Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key/Archive 4

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Use respelling examples in key

The key lists the respelling symbols and example words that have the sound in question, but it does not demonstrate how to respell those example words in full. This can sometimes lead to confusion about how the symbols are properly used. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 07:01, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Kh

What is the point of describing "kh->loch->/x/ but then adding "Pronounced like k by many speakers"? We may as well say that "s" is pronounced "th" by many speakers, which is equally true. It's all very well saying this is descriptive and not prescriptive, but having a "guide" or a "key" implies some sort of prescriptivism! "Ch" is a Scottish sound and it is properly pronounced as /x/. --John (talk) 18:44, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Replacing /x/ with /k/ isn't a speech impediment like a lisp, though. Many English speakers outside of Scotland really can't make a /x/ and replace it with /k/. Probably 90% or more of Americans when singing "Loch Lomond" or speaking of the Loch Ness Monster will pronounce loch with a /k/. Even I probably would in most circumstances, and I have no difficulty saying /x/. (I use it all the time when I'm speaking German.) But if I said something about the Loch Ness Monster to another American and pronounced it with /x/ it would sound affected and pedantic. For someone from Scotland it's different. (It's only replaced with /k/ at the end of a syllable though; at the beginning of a syllable in words like Hanukkah and chutzpah it's replaced with /h/.) Angr (talk) 10:22, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

How do you pronounce Bahrain or Dhahran, when talking to another American? --John (talk) 10:58, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Bahrain is /bɑˈreɪn/. I don't suppose I've ever uttered Dhahran in my life, but if I did, my first attempt would be /dɑˈrɑn/. In both cases probably influenced more by the spelling than by the Arabic pronunciation. Angr (talk) 13:36, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

The BBC always pronounces them with the /x/ sound. I am very sceptical indeed of the claim that anyone cannot pronounce it. I think people sometimes do not like to pronounce it, but it is that which is an affectation. I am deeply uncomfortable having a page which states this in the WP namespace, without either a reference or a consensus to include it. --John (talk) 14:34, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

I meant "cannot pronounce" in the sense of "haven't learned to pronounce", not the sense of "are physically incapable of pronouncing". Angr (talk) 15:04, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

How about chutzpah? How do you pronounce that in your ideolect? I lived in the States for five years and I heard "hoots-pa" a few times but most Americans seem to be able to pronounce it correctly, with the /x/ in the start of the word. As you say, when Americans speak German they seem to say "ich" and "nicht" without any problems. I am getting more uncomfortable as this conversation goes on; we should always defer to reliable sources for encyclopedic content, and to as wide a consensus as possible for guidelines and policies. This seems to have neither. --John (talk) 18:15, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I saw you had mentioned that above. This directly contradicts the guide, you know. How about Spanish words like jamón? Many Americans can speak Spanish successfully in spite of this supposed inability. --John (talk) 18:26, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, the variety of Spanish most familiar to Americans has already turned /x/ to /h/ itself, so /haˈmon/ is what we hear Spanish speakers say, not just our faulty rendering of /xaˈmon/. (Americans who simplify /hw/ to /w/ also do so in Spanish words, so Joaquín is rendered /wɑˈkin/.}} Chutzpah I do pronounce with /x/, since its /x/ is part of the charm of the word, but Hanukkah I pronounce with /h/. And as I mentioned above, some people (including myself) avoid /x/ not because they can't articulate it but rather because it isn't part of our phonemic inventory. I have no difficulty pronouncing loch and Hanukkah with /x/, but I don't, because those words are stored in my head as having /k/ and /h/ respectively; I'd only use /x/ in them if I'm intentionally "putting on" a Scottish or Yiddish accent as a joke, as when I wish my Jewish friends a "/x/appy /x/anukkah!" As for sources, consider this quote from John C. Wells's Accents of English (p. 190): "A more English, less Celtic pronunciation commonly involves the replacement of this /x/ by /k/: English people call Buchan /ˈbʌkən/. In Ireland /h/ is common corresponding to putative earlier /x/, as in Donaghadee, Haughey, though some speakers do have a /x/." Or in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary by the same author, loch is given as "lɒx lɒk" for RP and "lɑːk lɑːx" for GenAm (in both cases the bold face indicates the pronunciation to be preferred by learners of English as a second language); chutzpah is given as "ˈhʊts pə ˈxʊts-, -pɑː"; Hanukkah is given only with /h/, San Joaquin only with /w/, San Jose only with /h/. Are there any other Scots words with /x/ besides loch that are likely to be familiar to Americans? Angr (talk) 20:18, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Broch I suppose. Is this respelling guide explicitly aimed at Americans who are unable to pronounce certain sounds or use the IPA system? Because I think that's a little insulting to Americans (when it's obvious that they can pronounce the sounds when they want to) and a little annoying to our other readers who have to put up with two mutually redundant spelling guides on many articles, just to cater for Randy from Boise. --John (talk) 07:20, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I didn't know the word broch before now. I don't know whether it's really only Americans who say, "The IPA is gibberish and I can't read it. Why doesn't Wikipedia use a normal pronunciation key?" (see the top box at Help talk:IPA), but there are plenty of people who do feel that way and are just as opposed to using IPA as you are to using respelling. So we use both. After all, a good compromise leaves everyone equally unhappy. Angr (talk) 11:51, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Just having the IPA by itself leaves no one happy but academics.Tgm1024 (talk) 20:20, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. You merely have to be literate to learn the IPA. Learning to read IPA transcriptions of one's own native language takes no more than an hour. Learning to produce IPA transcriptions takes somewhat longer, and learning the symbols for phonemes one doesn't have in one's own language takes longer still, but it takes very little time for a literate speaker of English to learn to read IPA transcriptions of English. Virtually all English dictionaries published outside the U.S. use the IPA, and their target audience is definitely not only academics. Angr (talk) 21:04, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Why is this here?

I previously raised (almost three years ago) the basis for including this separate respelling system alongside IPA. It was not apparent to me then, and nor is it now, that there was ever a proper discussion prior to setting this up. As it is redundant to the international standard system, and is solely based on the original research of Wikipedia editors, I am suggesting that we get rid of it, unless there is a demonstrable project-wide consensus to include it. I realise a lot of well-intentioned and hard work has been done by editors to produce it, but I really think it merely adds noise and clutter and dumbs down our articles. Articles that have both IPA and this made-up system in the lead sentence look terrible to me. Would I be better off going to MfD, an RfC or what? I thought I would raise it here in the first instance. --John (talk) 17:18, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia never requires "proper discussion" prior to setting anything up. If we did, nothing would ever get done around here. The point of this respelling system is to placate those who can't read IPA and can't be bothered to spend 45 minutes learning it. I don't quite understand the charge of "original research", though; it's no more or less based on original research than the IPA system is, and since it's losslessly convertible to and from IPA, it requires no original synthesis or unverifiable personal knowledge to implement if the IPA is given. Angr (talk) 18:10, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Does this respelling system exist in the real world outside Wikipedia then? Generally, I'd say that introducing an entirely redundant and synthetic system to placate a minority of lazy and/or uneducated users definitely would need a consensus to do here. Nothing in your answer convinces me that we need this. --John (talk) 18:36, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

This specific one perhaps not but it's very similar, for example, to the one used in the World Book Encyclopedia. And to judge from the amount of whining about the IPA we have to put up with, I'm not convinced it's a minority of users who prefer this system. If you really think Wikipedia is better off without it, you're free to nominate it for deletion, but it survived a deletion attempt before, and that was when it was in article space and subject to stricter requirements than it has in the Wikipedia namespace. Angr (talk) 10:27, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

IPA suffers from one primary logic failing. When looking to see how an English word is pronounced (by definition, language specific), no one, not even a foreigner benefits from an international (by definition, language non-specific) formalism. IPA was a formalism for formalism sake and does not solve a problem and creates confusion in its wake. I want English specific representations of phonemes for English pages, Spanish specific representations of phonemes for Spanish pages, and Chinese specific representations of phonemes for Chinese pages. And outside of folks attempting cerebral arguments for what they perceive to be somehow the fairest and most accessible greater good, all this has done is aggravate people. A pronunciation formalism that doesn't resemble the language that people have to *learn* BEFORE they can learn about the word itself???? It'll never be universally accepted by the general population of any country.Tgm1024 (talk) 23:12, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Yep. Just like the metric system. No one benefits from an international system of units of measurement. The metric system is formalism for formalism's sake and does not solve a problem and creates confusion in its wake. I want America-specific units for weights and measurements in the U.S., and Mexico-specific units for weights and measurements in Mexico, and China-specific units for weights and measurements in China. A system of weights and measures that doesn't resemble the things people actually weigh and measure in their everyday life? It'll never be universally accepted by the general population of any country. Angr (talk) 12:22, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Broken analogy. Sorry, try again.Tgm1024 (talk) 20:16, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

It's a very good analogy. Opposition to both the metric system and the IPA boils down to nothing more than "I'm not familiar with this system, and change frightens me." Angr (talk) 21:05, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Text to speech?

Is there a text to speech program that can handle this PR key? Illegitimate Barrister 11:59, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

Error in the title?

The title uses the 'schwa' in the title key, for pronunciation. Is this incorrect? The sound is 'ɵ,' as in the 'u' in nun, isn't it?

86.154.34.159 (talk) 18:09, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

What's your native language or accent of English? I don't know any variety of English (excluding foreign accents of English such as Dutch-coloured English) where u in nun is pronounced as [ɵ], the close-mid central rounded vowel. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:57, 20 July 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 September 2014

In "It does not use special symbols or diacritics apart from the schwa, "ə", which is used (for example) for the a in about.", "or" should be "nor", and "a" and "about" should be in quotations. 2601:E:100:BD7:C949:A686:7408:FBC9 (talk) 21:54, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Not done: "or" is acceptable, and a and about are already italicized, which is appropriate. —Granger (talk · contribs) 21:04, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

"Or" is not only acceptable, it's preferable to "nor" after "not". —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:42, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Automated stress?

How do I prevent automatic stress formatting? I'm trying to get awkh|ən|TAW|shən but it forces this to AWKH|ən|TAW|shən which is wrong. Akerbeltz (talk) 12:51, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

The documentation says: When unstressed syllables follow one another (– . . .), they need to be hyphenated together in a single parameter". −Woodstone (talk) 17:20, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

>.< I did look at that but must have missed it. Many thanks. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:17, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Foreign sounds

The article for John Boehner includes a note that reads, in part, "The German pronunciation of the name Boehner/Böhner is [ˈbøːnɐ] BURH-na". This uses the respelling key here to respell a sound that is not actually in the key, presumably by analogy with a similar sound (in non-rhotic dialects). The key should probably make a note of what to do in cases of foreign sounds such as this one. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 06:55, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

The respelling key is intended only for English words. Foreign words should use IPA only. Angr (talk) 10:39, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I've seen it used for non English names, e.g. Lady Gaga. Guess this confirms what many have feared: Some people try to establish this idiocy as a "standard". --Fenris.kcf (talk) 11:19, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Free lax vowels

The way this key writes lax vowels, as simple a e i o u, seems liable to cause confusion when they fall in open syllables, since many of them have naive readings in this position which are tense. For instance, Up Helly Aa indicates /ˈʌphɛliə/ UP-he-lee-ə, where he suggests rather /hiː/. Even if you think this is accidental (the problem being that he collided with a word), there are several such landmines around.

Should we do anything about this? The sort of thing I'd think of as a good fix would be to double the following onset C to close the syllable (UP-hel-lee-ə); but that doesn't play so nicely with the marked syllable divisions, and it's less uniform, which some might dislike. 4pq1injbok (talk) 12:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

While it's tempting to want to maximize the syllable onset whenever possible, English doesn't really work that way. The lax vowels are checked, so the syllable divisions would necessitate that they are followed by consonant. I would say UP-he-lee-ə is incorrect in that regard and UP-hel-ee-ə would be the way to go. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:15, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Eh, that works for me too. (I learned a theory of English phonology with ambisyllabicity for such consonants way back when. But perhaps there's no need for it; I haven't thought so much about the problem since.) 4pq1injbok (talk) 22:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Discourage

On the whole, I think pronunciation respellings (PR) should be discouraged; I strongly favor IPA instead. There are many reasons. One is that it hinders communication between speakers of different languages, if they don't even use the same system for representing the sounds of language. It's a bit like us Americans using feet and pounds when the rest of the world uses metric. Esperantists claim that tyranny thrives on a lack of communication and understanding, and I agree, even though I despise Esperanto for a variety of reasons and do not believe it should be adopted as the “universal language”.

Another reason is that it reduces people's awareness of other languages. This is particularly important because so many English speakers can only speak English, which I find shameful. Also, PR makes people seem uneducated, like they don't know or can't learn IPA.

Perhaps my biggest objection to PR is that alot of the PRs are blatantly illogical, even ugly. Some of this is inevitable, because English has more vowels and consonants than there are letters, so odd digraphs are needed. However, I agree that, in particular, the respellings <ay> for /ei/ (face), and <y> or <eye> for /ai/ (time), are illogical; in a logical respelling system the former would be written <ei> or <ey> and the latter, <ai> or <ay>, almost a complete reversal of symbols. What in particular bothers me is that /stein/ is spelled <stain> and /stain/ is spelled <stein> when it should be vice versa. Another thing that bothers me is having /au/ (house) be spelled <ou> or <ow> instead of <au> or <aw>, encouraged in turn by another illogical symbol, <aw> or <au> for /ɔ/ (lawn). This is a major motive for me being a strong supporter of phoneticizing English (fonetisaizing Inglish).

I admit, however, that sometimes PR's can be desirable. However, would it be realistic to change Wikipedia's PR symbol for /ei/ (face) from <ay> to <ey>? In any "phoneticized" form of English, I would hate (heyt) to see the spelling of /ei/ normalized to <ai> or <ay> rather than <ei> or <ey>, so my aforementioned suggested change (cheynje) in Wikipedia's PR for English may (mey) be in the public interest.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 09:20, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

You seemed to be bothered by a lot of things, which I might suggest (based on personal experience) speaks to issues broader than just the use of a respelling system on Wikipedia. Part of maintaining a neutral point-of-view involves operating in reality rather than in the ideal; thus, one's opinions on the shame or logicality of the reality of many Americans don't have much sway in what we do on Wikipedia. One of the benefits, in my opinion, of using a respelling system on Wikipedia is that it has the potential to collapse insignificant pronunciation distinctions across dialects, particularly with regard to the realization of vowels. (For example, I pronounce "cab" as with æ-tensing, while you might not; however, this insignificant distinction would be hidden if the word were respelled as kab.) The respelling system is not meant to be logical from an absolute perspective; rather, it is meant to be as intuitive as possible to people who already know how to read English (no matter what dialect they speak). In that vein, I would imagine that the choice to use 'ay' over 'ey' for /ei/ and 'y' or 'eye' over 'ay' was made to avoid ambiguity in instances like 'key' and 'hey' and 'bay', where a respelling might represent a pronunciation that does not coincide with the homographic English word. I agree, however, that such a choice might cause ambiguity in a different context, so it might be a decision worth re-evaluating. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 16:57, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

I understand your point. Using <ey> as PR for /ei/ could be confusing if it results in <key> representing /kei/ when the ordinary word key is pronounced /ki:/. As a better alternative to reforming PR, I recommend using PR less and IPA more, and phoneticizing English; that is, changing the way English is spelled so that it is more phonetic, more logical. On the latter you can help by phoneticizing your name, if it is unphonetic: Stephen → Steven, Phillip → Filip, Sylvia → Silvia, etc. Also, regardless what part of the English-speaking world you are from, you can choose American spelling over British if the former makes more sense, and British if the latter makes more sense.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:29, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

If you want to advocate for phoneticizing English spelling, Wikipedia is not the venue for that. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 16:04, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Okay. I'll advocate for spelling reform somewhere else. I was mainly explaining my views on PR.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 10:26, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Btw, some articles for which I've deleted PRs: Archaea, Eukaryote, Fuchsia, Heuristic.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:11, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

Stop that. You're not adding value to Wikipedia, you're reducing its value. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:15, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

ɹ

The "/r/" in the consonants table should be "/ɹ/". Valkura (talk) 22:45, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Definitely not. See English phonology#Sonorants. There are far more variants of Standard English than only RP and General American (compare List of dialects of the English language). It is well-known that many speakers of Scottish English employ a tapped (or sometimes even trilled) /r/. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:34, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA for English which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 20:59, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

That discussion is closed as of 13:16, 15 December 2015 (UTC). --Thnidu (talk) 21:16, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

OK to represent "long" vowels using ordinary English spelling conventions?

I wanted to add a respelling pronunciation to Lompoc, California, which has an unusual pronunciation that may not be clear to non-IPA-readers. So I put LAHM-poke. According to the key, the systematic version would actually be LAHM-pohk, but I think that's less intuitive; it could easily be read as a "short o" (IPA /ɒ/), especially by users who are inclined that way anyway because of the spelling.

Maybe it would be a good idea to accommodate this technique explicitly in the key? --Trovatore (talk) 07:43, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

I would consider the use of orthographic devices as silent e in a phonological representation not a "technique", but a muddle. The least one can require is that all sounds are represented by one (compound) symbol and occur in the right sequence. −Woodstone (talk) 12:40, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

The whole idea of respelling, as I understand it, is to provide a guide that can be understood in most cases by most English speakers without looking up the key. In my judgment, pohk for /poʊk/ does not accomplish that, but poke does. --Trovatore (talk) 17:06, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

In order to work it should form a well defined system, and not be loosely based on guessing. Each sound should be written according to a fixed list of representations. −Woodstone (talk) 15:09, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

But the user should not have to look anything up, can we agree on that? If the user has to look something up, no matter how related to English orthography it might be, it defeats the purpose. --Trovatore (talk) 17:58, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Can we allow both? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 02:59, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

If both are allowed, in each case it would have to made clear which one is used. That seems rather burdensome to me. A system that is self-evidently clear without looking up anything is illusionary. If it existed, the world's English dictionaries would have adopted it long ago. So let's stick to a well defined system, which might occasionally require some mental effort of the reader. −Woodstone (talk) 07:29, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

There is no need to make the system deterministic, in the sense that an editor has only one choice. It needs to be deterministic in the other direction; that is, for any respelling, it needs to be clear how it sounds. But I don't see any problem with allowing more than one possible representation, as long as their meanings are clear. --Trovatore (talk) 22:57, 30 June 2016 (UTC)

This page is both meant as information for an editor who wants to render the pronunciation as well as the reader to interpret it. The use of alternatives is not helpful for the editor. In the specific case of silent e, it would make for a very complex table using wild cards such as "o*e" is pronounced like "oa" in "goat" preceding the sound corresponding to the "*". It is simpler to have just mono-, bi- and trigraphs as symbols in the order as spoken, making a simple alphabetic lookup work. −Woodstone (talk) 13:51, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

It is simpler for the editor, but not as useful for the reader. That's an easy choice. --Trovatore (talk) 17:10, 1 July 2016 (UTC)

It's more complicated for the reader, because it is bound to be ambiguous without a clear definition in a table.−Woodstone (talk) 15:20, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

In most cases it should be simpler for the reader, because it would allow representing most words (quite unambiguously) without the reader having to look anything up. There are admittedly some exceptions. The hardest case is words containing /ʊ/ or /u:/, because both are commonly spelled "oo" and there are no clear general alternatives.

But let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The goal should be that you don't have to look anything up, at least in most cases. If we're going to make readers look up the key, we might as well use IPA. --Trovatore (talk) 05:05, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Most important requirement is that it is unambiguous. That means it must be well defined and described. The idea that a system can rely just on the reader's intuition without ever needing lookup is illusionary. −Woodstone (talk) 15:40, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Without "ever", yes, but I didn't say "ever". I said in "most cases". By the way, you missed a subjunctive — should be "... that it be unambiguous".

Grammar nit aside, I don't agree that that's the most important thing. We're not implementing an IPA-lite here; if we were, we should just use IPA. The most important thing is that the reader understand it just by reading it. We can't make that always happen, but we can make it happen a lot more often, just by using the patterns that competent readers of the language already know. --Trovatore (talk) 17:30, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me that, if we have both ⟨oh⟩ and ⟨o*e⟩ to represent /oʊ/, then there isn't ambiguity for the reader. It's not like ⟨oh⟩+consonant is a natural feature of English orthography. The most common word that even has such a construction is John and that isn't pronounced with /oʊ/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:01, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 July 2016

The "Syllables and stress" section should indicate that consecutive unstressed syllables need to be separated in wikicode by hyphens, not by pipes. Currently it simply states that syllables are to be separated by pipes and the stressed syllable should be all-caps, but this is not entirely correct. The Template:Respell page details this, but since this Help page also describes the wikicode for syllables, then it should be corrected so other users are not misled like I was.

71.166.62.141 (talk) 02:34, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format.  ^B E _C K ^Y _S A ^{Y L} E _S  14:43, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

/ə:/-sound

How is the /ə:/ represented in this system? Like 'bird'. --Wester (talk) 17:26, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

That's a /ɜː/. Double sharp (talk) 06:20, 13 August 2016 (UTC)

As ur like in nurse. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 22:42, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

Help for Harambe

In Killing of Harambe#Harambe the pronunciation is hə-RAM-bee. Here is the original video where his name was first annouced [1]. Sounds like "Huh ROM bay". Need help if we have it right. -- GreenC 20:39, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Original discussion: Talk:Killing_of_Harambe#Listed_pronunciation_of_Harambe_is_wrong. -- GreenC 17:41, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Open syllable

Making references to checked vowels in open syllables strikes me as not understanding what an open syllable is or the phonotactic restraints of English phonology. Outside of a few interjections, the vowels /ɛ æ ɒ ɪ ʊ ʌ/ do not appear without a following consonant. I had made this edit in the hopes that @Espoo: might consider a different term (as I imagine there must be a more accurate one). @Mr KEBAB: seems to think otherwise. His explanation that they may appear "immediately before a stressed syllable" sounds funny to me. I'm forced to wonder how exactly we are we using the postvocalic h here. Anyone care to explain? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 03:32, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Longman Pronunciation Dictionary lists:

- 244 cases of /*ɛ.ˈ*/, for example Benin /bɛ.ˈniːn/ (RP and GA), which has alternative pronunciations with /bɪ.ˈ-/ (also an example of syllable-final /ɪ/), /bə.ˈ-/ and /-ˈnɪn/.

- 281 cases of /*æ.ˈ*/, for example tattoo /tæ.ˈtuː/ (RP and GA; probably because the second /t/ is aspirated). It has an alternative pronunciation with /tə.ˈ-/.

- 197 cases of /*ɒ.ˈ*/, for example Australia /ɒ.ˈstreɪl.i(.)ə/ (RP only), which has alternative pronunciations with /ɔː.ˈ-/ and /ə.ˈ-/.

- 3929 cases of /*ɪ.ˈ*/, for example eruption /ɪ.ˈrʌp.ʃ(ə)n/ (RP and GA), which has an alternative pronunciation with /ə.ˈ-/

- There's probably less than 3929 entries that have /*ɪ.ˈ*/, because LPD's imperfect search engine also includes the /eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ/ diphthongs.

- 1552 cases of /*ʊ.ˈ*/, for example Burundi /bʊ.ˈrʊnd.i/ (RP and GA), which has an alternative pronunciation with /bə.ˈ-/.

- There's probably less than 1552 entries that have /*ʊ.ˈ*/, because LPD's imperfect search engine also includes the /əʊ, aʊ/ diphthongs.

- 34 cases of /*ʌ.ˈ*/, for example frustration /frʌ.ˈstreɪʃ.(ə)n/ (RP and GA; no alternative pronunciations). Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:36, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I see. So let's take tattoo as a good example. If we represented it as {{respell|tat|OO}}, that would be an inaccurate representation of its pronunciation, since both t's are aspirated. If we represented it as {{respell|ta|TOO}}, I'm guessing that people would be unlikely to read that first syllable as having /æ/ and an h would... lend itself to that pronunciation? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:08, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Sounds correct, though if someone objects to using <h>, we can always think of something else. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:25, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I wonder why one could not write {{respell|tat|TOO}}? -Woodstone

Because it's not a geminate as in unnamed. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:11, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

What makes you think it's not? −Woodstone (talk) 17:50, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

...? Do you actually pronounce two /t/ there? I don't think so. Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:06, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

There is practically no danger of the respelling "a" being misunderstood as representing anything except /æ/. And it is not possible to add "h" to ensure it's understood as /æ/ because "ah" is this system's way of indicating /ɑː/.

We only need to add the alternative respellings with "h" with the letters "e", "i", and "u".

We don't need to decide what technical term instead of the apparently incorrect "open syllable" correctly describes the situations where use of these letters alone can be misunderstood as representing /i:/, /aɪ/, and /(j)u:/. What do you think of my newest editing attempt? --Espoo (talk) 21:05, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I like it. I don't think h does a good job of indicating /æ/. There's simply no good answer for that. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:55, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

What to do for respelling an initial "y" sound? "EW"?

Am having a bit of a time deciding how best to handle the respelling of the Nintendo game system Wii U. The IPA is fine, and "Wii" gets respelled "WEE", which is fine too, but according to the respelling key "U", which sounds like the word "you", gets respelled "EW"... Intuitively I'd rather respell it "YOO" but of course the letter "y" has already been set aside for the diphthong "ai". On the the hand, "EW" by itself and without any preceding consonant could imply that this sound is like the interjection in "Ew! A worm!", corresponding to IPA /ʔɛuː/. The current respelling in the article matches up with what we have in our key here— but it doesn't match up (here) with the intuitive pronunciation that it is intended to evoke. Has this ever been discussed or dealt with before, does anyone know? Is "WEE EW" really how we have to respell "Wii U"? 'Cause it just don't look right. KDS4444 (talk) 02:11, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with "yoo." — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:25, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, use "YOO". You'll see that y appears in the consonant chart as well as the vowel chart. So "YOO" follows the Respell system just fine. I think that ew is intended only for where the pronunciation can be either /ju:/ or /u:/ depending on dialect, such as in tune or new.Indefatigable (talk) 17:41, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Ah ha, the tricksy letter y, both consonant and vowel! I will modify the article according to the above, with much thanks to you both. KDS4444 (talk) 23:36, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Stress difference is "automatic"?

I've never understood why both primary and secondary stress are emphasized the same way. Although there is a variety between dictionaries, a secondary stress could come either before or after a primary stress, and therefore prə-NUN-see-AY-shən could be read as either /prəˌnʌn.siˈeɪ.ʃən/ or /prəˈnʌn.siˌeɪ.ʃən/. So one wouldn't be able to tell if HY-SKOOL is a secondary school or a school that's high up. It seems to me secondary stresses need not be emphasized at all. Nardog (talk) 19:18, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Orthographic variety in examples

@Woodstone: I believe illustrating orthographic variety in English words on this page is indeed important, because the fact some Wikipedians thought they needed this system is precisely because of the spelling inconsistencies in English (and people's lack of awareness about them), and those who need this page are exactly the kind of people who are unaware of how many phonemes they have, which spelling represents which sound, etc. This page isn't "just about pronunciation", but it is about both pronunciation and orthography and how they relate to each other, at least more so than Help:IPA for English is. I'm not suggesting to list all the possible variations, I just think it wouldn't hurt to have some, and it would be weird if Help:IPA for English had more examples (not all of which add phonetic diversity) than this one. I'd appreciate someone else chiming in on this, though. Nardog (talk) 17:48, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

This page is about pronunciation, as the title clearly indicates. Most of the sounds can be spelled in a myriad ways. See the huge table on page English orthography. The key needs to show the chosen "respelling" and examples for the most important phonetic variants. For consonants these are at most one example for initial, intervocal and final use, regardless of spelling. For vowels some more phonetic variation may exist, but never should examples be included purely because they are spelled differently. This page often attracts editors who start adding spelling variants here and there, thereby cluttering the page. This creep should be avoided, because there is almost no end to it. On page help:IPA, where the same creep is happening, I have occasionally cleaned up as well.−Woodstone (talk) 14:19, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

I guess I agree with you in principle and disagree slightly in practice. I'm certainly not advocating for adding examples "purely because" they are spelled differently, and I agree the creep should be avoided. However, I just think having a few examples for each phoneme that illustrate archetypal orthographic variations, while you're at it, also wouldn't hurt (the huge table on English orthography is exactly why it wouldn't to have some). Were they deemed redundant, then I don't know if examples illustrating allophonic variations are also necessary because most speakers wouldn't have a clue how differently they pronounce p in pie, spy and tip. I guess the reason we need those examples, in theory, is that they can help those with linguistic expertise identify what sounds constitute a given phoneme, but then why can't we also include some examples illustrating orthographic variations that can help others identify what sound is in discussion, as some of the speakers also don't realize they pronounce nurse and girl or comma and focus with the same sound? But again, I feel we've both laid our points out, so I guess I'd go with whatever a third person goes with at this point. Nardog (talk) 16:36, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Syllabification

Re: these edits: The maximal onsets principle isn't the only way of syllabifying English words, much less the "correct" one. Attributing a sequence of a checked vowel and a consonant to the same syllable (as opposed to universally applying the maximal onsets principle except where the consonant cluster is impossible) does make sense in this respelling system because the checked vowels never occur in open syllables save for a very few exceptions, and transcribing /mɪˈtɒnɪmi/ as mi-TO-ni-mee increases the chances of it being interpreted as /mɪˈtoʊnɪmi/. Granted, mi-TON-i-mee is also susceptible to being interpreted as /mɪˈtʌnɪmi/, but that is comparatively a small problem because there just happens to be the word ton in this specific case and does not apply to all respellings of syllables with checked vowels. There are probably a myriad of monosyllabic words that contradict this respelling system, and there cannot possibly be a respelling system that doesn't involve such disagreements because English orthography is just too inconsistent.

The potential problem with attributing consonants after checked vowels as syllable-final isn't words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently from the respelling (because this isn't limited to syllabification but concerns the respelling system as a whole); the problem is syllabification (theoretically) modifying the result of articulation. For instance, t in English is generally aspirated in syllable-initial positions except when it is preceded by s. So, if t in historic is not aspirated, then one has to transcribe it as /hɪˈstɒɹɪk/ and not /hɪsˈtɒɹɪk/. Similarly, if the second r in frustration is voiced, that means the syllabification should be /fɹʌ.stɹeɪ.ʃən/ rather than /fɹʌs.tɹeɪ.ʃən/, because the latter would indicate that the second r is voiceless. These are the only kinds of instances in which one needs to attribute the consonant after a checked vowel to the following syllable, i.e. hi(h)-STORR-ik  · fruh-STRAY-shən, not his-TORR-ik  · frus-TRAY-shən. This is why eh, ih, and uh were added as options for /ɛ, ɪ, ʌ/ to avoid confusion with free vowels (vowels that can occur in open syllables) such as /eɪ, iː, aɪ, uː/ (see #Open syllable above). But since ah and oh are already taken, no such solution is provided for /æ, ɒ/ (/æ/ isn't much of a problem but o at the end of a syllable is more likely to be misinterpreted as /oʊ/), which is all the more reason breaking the maximal onsets principle is encouraged wherever possible (that is, where it doesn't affect aspiration or devoicing).

Whatever the case, attributing consonants after checked vowels as syllable-final is already practiced in many articles, so please get a consensus before making a change if you wish to. Nardog (talk) 10:40, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

how about respell roof, root as ruoof, ruoot ?

Words like root and roof are pronounced with the respelling vowel oo as in goose by some English speakers and uu as in put by others.

Could we add a single respelled vowel sound to indicate this? Perhaps uoo?

uoo : roof, root

So for example roof would be respelled as ruoof which would be pronounced with an oo by some and uu by others.

DavRosen (talk) 17:22, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Any respelling has to correspond to the preceding IPA notation in accord with the Help:IPA/English key, so in order to add what you're proposing you have to first propose a similar thing in IPA and get approval. But as far as I know there is no IPA convention that stands for "either /uː/ or /ʊ/" and to concoct one on Wikipedia would be original research, so it is highly unlikely that you will. And how many other words are there that are pronounced /uː/ by some and /ʊ/ by others? You can always simply write /ruːt, rʊt/ root, ruut, /ruːf, rʊf/ roof, ruuf, and so on. Nardog (talk) 03:37, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

/oʊ/

Hello. A discussion recently arose among Wikipedians on how to represent pronunciation of a name of a chemical element. One thing that came as a complete surprise for me was that /oʊ/, which sounds like two separate vowel sounds, was represented with "oh." Because of that, I was not able to correctly read names of some elements at first, which quite defeats the whole point of the respell. I suggest we represent /oʊ/ with "ou"; that is not taken.--R8R (talk) 11:20, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

The problem with ⟨ou⟩ is that it is too ambiguous if we are to expect readers to use their understanding of English spelling rules as a guide. We have words like shout and thought, as well as through and southern, all with different pronunciations. ⟨oh⟩ has the advantage of not only being less ambiguous, but also the default pronunciation for /oʊ/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:43, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, this is right; that has, however, only come up later. But what about "oa"? I wasn't able to think of an example where it would not have the /oʊ/ pronunciation.

Also, why is "oh" the standard? And who invented this measure of standard? /oʊ/ is usually not what I have on my mind when reading "oh."--R8R (talk) 16:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@R8R: /oʊ/ is usually not what I have on my mind when reading "oh." That's because you're a non-native speaker. No offense, but that's the truth. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:43, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

No offense taken. I've found an extensive list of words that contain "oh." Most (though not all) are indeed pronounced as /oʊ/. However, the list of words that contain "oa" is longer, and the words it features are more common to the English language on average. (I haven't found a single exception there though I haven't been looking as closely.) Which is why I would want to ask again, what is the standard that aeusoes1 referred to and who set the said standard? I've seen in the archives of this page only that BBC uses it but also that it's been decided that Wikipedia is free not to follow them. Is that it or is there anything else?--R8R (talk) 18:20, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

@R8R: Oa is a bad choice because it (almost?) never represents /oʊ/ in the word-final position. If you respell go as GOA it's very likely to be interpreted as /ˈɡoʊ.ə/.

I can't really address the rest of your post, sorry. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:34, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

I checked the list for the words ending with "-oa" and you are indeed correct. Of the words ending with "-oa," I've only had in mind the word "whoa," which, as it turns out, is probably the only word to have "oa" in the final position pronounced as /oʊ/. Thank you for your time and for explaining me that.--R8R (talk) 18:44, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Seriously?

What is this really good for? In the articles it is used in, it only seems to provide respelling for what would sound like chewing-gum English of Americans with little education and no linguistic skills. There is no explanatory or educational value gained, whatsoever. Is there any comprehensive justification for using this extreme attempt to dumb down articles? It seems utterly non-encyclopedic. ♆ CUSH ♆ 19:24, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

It's to help indicate pronunciations. It is designed in particular for people who find IPA less intuitive than the respelling systems found in American dictionaries. I don't care for it personally, but I'm very familiar with the IPA so this isn't really for people like me. For people different from myself who struggle with IPA, I don't doubt the value of having an alternative to the IPA. Do you think there's a better way to accomplish this goal? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:32, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

IPA notation plus audio recordings would be better than this, but they're time-consuming to create and awkward to patrol. Even Wiktionary has very limited audio coverage thus far. Equinox (talk) 09:59, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

The Pronunciation respelling key follows no discernible rules of pronunciation. One would need IPA to understand what the PRK is supposed to sound. And truly, those people the PRK is intended for (white trash and ghetto kid?) should rather be redirected to some simple English version of WP. ♆ CUSH ♆ 10:04, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure what makes you think what you've just said is appropriate, but you would do well to revise your statement. Not only is it racially insensitive, but it's totally inaccurate. There are many informed, educated, and intellectually curious people who happen to be unfamiliar with IPA. As an educational tool, we should be flexible enough to cater to them. If you can't understand that, it may instead be you who this project is not for. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:39, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Believe me, the words for which I would need to look up the pronunciation have no respelling on this Wikipedia. Although I only speak English, German, and some French, I can grasp the pronunciation of most European languages, including those with Latin, Greek, Cyrillic alphabets. I can even puzzle together the letters of Phoenician and (Paleo-)Hebrew.

The Pronunciation respelling key is based on the weirdness of (mostly American) English pronunciation vs its spelling. Unlike other languages, spoken English usually does not represent the individual sounds of the letters in its words. The effort of WP to create its own quasi-standard despite existing international century-old standards is ridiculous. This is the international version of WP and editors should be aware of a global readership, not just Americans with their linguistic peculiarities. For readers whose first language is not English, PRK is of no value whatsoever. E.g. uː rendered as "oo" or iː rendered as "ee". And for those who are familiar with English, it just means a dumbing-down to annoyance level. Who is the target readership of this PRK supposed to be?? According to the other comments on this talk page, PRK is intended for English speakers who do not know how to speak English. How is this encyclopedic in any aspect???? ♆ CUSH ♆ 20:30, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

That's not quite an accurate characterization of the respelling key. The American nature of pronunciation respelling comes mostly through a comparison of the pronunciation keys found in American dictionaries, which generally avoid IPA for their own in-house conventions that incorporate some manner of respelling.

Remember, too, that IPA is given priority over respelling at Wikipedia; Per WP:PRON, respelling should not replace IPA or be used without it. This is in line with the international nature of the project. There is an important thing you seem to be missing with your appeal to this international nature: it goes both ways. With a primary readership that potentially includes hundreds of millions of Americans, disregarding the interests, preferences, viewpoints, or needs of American readers does not make something "international" as much as it makes it anti-American.

You are right that pronunciation respelling has much less value to ESL readers; I have not seen the other comments that you refer to, but the description on this key is quite explicit in agreeing with you on this point:

The IPA has significant advantages over the respelling system described here, as it can be used to accurately represent pronunciations from any language in the world, and (being an international standard) is often more familiar to non-native speakers of English. On the other hand, the IPA (being designed to represent sounds from any language in the world) is not as intuitive for those chiefly familiar with English orthography, for whom this respelling system is likely to be easier for English words and names.

Seems pretty clear to me, anyway. Respelling utilizes the orthographic rules that native English readers are familiar with. So long as no information is lost, this is not a "dumbing down" of pronunciation information. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:41, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

For an example where respelling is both necessary (in the sense that the correct pronunciation is not even obvious to a native speaker) and used on Wikipedia, I can name William Stokoe – like many other personal and place-names with unpredictable pronunciations, even when they are of English origin. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:29, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

The problem with IPA isn't that it's difficult - it isn't, and especially symbols such as [ɘ] really are helpful. The problem is that once you start using IPA, all sorts of questions seem to tend to pop up whether this sound is now actually [ɚ] or not rather [ɐ], or whether the [v] is not actually spoken as a [ʋ], and so on: questions which may be important enough in their own right to the professional student of (no, not the language) comparative phonetics or what's it called. The usual speaker and learner of the language, even on a high level, is interested with what the "sound" (equals roughly, but not entirely, the phoneme) is and especially hoq it is distinguished from other sounds.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:31BB:ABA2:5315:7D71 (talk) 17:40, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the IPA can be tricky when there are phonetic issues that people might not agree on. I'm having trouble understanding your point, though. What are you getting at? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:16, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

My point is that the basic information a normal guy would like to have is "how is this thing pronounced". And then he wants to know that [v] is not a [w] (especially I as a German do so), and that the th's in this and in think are different sounds. He doesn't want to know, and is confused if people tell him for paragraphs and paragraphs, whether this [v] is now actually [v] or something ever so slightly different. And that is my answer to the question I perceived this to be about, viz., why people don't just go the whole hog and use IPA.--2001:A61:260D:6E01:31BB:ABA2:5315:7D71 (talk) 18:37, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

I see. Well usage of IPA doesn't necessitate delving into the phonetic details like you say they would, but the point of our transcriptions is something to consider in our IPA guidelines. I've noticed that a number of the language-specific have a tendency to balloon over time with explanatory notes as editors put accurate but unnecessary information in. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:22, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: You're welcome to clean them up like you did 6 years ago. I'd do it with you, but I'm often not sure at all which information should be removed and what should stay. Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:40, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh boy, was that the last time I did that. It might just be about time for a fresh scrub, then. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:49, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: I guess not, but that was the time you made those huge lists of removed notes on talk pages. So that's what I remembered. We could start with Help talk:IPA/Slovene, on which we're discussing whether we should include [i̯] or not. The problem is, there already are about 200 articles in which that symbol is present. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:49, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

ew(r)

Since /juː/ and /jʊər/ have been separated in the IPA table, should we also replace "ew(r)" with "yoo(r)" completely, or should we keep it for the coronal consonants?
--maczkopeti (talk) 16:00, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Why don't we keep it the way it is? Ew after coronals is actually one of the few things the respelling is better at conveying intuitively and efficiently than the IPA. So we definitely want to keep it for the post-coronals. And at the same time I suspect it is not only unrealistic but also WP:CREEP to expect every editor instating a respelling to remember after which consonants they must use ew and after which ones yoo. Just "use ew for /juː/ after a tautosyllabic consonant" is way simpler than "use ew for /juː/ after tautosyllabic /t, d, n, s, l, θ/, but yoo for others". I just see no particular benefit in abandoning ew, not even after non-coronals. Nardog (talk) 16:45, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Respellings that look the same as the respelled word and incidentally vulgar syllables

Hi. Two questions:

1. What should we do when the respelling is exactly the same as the word we're respelling? For instance, the respelling of Limburgish is LIM-bur-gish LIM-bur-ghish. Is it appropriate to include it in the article anyway?
2. What about respellings with syllables that are incidentally vulgar? For instance, Aspergers is respelled ASS-pur-gərz or ASS-pur-jərz (depending on the phonetic realization of ⟨g⟩). This is twice as problematic because people with Aspergers are mocked as having ass burgers.

Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:42, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

1. As it stands, to add or remove a respelling is always and utterly at editors' discretion. I personally tend to regard them unnecessary whenever they are unlikely to help readers much, such as when the IPA and respelling look too much alike. Then of course there's WP:LEADPRON. (As for Limburgish, if there's anything confusing about it it must be how to pronounce the g, in which case you can write LIM-bur-ghish.)
2. Wikipedia is not censored, so I don't see a problem. But again, it's totally fine to remove them if it's too awkward.

Nardog (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

@Nardog: Thanks. So it doesn't apply to Limburgish because of the additional ⟨h⟩.

I'd rather not re-add it to the article then. Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:34, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

Regional assumption?

Nitpick: The entire article, particularly the key, assumes standard American English pronunciations even though this is never stated in the article. At the very least that assumption needs to be stated, and ideally there should be examples for both the American and BBC pronunciations. (I'm not suggesting that every accent in the world should be listed but most accents in the world are similar to one of the two).

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 20:29, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

It might look at first glance like it's American because of the post-vocalic rs, but it's actually a diaphonemic non-regional pronunciation. You can see an explanation of how it works here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply.

I would argue Help:IPA/English has somewhat of the same problem though it does at least talk a little bit about the accent differences. The problem is more than just rhoticity. But addressing rhoticity specifically, it is still a problem. For example, this article shows

Vowels

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA
ar	start	/ɑːr/

This is not correct for the RP/BBC pronunciation. That one should look like

Vowels

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA
ar	start	/ɑː/

Indeed, British introductory texts on Spanish (and some other languages) will often describe the letter a as being pronounced like "ar".

Again, I am not advocating that every single accent in the U.S., the U.K., and around the world should be reflected. But at least being a little more specific about the accent being shown is worthwhile to avoid confusion. The simple solution is just something like

Vowels

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA- Gen Am	IPA- RP
ar	start	/ɑːr/	/ɑː/

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 19:11, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I think you've missed something. As a non-regional transcription, it encodes aspects of multiple dialects. The post-vocalic r is a prominent feature of this, but as the page I linked to explains:

In many dialects, /r/ occurs only before a vowel; if you speak such a dialect, simply ignore /r/ in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it, as in cart /kɑːrt/.

We're always open to making this clearer, so if you've got a suggestion for changes in how to help readers understand this poly-dialectal system please feel free to share. Convincing the community to do away with the diaphonemic system and doing multiple transcriptions as you have advocated for above would be a much harder task for you, since many editors are entrenched in supporting the diaphonemic system (myself included). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:36, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Is there a key somewhere on Wikipedia, how the non-regional transcription maps to actual dialects? Is there any dialect at all that pronounces /r/ as [r]? -- Sloyment (talk) 06:59, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

There's International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:42, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

As for /r/, see Help talk:IPA/English/FAQ and [2]. Nardog (talk) 15:48, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Bot to generate these from IPA

It seems like it would be easy to make a bot that would, upon request, generate respelling automatically from IPA. If an editor sees IPA and wishes there were a respelled version, they could get one automatically generated. Ccrrccrr (talk) 00:45, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Although converting a respelling to IPA is relatively easy, the reverse is not, because syllable divisions are mandatory in respelling while usually implicit in IPA. Moreover, automatically converting an IPA notation to a respelling entails the IPA is correctly formatted, which unfortunately is often not the case. Nardog (talk) 06:26, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Hurry and furry?

Wait, "hurry" and "furry" have a different respell value for the "-urry" part? How so?? If true, I think this requires some kind of explanation; if false, then this looks like it needs to be fixed somehow. A loose noose (talk) 16:52, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

@A loose noose: As the section says, the sounds are discussed in more detail in Help:IPA/English, which appropriately has a link to Hurry–furry merger. Hurry and furry don't rhyme in many non-rhotic accents. In those, hurry has the sound of cut while furry has a longer vowel. Furry deriving from fur + -y makes this clear. Nardog (talk) 17:22, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay, I think I get it now. Is it better to leave this up to the reader to figure out or could we make some kind of connection (footnote, link. etc.) so that readers don't think we are being sloppy here? Both visually and, to my own American hear, acoustically, both appear identical. I now understand that there may be dialect difference, but there is nothing here right now to help me figure out what that difference is. A loose noose (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

And I tried adding some text to help fix that, and it got removed. Which leaves us where we started. Darn. If an editor (well, let's say, like me!) comes to this page and wants to figure out what to use for the respelling of a word and comes across "hurry" and "furry" and can't tell the difference and wants guidance on what to do, shouldn't there be something to help that person? Instead of nothing? A loose noose (talk) 14:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Could we possibly put a link to Hurry–furry merger somewhere visible to the reader? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The key used to have notes regarding dialectal variation but it was fairly neglected and grew some discrepancies with Help:IPA/English so now it directs those interested in variation to Help:IPA/English, which covers it in more detail and with citations and receives more scrutiny. Should we explain variation here too? If so, to what extent? I'm reluctant because respelling, which encodes less information than IPA, is specifically for readers not familiar with IPA and so it's designed to automatically map to their dialects, whereas editors dealing with respelling are expected to be familiar with IPA (because they damn well should be). Nardog (talk) 16:57, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Syllabification

What are the guidelines to follow regarding syllabification? For example, WIK-ih-PEE-dee-ə --Backinstadiums (talk) 16:09, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

We generally follow the maximal onset principle while taking checked vowels and aspiration into account. See the first footnote. Nardog (talk) 17:53, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

HW clearer than WH

Hi. In modern English it’s increasingly rare for people to pronounce an “h” sound at the front of why, where, what. I think therefore that it’s unhelpful to transcribe a “hw” sound such as (Tee-HWAH-nah, Tijuana) into English as “wh” (tee-WHAH-nah), as the average contemporary English speaker would read that as “tee-WAH-nah”. “He” is unambiguous. Keizers (talk) 12:43, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

In modern English orthography, what is/used to be pronounced [ʍ] is never spelled hw. In Old English it was, but the letters swapped in Middle English (see Pronunciation of English ⟨wh⟩). The average contemporary English speaker who lacks the wine–whine distinction should read tee-WHAH-nah with [w], because the sound doesn't exist anymore in their phonological inventory. The goal of this respelling system is to map sounds to the reader's accent, not to make them produce sounds that do not exist in their ordinary speech. If someone who normally lacks the distinction pronounced Tijuana with a voiceless fricative instead of a voiced labio-velar approximant, that would most likely be regarded as an incidence of the marginal phoneme /x/ (which we respell kh) rather than of a residual /hw/. (I assume you meant "Hw", not "He", in your last sentence.) Nardog (talk) 13:25, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

I suggest we keep ⟨wh⟩ for the /ʍ/ phoneme or for cases in which aspiration is optional (such as Tijuana, by the way), and use instead ⟨hw⟩ for foreign borrowings where aspiration always occurs. Though I’m afraid there are not many… イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 14:04, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

And how do you suggest we ascertain which category a word falls under? And I'm generally opposed to making our respelling encode anything that the IPA does not. If anything it should be the other way round (which it is, as in /iː/ vs /i/), because the respelling is, according to WP:PRON and the way it is currently used, optional and merely a reiteration of the IPA it follows. Nardog (talk) 14:37, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, as I was saying, it’s just a suggestion, even though it may be overly specific considering how limitedly /hw/ occurs. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 15:16, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

The only reason we would want to make that kind of distinction would be if there were a realizational difference. Like if speakers who otherwise exhibit the wine-whine merger still pronounce words like Juan and marijuana with something approximating [ʍ]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:38, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Guys I'm not a linguist or phonologist and don't understand the terminology, but basically the situation is like this: 1) Tijuana Is pronounced tee-HWAH-nah and not tee-ʍah-nah like an old fashioned pronunciation of "what" (ʍ). Tijuana is an H sound then a W sound. But because your page says "if it sounds like HW, write WH", I have a non-native speaker insisting that the way to write the pronunciation of Tijuana is "tee-WHAH-nah". Because WH is rarely pronounced with an H sound anymore, this is misleading and if you advise WHAH, most native speakers would say "tee-WAH-nah", - a pronounciation which I have never heard! (what you *do* hear is tee-uh-WAH-nuh). So however you want to take it, but I believe that the "hw" pronunciation of words like "what where, why" is so rare nowadays (in the US I would perceive it as affected), that indicating that a "HW" sound should be indicated as "WH" is really confusing. (Another example: San Juan. San HWAHN would make the average non linguist produce a correct result. San WHAHN would make most people pronounce San WAHN, which it's not.Keizers (talk) 07:04, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

The fact is, some of the sources I found actually list tee-WAH-nə as a possible pronunciation, so at least in cases like this it would be fine to adopt the -WH- solution. Also, I don’t think English speakers ever distinguish /hw/ from /ʍ/, but I may be wrong. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 07:28, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

They don't. ⟨ʍ⟩ represents what is basically a voiceless [w]. This is different in Spanish, where a word like Juan might be transcribed as [xwan] in the IPA, with the ⟨x⟩ representing an h-like sound and the ⟨wa⟩ representing a diphthong, which is a vowel sound with two sequential articulations. Thus, in Spanish, there really is a separation between the h and the w because the w is part of the vowel. In English, both voiced and voiceless w's are in the syllable onset, rather in the nucleus where vowels are. It is thus not a sequence of h and w, but a single sound.

In those English dialects that do distinguish between voiced and voiceless w, the conventional way to represent the latter in English orthography (particularly when we exclude words borrowed from other languages) is with ⟨wh⟩. We wouldn't want to use ⟨hw⟩ in this respelling system because we're trying to stick as closely to English spelling conventions as we can and there are no words that use ⟨hw⟩ to represent /ʍ/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:27, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Which is why if someone who has wine and whine merged pronounced Juan with a voiceless continuant at the beginning I would transcribe it /xwɑːn/. Nardog (talk) 15:33, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Does that mean that, in addition to /k/ and /h/, /x/ can be replaced by /w/? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:49, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

I meant that as an alternative to /wɑːn/. Using /hw/ would indicate those with the merger invariably pronounce it as /w/, so assuming some of them do not use simple /w/ in these loanwords, /wɑːn, xwɑːn/ is a better diaphonemic notation than /hwɑːn/. Nardog (talk) 17:03, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I understand. It's a good solution, but it might mean we would want to adjust the note on /x/ at Help:IPA/English. Unless I'm overlooking something. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:47, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

In any case, are we sure those with the merger will use a different realization for foreign borrowings? Because if not, we wouldn’t even need to do that. イヴァンスクルージ九十八_（会話） 18:27, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

We are not sure that they are treated differently. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:10, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

This may depend on their knowledge of Spanish, but don't quote me on that. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 22:29, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Real word ambiguity

(As there appears to be no actual policy behind this help page, I'm discussing this here. If there is a policy, it should be linked.)

Avoiding using a respelling due to possible ambiguity with real words seems suboptimal, and does not reflect what I seem to remember saying before. It instead suggested that double letters or other possibilities be used.

Of the three examples in the text, at least the pronunciations of "cobalt" and "metonymy" could be easily indicated in unambiguous ways, e.g. KOH-bahlt and meh-TAH-no-mee, or possibly meh-TONN-oh-mee

I would suggest that the advice be to attempt to find a respelling that does not use ambiguous real words, rather than being told not to use respelling at all. The fact that a using double letters was allowed in the past suggests this was already the practice.

— trlkly 06:47, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Your alternate spelling doesn't really solve the issue of ambiguity. I still read tonn as the same as ton and ah would be inaccurate for both cobalt and metonomy since the vowel of the second syllable is /ɒ/, not /ɑː/. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:36, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

References

If references are not needed in "in-house articles", how come WP:IPAE has them? —Biscuit-in-Chief :-) ^{(Talk – Contribs)} 16:59, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

The text in H:IPAE covers a lot of dialectal ground that is worth citing, particularly as that page has been challenged on a number of grounds over the years. Is there something specific here that you think needs a citation? The only fact claim I can even find is that /æ, ɛ, ɪ, ɒ, ʌ, ʊ/ are checked vowels, which isn't likely to be challenged. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:24, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

Mattress

Based on syllabication (which I know is itself a continually debated topic), how would we use this key to transcribe "mattress"? After reading Note 1 on the page, about checked vowels, I would assume it's MA-triss. Is that correct? Kbb2 offers something like MATR-iss (or MATR-əss in certain accents), but that looks very odd to me! Wolfdog (talk) 18:27, 7 December 2019 (UTC)

MAT-riss is compliant with Note 1, because [t] is not aspirated in the cluster [tr]. It's not 100% correct syllabication, but it's acceptable because it keeps the vowel checked. MATR-iss is just completely wrong in syllabication - [tr] can't end a syllable in English. Indefatigable (talk) 21:32, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Kbb2 is adopting Wells's scheme, which is "heretical" in his own admission. Even though /tr/ is affricated, I see nothing wrong with MAT-riss as I don't see how it can mislead readers into pronouncing it incorrectly (whereas MATR-iss could be interpreted as /ˈmætərɪs/ and MA-triss as /ˈmɑːtrɪs/). I think most readers will know it's affricated, consciously or not, upon seeing a notation like MAT-riss just by the virtue of knowing it is one word and the hyphen separates syllables, not words.

This brings me to the thought I've had for some time: Do we really need to respell frustration, historic, etc. as fruh-STRAY-shən, hih-STRORR-ik as opposed to fruss-TRAY-shən, hiss-TORR-ik? I don't really think readers will be misled and produce affrication or aspiration—and even if some of them did, I don't think it outweighs the risk of fruh-, hih- being interpreted as /frɜː-/, /hi(ː)-/. Nardog (talk) 21:55, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Actually, yes, I very much do prefer your first (rather than second) respellings of frustration and historic (assuming you mean "hih-STORR-ik") -- those look much more natural than the second respellings! With the respelling you've used for Beatrice, I'd mistakenly assume it's pronounced [biˈæʔ.ɹɪs], when in fact the pronunciation is [biˈæ.t(ʃ)ɹɪs]. Honestly, the best-cast scenario seems like it'd be "bee-AT-triss". That's certainly the clearest for a newbie. For mattress, for example, the best-looking to me would be MAT-triss; there's no ambiguity there about aspiration, or affrication. (Can't syllabication, which is has long been debatable anyway, take a backseat here to pronunciation clarity? In fact, isn't that the point of the respelling key?) Likewise, citron would be SIT-trən; hard to imagine SIT-rən is better. Wolfdog (talk) 11:17, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Then how would you respell fast-track or headdress? Nardog (talk) 11:41, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

FAST-trak and HED-dress. Wolfdog (talk) 14:19, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

And how do you expect the readers to know HED-dress has two /d/ but MAT-triss one /t/? Nardog (talk) 05:35, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

@Nardog: I'd prefer frust-RAY-shən and hist-ORR-ik, which correctly show the plosives as unaspirated. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 12:04, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

The fact is that the word frustration is pronounced variably as either frus.tration or fru.stration. Depends on the speaker. (That's frus-TRAY or fruh-STRAY... and I'd be willing to bet that frust-RAY is an alternative too, though less common.) Wolfdog (talk) 14:23, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@Wolfdog: True. /str/ can be affricated (hence the pronunciation "frushchration", in which the postalveolar affricate after /s/ retracts the initial consonant - a natural consequence of the affricated pronunciation of /tr/). How would you differentiate between fru.stration and frust.ration (or frustr.ation - same thing as the second variant)? They look the same to me. I'd denote the difference in affrication as /frʌˈsdreɪ.ʃən/ vs. /frʌˈstreɪ.ʃən/, with /str/ being the only possible onset with the combination /st/ in English. I'm starting to like the maximal onset principle as well - but that's off-topic. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 17:34, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

Honestly, either pronunciation would end up affricated normally: [frʌsˈdʒɹeɪ.ʃən] (voiced [dʒ]) vs. /frʌˈstʃɹeɪ.ʃən/ (unaspirated [stʃ]) sound equally good to my ears. Is this answering your question? Wolfdog (talk) 22:49, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

@Wolfdog: Not quite. I meant /frʌˈsdreɪ.ʃən/ vs. /frʌˈstreɪ.ʃən/, so that the initial syllable has no coda. I'm just applying the theory that those plosives that are written with ⟨p, t, k⟩ in English orthography but are categorically unaspirated (meaning: are preceded by a voiceless consonant) actually belong to the /b, d, ɡ/ set (as in "spy" /sbaɪ/, "lisp" /lɪsb/, "stir" /sdɜːr/, "next" /nɛksd/ [not /nɛɡsd/, which blocks pre-glottalization and elongates the vowel], "sky" /sɡaɪ/ and "task" /tæsɡ/ or /tɑːsɡ/). /str/ would then be the only onset that would be the exception to that rule. My question was "how would you differentiate between fru.stration and frust.ration".

EDIT: [fɹʌˈstʃɹeɪ.ʃən] does contain an aspirated /t/. In this case it manifests as an affricate, formed with the following postalveolar approximant. /str/ is the only syllable onset that can contain an aspirated /t/ (it's /str/, rather than /tr/ with /s/ belonging to the coda of the preceding syllable because the same can happen in "street" [stɹiːt ~ stʃɹiːt ~ ʃtʃɹiːt] - notice that the affrication is variable even here). I wonder if there are e.g. Scottish speakers who would differentiate between "fru.stration"/"frust.ration" and "frus.tration" as [fɾʌstɾeʃən] (with two taps) vs. [fɾʌstʃɹeʃən] (with a tap and a postalveolar affricate). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

The difference between pure tenuis [t] and [d] to me is so minimal as to be almost inaudible. Therefore, I barely, if at all, would differentiate fru.stration and frust.ration. I guess I'm missing the point of this experiment/question. I do, however, like the sound of your "Scottish experiment"; that findings of such a study would indeed be interesting. This conversation is reminding me think of the typical-American pronunciation of sixteen as [sɪks.tʰiːn] vs. the typical-British [sɪk.stiːn] (or even [sɪk.sdiːn]). Wolfdog (talk) 20:25, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I just don't think it's practicable to try to replicate the exact allophonic realization. Someone seeing MAT-riss for the first time may indeed pronounce it [ˈmæʔɹəs], but once they know it's one word and once it's in their personal lexicon they are much more likely to pronounce it with an affricate—unless they are aware of the allophonic difference, but such a person wouldn't need a respelling in the first place. The goal should be to convey the phonemic values, and MA-triss, MATR-iss, and MAT-triss are all more susceptible to conveying a wrong sequence of phonemes than MAT-riss. Same with fruh-, hih- vs. fruss-, hiss-. (An alternative cure to all this, by the way, is to proscribe respelling these words, as we already do for other cases.) Nardog (talk) 05:35, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not seeing how my option (MAT-triss) has the same "susceptibility" as the others. Of course, the point of the respelling key is to simplify for nonexperts. That being said, maybe you're right that we should just proscribe respelling these types of words. Wolfdog (talk) 20:25, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

If someone really is confused about how to pronounce a respelling, couldn't they go to an English dictionary website that has audio, or get a dictionary app, and look up the word and listen to it? I think in most cases they would be able to relate what they hear to how the word has been respelled. (Unless the dictionary butchers or otherwise does a poor job of rendering the pronunciation but I guess that's a separate issue.) Senjoro Nie (talk) 14:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

The words we transcribe using IPA and respelling are most typically the kinds general dictionaries do not include (see also WP:LEADPRON). Nardog (talk) 12:12, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

kh

Consonants

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA
kh	loch, Chanukah	/x/

Incredibly helpful. 2001:9E8:26:3D00:2EFD:A1FF:FE73:84E6 (talk) 11:18, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

What is your point? /x/ is a marginal sound only found in loanwords so there are hardly any less obscure words that have it than those two. Nardog (talk) 16:31, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

'ur' sound

This seems to be used for words with 'er' such as 'herd', and that doesn't work for Scottish English where it's a separate sound. Additionally, I don't believe the two examples in the table have the same vowel sound as each other in some Scottish dialects. 115.70.7.33 (talk) 09:16, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposal: Eliminate most of footnote 1

Presently we have a huge, complicated footnote that virtually no one will understand without a linguistics background:

/æ, ɛ, ɪ, ɒ, ʌ, ʊ/ (a, e(h), i(h), o, u(h), uu) are checked vowels, meaning never occurring at the end of a word or before a vowel. When a checked vowel is followed by a consonant and a stressed vowel, which is rare nonetheless, it is acceptable in some cases to attribute the following consonant to the same syllable as the checked vowel, as in bal-AY, even though in IPA it is customary to attribute it to the following syllable, as in /bæˈleɪ/. However, when the following consonant is a voiceless plosive (/p, t, k/) pronounced with aspiration (a slight delay in the following vowel), it must be attributed to the same syllable as the following vowel, as in ta-TOO, because tat-OO may result in a different pronunciation than intended (compare "whatever" whot-EV-ər, whut-, wherein /t/ is not aspirated and may be glottalized or flapped). Similarly, when a vowel is followed by /s/, one or more consonants, and a stressed vowel, the syllabification must be retained, as in fruh-STRAY-shən, because frus-TRAY-shən may result in a different pronunciation than intended.

Frankly, this is stupid and self-defeating. It's bending over backwards double-hard, to deal with problems caused by bending over backwards in the first place; it makes much more sense to just stand up straight again.

• The entire purpose of that sprawling ramble is to lay out exception after exception to the idea of attributing to preceding syllable.
• "In IPA it is customary to attribute it to the following syllable". No kidding, and for good reason.
• Attributing to preceding syllable buys us nothing. As a pronunciation guide for ballet, bal-AY is no way clearer than ba-lAY, and as with all those caveats and warnings, it may actually produce the wrong pronunciation: a hint of a pause before the AY and an exaggeration of it, as many English speakers introduce when attempting to pronounce less familiar French words, like déclassé, that end with this sound. (Ex.: "That's so dé-class-ÉÉÉ, Jim.")

Ergo, I propose that this entire mess be replaced with something quite simple, like: /æ, ɛ, ɪ, ɒ, ʌ, ʊ/ (a, e(h), i(h), o, u(h), uu) are checked vowels, meaning never occurring at the end of a word or before a vowel. Consonants (and same-syllable clusters thereof) that come after a checked vowel and are followed by another vowel must be attributed to the following syllable. E.g., for ballet, use ba-lAY not bal-AY. And just leave it at that.

Even this might be trimmable; I'm not certain the checked vowel stuff matters if we can get away with just saying Consonants (and same-syllable clusters thereof) that come after a vowel and are followed by another vowel must be attributed to the following syllable. E.g., for ballet, use ba-lAY not bal-AY. That is, I can't see any reason to transcribe nosy as NOZ-ee when NO-zee will do just fine. These are pronunciation guides not etymologies, so they do not need to correspond to morpheme boundaries. Regardless, none of these proposal variants would have any effect on Shatner as SHAT-nur, since -tn- in this is visually a cluster but is two distinct consonants that force a syllable break.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:54, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Writing ba- doesn't convey the quality of the vowel nearly as well as bal- and would be read as /bɑː-/ or /bə-/ by a non-negligible proportion. Since checked vowels are by definition always followed by consonants, untrained speakers have difficulties producing or perceiving them in isolation. Putting a syllable break between a checked vowel and a consonant will make the vowel prone to being interpreted as a free vowel, especially if the former syllable coincides with an existing word, as in ma, pa, spa, bra.

Nosy is respelled NOH-zee (or NOHZ-ee). And even if it was pronounced /ˈnɒzi/, no one is telling you to respell it NO-zee since stress doesn't fall on the second syllable. What you're advocating for, rather, is to respell Benin as beh-NEEN instead of ben-EEN. How's that going to help readers? (And why are you mixing upper- and lowercase in the same syllable?) Nardog (talk) 23:50, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with SMcCandlish on this one. /bal-AY/ will screw up syllabification. Stressed syllables should begin with their onset consonant, so /ba-LAY/ and /be-NIN/ (or /bə-NIN/). I don't see the point of "eh". Stressed syllables should also end with the following consonant if they contain a 'checked' vowel, but not otherwise: /NOH-zee/ but /NOZ-əl/.

As for mistaking "a" for "ah", that kind of thing is always going to be a problem with a respelling system. Trying to address it will make the system too complicated to function. Better just to say "a" is the vowel in "bat", and if people can't follow that, there's only so much we can dumb things down. — kwami (talk) 01:38, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

be-NEEN would no doubt be read as /biː-/. We added eh, ih, uh precisely for the same reason we write bal-AY (see /Archive 4#Open syllable).

The whole reason we have this key in the first place is to satiate the native speakers who complain that the IPA is unintelligible to them. If something as simple as syllabifying a checked vowel and sonorant together "will make the system too complicated to function", then we might as well ditch the whole thing in favor of the IPA. Nardog (talk) 02:05, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

Also, maximizing the onsets of stressed syllables is impossible in some cases. yoo-RAY-nee-əm instead of yoor-AY-nee-əm would result in a different pronunciation. Nardog (talk) 14:29, 12 May 2021 (UTC)