaps kh zh wh). For vowels, its plain symbol plus the long marker should together be seen as one symbol and never be altered by the template.−Woodstone (talk) 15:30, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- Just because a respelling combination may not be readily intuitive doesn't mean it should never be used categorically. Such combinations may nonetheless be useful in longer words, for example. In any case, if you believe we shouldn't encourage some combination, please don't go ahead and change the respellings directly but bring it up at Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key first. Nardog (talk) 15:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- Dh is rarely used in respellings anyway. I'm not saying we should remove it from the key, but we shouldn't encourage its use either, like with ow. --maczkopeti (talk) 14:55, 13 June 2018 (UTC)
- Can we also remove the instances of
Broken talk pages
Some 75 talk pages are reporting {{error}}s, most as a result of the changes discussed above. Can someone fix these, please? I'm not really familiar with IPA, so I'd need a roadmap to help me fix them. Thanks, wbm1058 (talk) 17:46, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Wbm1058: One fix:
ɨ
,ɪ-
,i-
→ɪ
. — Eru·tuon 17:59, 2 July 2018 (UTC) - @Wbm1058: Thanks for reporting, I've fixed them all. Just to confirm though, is it just the Talk namespace (and obviously the main) where instances of Template:Error need to be eliminated, or is it all namespaces? The reason I didn't fixed them in talk namespaces at first is that there are also deprecated templates such as {{IPAEng}} but we're not making sure they display correctly either (even some instances of {{IPAc-en}} without errors don't show as originally intended as changes are made to the template), and also editing others' comments is generally discouraged (so someone just reverted me fixing IPAc-en errors!). If instances of Template:Error need to be reduced for maintenance (but we should refrain from correcting errors in talks for preservation's sake), one thing we can do is to suppress IPAc-en from inserting Template:Error in certain namespaces. Nardog (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Nardog: There are also a few in Wikipedia talk. I don't patrol all namespaces; I think that covers it. Suppressing the error in namespaces where it doesn't matter is fine. wbm1058 (talk) 01:57, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Wbm1058: Now that I think about it, would it be a good idea to stop invoking Template:Error and use
<strong class="error">...</strong>
directly? Erroneous transclusions are tallied at the tracking category anyway, from which unimportant namespaces such as Talk are already exempt. Nardog (talk) 13:36, 5 July 2018 (UTC)- @Nardog: When I want to document error conditions without actually triggering them, I replace {{error}} with {{strongbad}}. I think clearing these from the talk pages was appropriate and fine. You mentioned that you were reverted a couple of times, but editors understand once the situation is explained to them. I was thanked for this edit. The problem with categories like Category:Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions is that there are a gazillion cats like that, and they're empty most of the time. Few editors patrol them because it's a time-consuming bother (is there a way to watchlist for addition of pages to categories?) – I set up the {{error}} system as a convenient single bucket for high-priority issues to be addressed that are generally infrequently occurring. I often (several times a month) revert IPA-breaking edits and point to Help:IPA/English in my edit summaries. I find them because they are {{error}}s, as I don't patrol the category. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:05, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Wbm1058: Thank you for your prompt reply. I for one check the tracking category from time to time, but I don't know how many others. But if it's just "several times a month", then doing away with {{Error}} doesn't seem too harmful especially when transclusions on talks might obfuscate other errors that matter more in Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Error. (Editing transclusions with obsolete parameters in comments may also be problematic from a preservationist point of view, because in most cases the now-invalid input represented something the template no longer allows when it was inserted.)
is there a way to watchlist for addition of pages to categories?
There is: Uncheck "Hide... page categorization" on the watchlist and you'll see additions and removals to the categories you watch. But I've never found this particularly useful as a mass change could inundate the entire watchlist. Nardog (talk) 12:46, 6 July 2018 (UTC)- The template now inserts
<strong class="error">...</strong>
directly. No other module seems to be using Template:Error anyway. Nardog (talk) 14:37, 10 July 2018 (UTC)
- The template now inserts
- @Nardog: When I want to document error conditions without actually triggering them, I replace {{error}} with {{strongbad}}. I think clearing these from the talk pages was appropriate and fine. You mentioned that you were reverted a couple of times, but editors understand once the situation is explained to them. I was thanked for this edit. The problem with categories like Category:Ill-formatted IPAc-en transclusions is that there are a gazillion cats like that, and they're empty most of the time. Few editors patrol them because it's a time-consuming bother (is there a way to watchlist for addition of pages to categories?) – I set up the {{error}} system as a convenient single bucket for high-priority issues to be addressed that are generally infrequently occurring. I often (several times a month) revert IPA-breaking edits and point to Help:IPA/English in my edit summaries. I find them because they are {{error}}s, as I don't patrol the category. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:05, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
- @Wbm1058: Now that I think about it, would it be a good idea to stop invoking Template:Error and use
- @Nardog: There are also a few in Wikipedia talk. I don't patrol all namespaces; I think that covers it. Suppressing the error in namespaces where it doesn't matter is fine. wbm1058 (talk) 01:57, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- It would be helpful to have the template suggest replacements for deprecated input (as is done by Template:IPA on Wiktionary for incorrect IPA symbols, such as
:
in place ofː
). Unfortunately, I am not a template editor, so I can't add this feature to the module. — Eru·tuon 20:04, 2 July 2018 (UTC)- Actually, it's wikt:Module:IPA/templates, so we need a Lua module editor. wbm1058 (talk) 22:16, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
- I mean, I don't have privileges to edit Module:IPAc-en. I'll work on the proposed function in Module:IPAc-en/sandbox instead. [Edit: See examples at the bottom of Template:IPAc-en/testcases. It's a little annoying how big the messages are, but they are at least more helpful.] — Eru·tuon 22:24, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not sure about this. Not all editors will be able to handle multibyte IPA characters with ease and it may lead to incorrect transcriptions or them giving up instating transcriptions. What about a subst template that automatically replaces the input characters with the correct diaphonemes? Nardog (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- Well, a subst template would be handy. I did create templates on Wiktionary (wikt:Template:x2ipa, wikt:Template:x2ipachar) that you can put X-SAMPA characters into, and they will substitute into an IPA template with the equivalent IPA characters. But at least ⟨ɵ⟩ has two valid replacements (⟨ə⟩ or ⟨oʊ⟩), so the template would have to choose between them in some fashion.
- My modification allows you to copy the symbol you want from the preview and paste it into the edit box. (I unlinked the error message so that it doesn't take you to Help:IPA/English when you click on it.) That is somewhat helpful, if people know that they can do it. That's the strategy used on Wiktionary with wikt:Template:IPA.
- I would imagine most modern operating systems and browsers can handle copy-pasting of non-ASCII characters in the BMP, as it's a pretty basic feature. If they can't, they probably have other big problems with basic handling of Unicode that would make it hard for someone to use Wikipedia. But the suggestion could also be changed to an ASCII sequence. (But then other editors might spend time later on "fixing" the template by substituting the official IPA characters.) — Eru·tuon 00:48, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- I don't really see a point in your suggestion. The problem doesn't come from users instating new transcriptions with invalid characters; that is already deterred by the error message. But we don't want to ban all aliases, do we? Because that would require fixing all existing uses of a diaphoneme every time we make a change to the key.
ɨ
,ɵ
, etc. were at once full-fledged diaphonemes, which is why we have (or had) many pages using them and therefore why we discourage new insertions of them by merging, fixing, and/or deprecating them. Nardog (talk) 01:30, 3 July 2018 (UTC) - So perhaps a more desirable procedure for deprecating a diaphoneme may be to make the template insert a category on every page using it (e.g. "IPAc-en transcriptions using deprecated parameters"), fix all of them, and then deprecate it completely (if it is not suitable to leave it as an alias). Nardog (talk) 01:40, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- This sounds good to me. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 01:42, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- No, I'm not proposing deprecating aliases. See the list of suggestions in Module:IPAc-en/sandbox: it includes symbols that have recently been removed from the data module, but used to be valid. I guess the idea is only useful while the errors linked at the top of this thread are being corrected. — Eru·tuon 02:14, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- I don't really see a point in your suggestion. The problem doesn't come from users instating new transcriptions with invalid characters; that is already deterred by the error message. But we don't want to ban all aliases, do we? Because that would require fixing all existing uses of a diaphoneme every time we make a change to the key.
- I'm not sure about this. Not all editors will be able to handle multibyte IPA characters with ease and it may lead to incorrect transcriptions or them giving up instating transcriptions. What about a subst template that automatically replaces the input characters with the correct diaphonemes? Nardog (talk) 00:14, 3 July 2018 (UTC)
- I mean, I don't have privileges to edit Module:IPAc-en. I'll work on the proposed function in Module:IPAc-en/sandbox instead. [Edit: See examples at the bottom of Template:IPAc-en/testcases. It's a little annoying how big the messages are, but they are at least more helpful.] — Eru·tuon 22:24, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
- Actually, it's wikt:Module:IPA/templates, so we need a Lua module editor. wbm1058 (talk) 22:16, 2 July 2018 (UTC)
Tooltip for /ɜː/
Help talk:IPA/English#RfC: Should we acknowledge /ɜː/ as a marginal diaphoneme distinct from /ɜːr/? has been closed, so I'd like to discuss what tooltip to show for it. LiliCharlie has suggested "'öh' in 'föhn' (British Received Pronunciation)", but I don't think using a word that would actually be transcribed with /ɜː/ or mentioning a specific accent is a good idea. The average reader might not know what RP is or how föhn is pronounced in RP, or simply ignore the note and think it's whatever is the vowel they use in that word. I think the example word should be a common word pronounced with preconsonantal /ɜːr/, and the qualifier should be brief and non-technical. So I suggest "r-less 'ur' in 'nurse'", or if that sounds like an oxymoron, "non-rhotic 'ur' in 'nurse'". The former may come off as a contradiction, and the latter may be too technical. We can't have it both ways, but to me the former is better. Nardog (talk) 17:55, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
- Considering that it will only be used for British pronunciations that are explicitly marked as such, why not use a word that would be transcribed with this vowel? — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 18:52, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
- That would be helpful only to those who already speak British English. And words that would be transcribed with /ɜː/ tend to be obscure, so it would most likely exclude learners, who are rather the ones that benefit from transcriptions most. Nardog (talk) 19:08, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
- The transcriptions with /ɜː/ are only for British speakers anyway. These transcriptions are to help people know how to pronounce words in their own dialect, not to teach non-native speakers. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 22:06, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
- I can hardly imagine that being a popular opinion, especially when it comes to tooltips. Otherwise we wouldn't have had this kind of conversation. The purpose of transcriptions first and foremost is to document pronunciations and inform readers; it's not up to us to decide what they should do with that information.
- But I digress. I just want to hear from more people about the OP. Nardog (talk) 17:26, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
- The diaphonemic transcription system was set up for people to be able to read a single transcription in their own dialect. This is why the explanations at Help:IPA/English focus on the reader's dialect. The few examples that provide regionalized pronunciations are still designed for people to identify their own dialect's pronunciation. If people use the transcriptions for other purposes (dialectology or ESL learning) that's fine, but those considerations shouldn't take precedence over the primary one. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:55, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
- I concur with Nardog: "r-less 'ur' in 'nurse'" is easier to understand and less technical than "'öh' in 'föhn' (British Received Pronunciation)". --mach 🙈🙉🙊 13:49, 14 July 2018 (UTC)
- The diaphonemic transcription system was set up for people to be able to read a single transcription in their own dialect. This is why the explanations at Help:IPA/English focus on the reader's dialect. The few examples that provide regionalized pronunciations are still designed for people to identify their own dialect's pronunciation. If people use the transcriptions for other purposes (dialectology or ESL learning) that's fine, but those considerations shouldn't take precedence over the primary one. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:55, 13 July 2018 (UTC)
- The transcriptions with /ɜː/ are only for British speakers anyway. These transcriptions are to help people know how to pronounce words in their own dialect, not to teach non-native speakers. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 22:06, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
- That would be helpful only to those who already speak British English. And words that would be transcribed with /ɜː/ tend to be obscure, so it would most likely exclude learners, who are rather the ones that benefit from transcriptions most. Nardog (talk) 19:08, 12 July 2018 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 5 November 2018
This edit request to Module:IPAc-en/phonemes has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please copy the code from Module:IPAc-en/phonemes/sandbox to Module:IPAc-en/phonemes. The resulting diff should look like Special:Diff/867386636.
This will implement the result of the recent RfC, cf. RfC: Should we acknowledge /ɜː/ as a marginal diaphoneme distinct from /ɜːr/? by making the following change:
Current display | Display after requested change, as per RfC | |
---|---|---|
Mockup | UK: /ˈmɜːrbiəs/ | UK: /ˈmɜːbiəs/ |
Wiki | UK: /ˈmɜːbiəs/ (using {{IPAc-en}}) | UK: ⫽ˈmɜːbiəs⫽ (using {{IPAc-en/sandbox}}) |
Thanks. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 11:54, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
P.S.: I have verified that all of the articles that will have the new /ɜː/ are really meant to have it according to the RfC. You can search for them by using the following query: hastemplate:"IPAc-en" insource:/\{\{IPAc-en[^\}]*([3ɜ][ː:]?|\@:|əː)\|/ (currently there are 24 results). --mach 🙈🙉🙊 14:37, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
[invalid input: 'ɤ']
I get the above when trying to use ɤ in this template. That is IPA for pinyin "e" according to Help:IPA/Mandarin. I am trying to correct He (surname) which has /hiː/, which is totally incorrect at least for Mandarin. NTK (talk) 17:12, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- That is normal. The template is not meant to render the Mandarin pronunciation, but only an English approximation. That is why it only covers the native phonemes of the English language. I do not know that the best English approximation might be, but it is probably not /hiː/. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 20:08, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- For Mandarin, the IPA for "He" is /xɤ:/ or similar, which is what I changed it to. Given this template is widely used across Wikipedia for Mandarin and other non-English language pronunciations, I would love to know more about this "English approximation" you speak of which isn't mentioned on this template page or any policy page I can find (not at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation, Help:IPA/English, Help:IPA/Mandarin, Help:IPA, or Template:IPAc-en). I suppose English "approximations" would be /xə/ or even /hə/ (which is what it used to be), but I would like to know if there is a policy on this or a template for IPA Chinese/Mandarin. It seems odd to use a specialized and not-very-friendly system like IPA to convey an incorrect English approximation of foreign names. NTK (talk) 21:55, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- There are two templates you can use. One for Mandarin {{IPAc-cmn}} and one for Cantonese {{IPAc-yue}}. Because borrowings from other languages into English are irregular, it is often best practice to find a reliable source that indicates how English speakers pronounce the name, rather than guess by way of language transfer how English speakers might pronounce foreign terms and names based on their mutual phonologies. — Ƶ§œš¹ [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:21, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
- For Mandarin, the IPA for "He" is /xɤ:/ or similar, which is what I changed it to. Given this template is widely used across Wikipedia for Mandarin and other non-English language pronunciations, I would love to know more about this "English approximation" you speak of which isn't mentioned on this template page or any policy page I can find (not at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation, Help:IPA/English, Help:IPA/Mandarin, Help:IPA, or Template:IPAc-en). I suppose English "approximations" would be /xə/ or even /hə/ (which is what it used to be), but I would like to know if there is a policy on this or a template for IPA Chinese/Mandarin. It seems odd to use a specialized and not-very-friendly system like IPA to convey an incorrect English approximation of foreign names. NTK (talk) 21:55, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
Audio synthesis fallback when no sample file is linked?
Apparently, a GPL-lincensed synthesizer exists for English IPA exists. Has thought been given to hosting a copy on a Wikimedia site and using that in this template, so when there's no uploaded sample OGG file, a visitor could still click a fallback "( listen)" link? —Undomelin (talk) 23:25, 24 January 2019 (UTC)
- The link's voice does not sound good.
- Most browsers now include speech synthesis. The synthesizer on Window's Edge includes support for SSML's phoneme capability.
<?xml version="1.0"?> <speak version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis" xml:lang="en-US"> <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="mʊmˈbaɪ">Phoneme speech not available.</phoneme> </speak>
- User:Glrx/Phoneme.js can speak some IPA templates (/mʊmˈbaɪ/), but without phoneme-level support on Chrome and Firefox, such a feature would have little coverage.
- Glrx (talk) 17:45, 25 January 2019 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 23 April 2019
This edit request to Template:IPAc-en/pronunciation has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Please prepend {{subst:tfd}}
to Template:IPAc-en/pronunciation to nominate it for deletion. I have opened a TfD at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2019 April 23. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 01:41, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
- Done Izno (talk) 02:17, 23 April 2019 (UTC)
Support for indicating t variants in dialects?
Referencing http://ipa.typeit.org/, could we consider using /t̬/ for "flap t" normally pronounced as /ɾ/ in North American English? Additionally, could we consider something similar for what is often glottalized in the UK? -- Daviddwd (talk) 00:55, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
- The kind of transcription this template provides is diaphonemic, which is essentially an amalgamation of phonemic transcriptions for multiple accents (as indicated by the slashes enclosing the notation—see International Phonetic Alphabet#Types of transcription). I don't know of any analysis that regards [ɾ] in North American English as phonemic, so it wouldn't make sense to mark this allophony in our (dia)phonemic notation. See Help:IPA/English, which this template links to. Also, the talk of said help page is a more appropriate forum to post queries like yours, as the top of this talk page suggests. Nardog (talk) 19:13, 27 April 2019 (UTC)
IPA text not displaying on websites using Wikipedia text
Websites that quote Wikipedia text via the API do not seem to receive the IPA text contents. For example, see https://musicbrainz.org/artist/8b431ac6-0806-4e4a-9b6b-1734370fa890. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 01:06, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
- That's the site's business, not ours. There are mirror sites that display IPAc-en correctly.[1] Nardog (talk) 09:38, 3 June 2019 (UTC)
θ and ts are missing, and some other
Some voices are missing. --Obsuser (talk) 12:12, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
- /θ/ isn't missing and /ts/ is not a single phoneme in English, unlike /tʃ/ or /dʒ/. If you're transcribing a word in a language other than English, use one of these. Nardog (talk) 19:13, 11 August 2019 (UTC)
Also
Assuming I should be asking this here rather than at Help:IPA/English... Would it be helpful for us to add an "also" function in the IPAc-en template? I use this quite a lot and I see it appears to be in vogue right now to represent common alternative pronunciations, particularly associated with some dialect (perhaps even a majority variant in this dialect). For example, I was just editing the Machiavelli pronunciation to read /ˌmækiəˈvɛli/, also US: /ˌmɑːk-/, which could benefit from something along the lines of this kind of template: {{IPAc-en|also|US|ˌ|m|ɑː|k|-}}. Wolfdog (talk) 11:39, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
- I would support adding options for "also", "also UK:", "also US:", "UK also", and "US also" individually. We essentially abandoned the support for simultaneous multiple label codes because that led to clumsy annotations like "pronunciation: /ɪɡˈzɑːmpəl/" and "US /ɪɡˈzæmpəl/" (sans colon). In the long term I believe these IPA templates should support manually input labels in addition to the canned ones, but that's a topic for another day I guess. Nardog (talk) 13:22, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Wolfdog: What do you think? Nardog (talk) 09:59, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
- I use also a lot, too, and I agree it would be helpful to have 'UK also' etc. (which IMO sound better than 'also UK:' etc. that I personally use to keep the automatic link given by the code). 〜イヴァンスクルージ九十八[IvanScrooge98](会話) 10:25, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
- "UK also" and "also UK:" have slightly different connotations. The former implies the labeled pronunciation is merely a minor variant even in the UK, while a pronunciation labeled "also UK:" may be more or equally common in the UK than the one given without a label. So I would include both. Nardog (talk) 10:39, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
- @Nardog: Oh sorry, I thought it'd be clear that I basically agreed. I agree! Although, now that you spell out what you believe the two distinct connotations to be, I'd have to say I doubt that that's really as obvious to others as you might think. It certainly didn't occur to me. I think I take any appearance of "also" to mean a ranges anywhere from a minor to major alternative. Not sure how that'd be resolved, though I appreciate your idea of trying to make such a distinction. I'm happy to go along with it if that's the best we can do for concision; it just doesn't seem self-explanatory in my view. Wolfdog (talk) 00:08, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
- Done. I'm not necessarily advocating for making such a distinction, just saying it could be made, and it doesn't hurt to have them both so editors can freely choose between them. Nardog (talk) 09:19, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
- Rejoice! I'm so happy to see common sense as y'all see above. I shall add it among written 'arguments', that is entries after |.- Adam37 Talk 16:21, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
- Done. I'm not necessarily advocating for making such a distinction, just saying it could be made, and it doesn't hurt to have them both so editors can freely choose between them. Nardog (talk) 09:19, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 27 August 2019
This edit request to Module:IPAc-en has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Change the "letter" in /ər/: 'er' in 'letter'
to something like "her" or "maternal" or "urban" because most English accents don't say the "er" when unemphasised. Nixinova T C 22:42, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
- Not done. See Help:IPA/English. The sound in urban is symbolized by /ɜːr/ in this system. Nardog (talk) 23:03, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
No options for other varieties of English?
Recently I came across a problem when trying to add the IPA to the page Portage. Canada uses a different pronunciation from both the UK and the US, owing to the fact that it is a French loanword. Why are US and UK the only options for giving distinctions based on the variety of English?--Molandfreak (talk, contribs, email) 05:38, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
No tooltip for "j"?
At the article Euripides, there's no specific example sound given with a tooltip upon hover over the "j". Is this a mistake? Jason Quinn (talk) 02:14, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- No, it shows "/j/: 'y' in 'yes'". Perhaps "j" in your environment is too small to put the cursor on with ease, but it'll appear if you try a little hard. Nardog (talk) 02:23, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
- I see it now too and it's easy now whereas before it simply wasn't showing. I even had tried zooming the text as big as possible over the same concern you suggested and the tooltip for "j" was simply not showing before. Dunno. Thanks for reply. Jason Quinn (talk) 05:26, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
A discussion could use your input
A discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#IPA-x templates could use your input. --Gonnym (talk) 11:39, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Dipthong Ambiguity
I noticed in the article Melissa Benoist that the IPA representation of her surname is ambiguous. Her name is pronounced as two syllables: /bəˈnɔ͜ɪst/ (or /bəˈnɔɪ̯st/, depending on one's transcriptional preferences). But the transcription given in the article could be reasonably read as three syllables: /bəˈnɔ.ɪst/. The template's tooltip does clear up the confusion, but readers with some familiarity with IPA will not necessarily be reading the tooltips. I would be surprised if there aren't other articles that have similar ambiguities. (Admittedly, I couldn't find any other examples in a quick search; but it's a hard thing to search for.)
As far as I can tell, the IPAc-en template does not allow for an unambiguous transcription, using either a tie-bar or the non-syllabic diacritic.
I don't know if this would be best resolved with a modification to the template to allow for explicit transcription of diphthongs, or if Help:IPA/English should be re-written to make explicit that such consecutive vowels should be read as diphthongs unless otherwise specified with an IPA dot ⟨.⟩. (This is implicit in footnote #38 in Help:IPA/English, but I had to go looking for it.)
Am I making too big a deal of this? Is there a better fix I haven't considered?
-Dave314159 (talk) 20:20, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
- I think this is not a big deal. It seems that plain [ɔɪ] is the preferred way for transcribing this diphthong in pronunciation dictionaries, cf. Help:IPA/Conventions for English. Strictly speaking, the transcription is not even ambiguous in the Gimson-style IPA convention we are using, where the sign /ɔ/ cannot occur by itself, but only in the combinations /ɔɪ/ and /ɔː/. Of course, there are other IPA conventions without the length mark where words like sawing would be transcribed in an ambiguous way as /ˈsɔɪŋ/. In our convention, it is transcribed unambiguously as /ˈsɔːɪŋ/.
- BTW, the /bəˈnɔɪst/ pronunciation feels extremely weird to me. Every fibre in my body tells me it should really be [bənwa], but hey, that’s what you get for speaking French. ☺ --mach 🙈🙉🙊 14:16, 2 May 2020 (UTC)
Link
It would be helpful in Module:IPAc-en/phonemes to link the word "catch" to Glottal stop, in this line:
tooltip = "/ʔ/: the catch in 'uh-oh'",
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:20, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- How is that possible? The tooltips appear in the output only as
title=
attributes. Nardog (talk) 07:38, 6 August 2020 (UTC)- Sorry, to be clearer, I'm talking about the content that appears at Template:IPAc-en/doc in the "Diaphoneme codes" table; not the rendered output of the template. If I've mis-traced which fragment of module code is generating that material, then we'll need to track it down. This is a good example of why /doc pages for templates/modules should not be generated by code but just exist as documents. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:53, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- The code is used for both the rendered output of the template and the documentation. So it's impossible to add a link that only appears in the latter without making changes not just to the data but to the internal code. I don't agree with your last sentence; generating documentation from the code that's used for template output prevents discrepancies between the code and the documentation. The documentation of this template shouldn't tell you how to transcribe or what each symbol means—that's the job of Help:IPA/English—but tell you how to use the template. Nardog (talk) 06:21, 7 August 2020 (UTC)
- Sorry, to be clearer, I'm talking about the content that appears at Template:IPAc-en/doc in the "Diaphoneme codes" table; not the rendered output of the template. If I've mis-traced which fragment of module code is generating that material, then we'll need to track it down. This is a good example of why /doc pages for templates/modules should not be generated by code but just exist as documents. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:53, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
A replacement example
This one is terrible:
/nj/: 'n' in 'new'
Something like 350 million English speakers do not use that sound, but a regular /n/, in that word. Try something like:
/nj/: 'ny' in 'vinyard'
or
/nj/: 'gn' in 'vignette'
— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
- No, /dj, lj, nj, sj, tj, θj, zj/ as distinct diaphonemes are specifically for when /j/ is subject to yod-dropping or coalescence. When it is present even in accents with dropping or coalescence they should be transcribed as
n|j
etc. See Help:IPA/English. Nardog (talk) 07:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)- Ah, okay. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:54, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
Adding support for attribution parameter
I would like to add support for an optional "attribution" parameter, as described at Template:IPA audio link. This will enable us to simplify the audio links for CC0 audio files and reduce the parenthetical clutter in lead sentences. I have added support to {{IPA-fr}} as an example. You can see the output with "attribution=no" at [2] vs. [3]. Note that this does not change the output for existing uses. An editor has to explicitly add "attribution=no" to the {{IPAc-en}} transclusion within the article in order to get the simpler audio link. We would also need to update the template documentation to explain how and when to use the parameter. Any objections or concerns with making this change? Kaldari (talk) 16:43, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
- Since there were no objections, I added support for "attribution=no" and updated the documentation. Kaldari (talk) 03:51, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Kaldari: I missed this the first time so I'm sorry to chime in so late, but I don't think this is a good idea. This results in the speaker icon having different functionalities when
attribution=no
is present and when it is not, which is not user-friendly (cf. WP:ASTONISH). I also don't fundamentally agree with the idea that if the file is CC0 there need not be a link to the description; there's no guarantee the audio is accurate or consistent with the accompanying transcription, and IMO there should be a way for the reader to know more about the recording regardless of its license. I would like to see more consensus-building if this were to be rolled out widely. Nardog (talk) 09:44, 24 November 2020 (UTC)- @Nardog: I agree that it is confusing having two different functionalities for the speaker icon, but I think we should change the default behavior rather than the
attribution=no
behavior. It's a nearly universal UI convention that clicking on a speaker icon either plays a sound or let's you change the volume. I always instinctually click the speaker icon expecting it to play the sound and then remember I have to click the "listen" link instead. The default behavior definitely seems more against WP:ASTONISH to me. I don't think anyone would assume that clicking on a speaker icon would take them to a page of information about a sound file. It would be better if this template output something like ( info) by default. I believe the only reason it wasn't implemented that way to begin with was because of bug T18409 (which I did a workaround for). - Regarding not providing a link to the file page, I'm not sure I understand your argument. How would linking to the file page improve the accuracy or consistency of the audio? If we were talking about a recording of a piece of music or a speech, I would agree that we need to provide a link to the audio file page, but we're just talking about simple pronunciations. Unless the user is an editor, I think it's unlikely that they would want to do anything other than hear the pronunciation and keep reading the article. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong. I suppose the best solution would be to have it always output just a speaker icon which then launches a small javascript player that includes a link to the file page (similar to what the {{listen}} template does). That way you wouldn't lose any functionality, but you also wouldn't have the article clutter that this template currently creates. If you feel strongly that the current
attribution=no
behavior is bad, I can undo it. But either way, I would like to come up with ideas for how to improve this template, as it adds a lot of clutter to our already over-cluttered lead sentences. Kaldari (talk) 01:26, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
- @Nardog: I agree that it is confusing having two different functionalities for the speaker icon, but I think we should change the default behavior rather than the
Discussion on better automating respelling
You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Automating Template:Respell better. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 01:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
Template-protected edit request on 26 October 2020
This edit request to Module:IPAc-en/phonemes has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I'd like to request code such as "flipr" be added which renders as ɹ. I understand that r is preferred in English-specific contexts, but this would be an extremely useful (perhaps unadvertised) option to have when drawing a contrast between the pronunciation of a word in English and in another language that has alveolar trills. Botterweg14 (talk) 21:40, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
- Please put the code you require on Module:IPAc-en/phonemes/sandbox — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:09, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
- Thanks, done! Botterweg14 (talk) 12:43, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
- Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:47, 30 October 2020 (UTC)
- The whole point of this template is to present symbols listed at Help:IPA/English in a coherent manner and link the input to that page so that readers can look up what each symbol means. ⟨ɹ⟩ is not listed there, and it will never be, because the type of notation it adopts is diaphonemic and English has only one /r/, which varies in realization from [ɹ] to [ɻ] to [ɾ] to [r] to [ʋ] to nothing. In fact, in Sobibor, a transcription at Sobibor extermination camp of which was the only one in which
flipr
was used as of this comment, the /r/ in /ɔːr/ is not even present in the many non-rhotic accents of English. /ɔːr/ represents an abstract category, or a diaphoneme, of "whatever is the sound in war". As explained in MOS:PRON, symbols used in IPA(c)-xx templates and the corresponding keys must be in agreement (since otherwise it defeats the whole purpose), so if you want to add ⟨ɹ⟩ in IPAc-en then you must first convince the community to add it to Help:IPA/English, but that's not going to happen. If you want to add allophonic transcriptions you can use {{IPA-all}} in addition to the diaphonemic transcription, but I don't see how that's useful except to illustrate e.g. the local pronunciation of an English-speaking place (which Sobibor obviously is not) since the whole point of the diaphonemic transcription is to be able to be pronounced by speakers of all kinds of English accents. Undone. Nardog (talk) 09:01, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
Circular definition of how to pronounce /ɔɪər/
How do you pronounce /ɔɪər/?
The top of the article coir helpfully provides IPA keys and invokes this template. This template defines it only in terms of a word I've never heard of, 'loir'. I clicked for more details and was taken to Help:IPA/English, which very helpfully defines those phonemes as being pronounced like the oir in coir.
Dear linguists of Wikipedia, please update this template to provide a definition of /ɔɪər/ which is not circular and does not rely on knowing the French pronunciation of Loir. —dgiestc 17:30, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
- /ɔɪər/ is such a rare diaphoneme that coir is about the only common enough word we can use to illustrate it. No, it does not rely on knowing the French pronunciation of Loir, which would be /wɑːr/, not /ɔɪər/. I've removed the transcription at Coir and changed loir in the tooltip to coir. There's no other reasonable way AFAICS. Nardog (talk) 17:58, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
- The tooltip might be circular, but the IPA is not. Perhaps we can explain in words. — kwami (talk) 18:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
- Does the word warrant a transcription though? The spelling couldn't be more straightforward; the only reason I can see it might be confusing is the more common word choir, but is it so confusing as to require a transcription? It's closer to the laughter, sword camp than to synecdoche, atlatl in WP:LEADPRON if you ask me. Nardog (talk) 02:14, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Your point about rare diaphonemes prompted me to look up rhymes of 'coir'. This site gave several perfect rhymes, but all appear to be other foreign loanwords or names. I'm not a linguist, but to me this suggests /ɔɪər/ may not actually be an English phoneme. —dgiestc 01:28, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- It definitely isn't, but it is a diaphoneme in our Help:IPA/English system. Whether non-rhotic accents of English have phonemic triphthongs is controversial, with two out of three major pronouncing dictionaries positing none, and even the one that does (Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary) admits tautosyllabic /aɪə, aʊə/ but not /ɔɪə/. But all three transcribe coir with tautosyllabic /ɔɪr/ (as the only option or one of two) for their American models, so reason to posit /ɔɪər/ as a diaphoneme is solid. (I wouldn't place any trust in that site. I'm having a hard time coming up with any situation where noir is rhymed with coir.) Nardog (talk) 01:56, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Can you point me to a page where this encyclopedia needs and uses the /ɔɪər/ diaphoneme outside help pages and templates? What have we lost if we follow the other renowned pronouncing dictionaries and treat it the same way we treat the /ɔɪər/ in employer? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 03:02, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Coir, Jan Moir, and List of English words without rhymes are currently the only articles using the diaphoneme. It wouldn't be to "follow the other renowned pronouncing dictionaries" if we "treat[ed] it the same way we treat the /ɔɪər/ in employer" because otherwise we have no way of showing "/ɔɪə/ (however many syllables) in RP, /ɔɪr/ in GA". Nardog (talk) 18:08, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Is there some reason /ɔɪər/ can't be represented as /ɔɪ.ər/: that is, /ɔɪ/ (CHOICE) + /ər/ (lettER)? Wolfdog (talk) 21:45, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Employer can (and should) be, but not coir if the "renowned pronouncing dictionaries" are anything to go by, because it's monosyllabic in GA according to them. Nardog (talk) 22:19, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Is there some reason /ɔɪər/ can't be represented as /ɔɪ.ər/: that is, /ɔɪ/ (CHOICE) + /ər/ (lettER)? Wolfdog (talk) 21:45, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Coir, Jan Moir, and List of English words without rhymes are currently the only articles using the diaphoneme. It wouldn't be to "follow the other renowned pronouncing dictionaries" if we "treat[ed] it the same way we treat the /ɔɪər/ in employer" because otherwise we have no way of showing "/ɔɪə/ (however many syllables) in RP, /ɔɪr/ in GA". Nardog (talk) 18:08, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- Can you point me to a page where this encyclopedia needs and uses the /ɔɪər/ diaphoneme outside help pages and templates? What have we lost if we follow the other renowned pronouncing dictionaries and treat it the same way we treat the /ɔɪər/ in employer? Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 03:02, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- It definitely isn't, but it is a diaphoneme in our Help:IPA/English system. Whether non-rhotic accents of English have phonemic triphthongs is controversial, with two out of three major pronouncing dictionaries positing none, and even the one that does (Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary) admits tautosyllabic /aɪə, aʊə/ but not /ɔɪə/. But all three transcribe coir with tautosyllabic /ɔɪr/ (as the only option or one of two) for their American models, so reason to posit /ɔɪər/ as a diaphoneme is solid. (I wouldn't place any trust in that site. I'm having a hard time coming up with any situation where noir is rhymed with coir.) Nardog (talk) 01:56, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
- The tooltip might be circular, but the IPA is not. Perhaps we can explain in words. — kwami (talk) 18:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
ᵻ should be an alias for ə
We have a bunch of schwis that now display as the KIT vowel. If we're not going to follow the diaphonemic convention this template is supposed to be based on, these should be schwa for all the people who don't distinguish reduced vowels. — kwami (talk) 09:25, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
- The only reason
ᵻ
is an alias at all is that it was a distinct diaphoneme before it was deprecated. Changing what it converts to obviously changes how words are transcribed in articles, so if it needs to be changed, so does Help:IPA/English. So this is not the right venue. Nardog (talk) 03:47, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
I'll take it there then. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
Error in pronunciation of the sound /ɔ/
Hi, why this IPA pronunciation: {{IPAc-en||ˈ|b|ɜ|r|k|h|ɔ|f}} that its output is /ˈbɜːrkh[invalid input: 'ɔ']f/ makes an error for the sound /ɔ/? This IPA symbol exists in https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:IPA_pronunciation_key in the section Vowels. Please correct that. Thanks, Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 06:37, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Hooman Mallahzadeh: We always mark ɔ as a long vowel, and we also enter ɜːr is a single parameter, so it should be written {{IPAc-en||ˈ|b|ɜːr|k|h|ɔː|f}} with output /ˈbɜːrkhɔːf/. —Mahāgaja · talk 10:54, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Mahagaja Isn't it better to comment the message "Mark ɔ as a long vowel" when such exceptions arising, instead of the showing the existing red exception message "[invalid input: 'ɔ']"? Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 11:03, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- ⟨ɔ⟩ is ambiguous. In the qualitative notation common in North America it means the THOUGHT vowel, but in the quantitative notation popularized by first editions of the English Pronouncing Dictionary it represents the LOT vowel, which is now more commonly written ⟨ɒ⟩. Nardog (talk) 11:11, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Nardog@Mahagaja I found that pronunciation for Birkhoff in this site: https://www.xoxomary.com/words/how-to-pronounce-the-word-birkhoff-in-american-english-w87098.html. And this type of using (ambiguous) ⟨ɔ⟩ in phonetic transcription is highly frequent. But for the word "thought" in the site https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/thought which belongs to Oxford it is pronounced as /θɔt/ and by using the this template, we have {{IPAc-en|θ|ɔ|t}} which produces /θ[invalid input: 'ɔ']t/ again with an exception message. The usage of the (probably ambiguous) vowel ⟨ɔ⟩ in phonetic transcription in highly common, e.g. it is frequently used in Oxford. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:08, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- So what? IPAc-en is a template for representing pronunciation in the system laid out at Help:IPA/English and therefore only accepts the diaphonemes listed there. Nardog (talk) 12:14, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Nardog So that Oxford pronounces "thought" as /θɔt/ and claimed it is IPA too, but it is not in the version of IPA used by Help:IPA/English. This confusion in the versions of IPA is very dangerous. I really think that Oxford pronunciation version is more fundamental and basic than the version of IPA that Wikipedia uses in this template. Oxford should not change its version, but we should change this template so that it would be compatible with IPA version of Oxford too. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:32, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- Um, even despite the fact Oxford uses a scheme for British English no other publisher uses, another scheme for American English, and yet another scheme for its learner's dictionaries, and despite the fact our IPA for English is supposed to cover a variety of accents?
The IPA does not provide a phonological analysis for a particular language, let alone a single 'correct' transcription, but rather the resources to express any analysis so that it is widely understood.
Nardog (talk) 12:41, 5 May 2022 (UTC)- @Nardog I really think that this template lacks an important argument named "reference" that redirects the users to a reliable source of extraction of pronunciation and I really think that, when the "reference argument" is not empty, then it should accept the "Oxford scheme" for the pronunciation of /θɔt/ and the vowel ⟨ɔ⟩. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:02, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- So you're proposing that the encyclopedia stop using the dialect-neutral scheme for English and start using different schemes across articles? How do you suggest we decide which scheme to use in each article, and how would that benefit readers? Nardog (talk) 13:11, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Nardog I really think that this template lacks an important argument named "reference" that redirects the users to a reliable source of extraction of pronunciation and I really think that, when the "reference argument" is not empty, then it should accept the "Oxford scheme" for the pronunciation of /θɔt/ and the vowel ⟨ɔ⟩. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:02, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- Um, even despite the fact Oxford uses a scheme for British English no other publisher uses, another scheme for American English, and yet another scheme for its learner's dictionaries, and despite the fact our IPA for English is supposed to cover a variety of accents?
- @Nardog So that Oxford pronounces "thought" as /θɔt/ and claimed it is IPA too, but it is not in the version of IPA used by Help:IPA/English. This confusion in the versions of IPA is very dangerous. I really think that Oxford pronunciation version is more fundamental and basic than the version of IPA that Wikipedia uses in this template. Oxford should not change its version, but we should change this template so that it would be compatible with IPA version of Oxford too. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:32, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- So what? IPAc-en is a template for representing pronunciation in the system laid out at Help:IPA/English and therefore only accepts the diaphonemes listed there. Nardog (talk) 12:14, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- Who uses those editions of EPD anymore? I think that CUBE is a better and more relevant example as of 2022. If it wasn't for CUBE we could use ⟨ɔ⟩ as an alias of ⟨ɔː⟩. Sol505000 (talk) 12:58, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- Many bilingual dictionaries are still stuck with the Jonesian notation. Even if not (or CUBE), the template rejecting it is helpful because it prompts the transcriber to clarify which diaphoneme they mean. Nardog (talk) 13:05, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Nardog I'm not agree with you! If the "reference argument" is applied, then we should accept the other (like Jonesian) pronunciation notations, I mean making a change (a big change e.g., ɔ to ɔ:) in the transcription of Oxford pronunciation is unreasonable. When referenced, the pronunciation in "Jonesian notation" should be accepted, because sometimes the "reference" is highly important for us, and pronunciation should be written exactly. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:15, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- So if I'm citing CUBE I can use ⟨ɔ⟩ to mean the LOT vowel and if I'm citing NOAD it can mean THOUGHT? So the reader cannot know whether ⟨hɔk⟩ is a transcription for hock or hawk just by looking at it? I mean, bring it up at Help talk:IPA/English if you must. Good luck finding anyone who agrees with you though. Nardog (talk) 13:31, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Nardog I'm not agree with you! If the "reference argument" is applied, then we should accept the other (like Jonesian) pronunciation notations, I mean making a change (a big change e.g., ɔ to ɔ:) in the transcription of Oxford pronunciation is unreasonable. When referenced, the pronunciation in "Jonesian notation" should be accepted, because sometimes the "reference" is highly important for us, and pronunciation should be written exactly. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 13:15, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- Many bilingual dictionaries are still stuck with the Jonesian notation. Even if not (or CUBE), the template rejecting it is helpful because it prompts the transcriber to clarify which diaphoneme they mean. Nardog (talk) 13:05, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Nardog@Mahagaja I found that pronunciation for Birkhoff in this site: https://www.xoxomary.com/words/how-to-pronounce-the-word-birkhoff-in-american-english-w87098.html. And this type of using (ambiguous) ⟨ɔ⟩ in phonetic transcription is highly frequent. But for the word "thought" in the site https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/thought which belongs to Oxford it is pronounced as /θɔt/ and by using the this template, we have {{IPAc-en|θ|ɔ|t}} which produces /θ[invalid input: 'ɔ']t/ again with an exception message. The usage of the (probably ambiguous) vowel ⟨ɔ⟩ in phonetic transcription in highly common, e.g. it is frequently used in Oxford. Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 12:08, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- ⟨ɔ⟩ is ambiguous. In the qualitative notation common in North America it means the THOUGHT vowel, but in the quantitative notation popularized by first editions of the English Pronouncing Dictionary it represents the LOT vowel, which is now more commonly written ⟨ɒ⟩. Nardog (talk) 11:11, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
- @Mahagaja Isn't it better to comment the message "Mark ɔ as a long vowel" when such exceptions arising, instead of the showing the existing red exception message "[invalid input: 'ɔ']"? Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 11:03, 5 May 2022 (UTC)
Speaker icon when audio file is present
The little black speaker icon that appears when this template includes an audio file causes issues on mobile devices using the Wikipedia app's dark mode. On the darkest dark mode setting, this icon is invisible against the black background. Is there a way we can control for this? Either having the color dynamically switch to white like with the wiki text or change the permanent black color to something else, possibly the color of links? I don't know if this is the right place; I can't tell what template or module governs the speaker icon. Thrakkx (talk) 02:28, 24 September 2022 (UTC)
Unnecessary tooltips?
I suggest that the tooltips for /b/, /d/, /f/, /ɡ/, /h/, /k/, /l/, /m/, /n/, /p/, /r/, /s/, /t/, /v/, /w/, /z/ and /u/ should be removed. At least in my opinion, they're unnecessary. This would, however, be useful in the Simple English Wikipedia.
Ⲕրⲁիօրետ (tɒk) 10:27, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
- Agree
- Hooman Mallahzadeh (talk) 11:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
- That would result in notations like /ˌæləˈbæmə/, which I find jarring. Nardog (talk) 18:11, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
I take it back - this would make the notation horrendous looking. Ⲕրⲁիօրետ (tɒk) 18:12, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
Add ascii aliases for 'jU@r'?
Seriously, at least the X-SAMPA one. Hopefully others like "jur" too. T3h 1337 b0y 01:42, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
- Help:IPA/English no longer lists /jʊər/ as a distinct diaphoneme, so
jʊər
is only kept for compatibility. Usej|U@r
. Nardog (talk) 16:47, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
exclamation point generates stripped tag for span lint error
@Nardog, Mr. Stradivarius, MaxSem, Thumperward, Kaldari, Ezhiki, Kwamikagami, Deflective, and Woodstone: The markup {{IPAc-en|!}}
generates a stripped tag lint error for </span>
. Behold:
Please fix. —Anomalocaris (talk) 02:17, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- Error suppressed. This strikes me as an error on the linter's part though. Nardog (talk) 07:25, 8 August 2023 (UTC)
- Nardog: Thank you for fixing Module:IPAc-en! —Anomalocaris (talk) 21:18, 8 August 2023 (UTC)