Template talk:IPAc-en

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Template:IPAc-en is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the IPAc-en template.

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Frequently asked questions

The IPA is gibberish and I can't read it. Why doesn't Wikipedia use a normal pronunciation key?

The IPA is the international standard for phonetic transcription, and therefore the Wikipedia standard as well. Many non-American and/or EFL-oriented dictionaries and pedagogical texts have adopted the IPA, and as a result, it is far less confusing for many people around the world than any alternative. It may be confusing in some aspects to some English speakers, but that is precisely because it is conceived with an international point of view. The sound of y in "yes" is spelled /j/ in the IPA, and this was chosen from German and several other languages which spell this sound j.

For English words, Wikipedia does use a "normal" pronunciation key. It is Help:Pronunciation respelling key, and may be used in addition to the IPA, enclosed in the {{respell}} template. See the opening sentences of Beijing, Cochineal, and Lepidoptera for a few examples. But even this is not without problems; for example, cum laude would be respelled kuum-LOW-day, but this could easily be misread as koom-LOH-day. English orthography is simply too inconsistent in regard to its correspondence to pronunciation, and therefore a completely intuitive respelling system is infeasible. This is why our respelling system must be used merely to augment the IPA, not to replace it.

Wikipedia deals with a vast number of topics from foreign languages, and many of these languages contain sounds that do not exist in English. In these cases, a respelling would be entirely inadequate. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation for further discussion.

The IPA should be specific to a particular national standard, and the national pronunciations should be listed separately.

Listing multiple national pronunciations after every Wikipedia entry word quickly becomes unwieldy, and listing only one leads to accusations of bias. Therefore, we use a system that aims at being pan-dialectal. Of course, if a particular dialect or local pronunciation is relevant to the topic, it may be listed in addition to the wider pronunciation, using {{IPA-all}} or {{IPA-endia}}.

The use of /r/ for the rhotic consonant is inaccurate. It should be /ɹ/ instead.

The English rhotic is pronounced in a wide variety of ways in accents of English around the world, and the goal of our diaphonemic system is to cover as many of them as possible. Moreover, where there is no phonological contrast to possibly cause confusion, using a more typographically recognizable letter for a sound represented by another symbol in the narrow IPA is totally within the confines of the IPA's principles (IPA Handbook, pp. 27–28). In fact, /r/ is arguably the more traditional IPA notation; not only is it used by most if not all dictionaries, but also in Le Maître Phonétique, the predecessor to the Journal of the IPA, which was written entirely in phonetic transcription, ⟨r⟩ was the norm for the English rhotic.

Missing HTML class "IPA-label"

I was just setting up some custom CSS to make translations and such easier to read when I noticed this template doesn't add the class "IPA-label" to the label it generates, unlike the other IPA templates. Is that intentional, or should it be added?

For example:

{{IPA|fr|fubaʁ}}

results in:

<span class="IPA-label IPA-label-small">French pronunciation:</span> ...

which, for reference, is rendered as:

French pronunciation: [fubaʁ]

While for this template:

{{IPAc-en|lang|f|u|b|a:r}}

results in:

<small>English: </small>...

rendered as:

English: /fubɑːr/

— W.andrea (talk) 01:53, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 24 April 2024

This edit request to Module:IPAc-en has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

I talked about this above. Basically, this change is to bring the markup inline with Template:IPA.

In Module:IPAc-en, change

(Note: The template documentation doesn't need to be updated since it doesn't mention this behaviour.)

By the way, Template:IPA also has a small parameter that maybe this template should implement as well, but that's beside the point.

— W.andrea (talk) 20:10, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That alone won't be enough because without Module:IPA/styles.css IPA-label-small doesn't work.

Done. Nardog (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally this module should just call the IPA module instead of handling the label, audio, etc. on its own. Nardog (talk) 20:42, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What's with the double slashes?

I've noticed that IPA is now wrapped in double slashes: ⫽

Is this a new standard? A coding change perhaps? Not a complaint, just genuinely curious what the reason is.

Editor510 ^{drop us a line, mate} 17:51, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just noticed this too and, as mentioned in the edit summary Special:Diff/1233122572, some people think it makes it clearer that this is supposed to be a diaphonemic rather than phonemic transcription. It does, but only to those who already know about it. One problem I personally have with this change is that it makes things ugly because the double solidus usually ends up coming from some poorly designed fallback font on most systems. (No, it doesn't display in Gentium Plus for most people.) And I don't believe it's going to serve its intended purpose. Attentive reader will notice it's something different, but will have to check it in Help:IPA/English anyway because double slashes are just as ambiguous as single slashes (it surely must be a morphophonemic transcription, right?). But people who read Help (and MOS) pages and people who argue about which dialect to use are not the same people in the first place. – MwGamera (talk) 18:38, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I object to these changes too, and the way they've been implemented. Even Wikipedia's own article implies that ⫽⫽ is a fringe method of displaying IPA, being less common than the "less common conventions" in IPA – see International Phonetic Alphabet#Brackets and transcription delimiters. For aesthetic reasons, the ⫽⫽ takes much more than double the space of // in an article's 1st sentence, where brevity is important, and that's if the unusual characters render properly. They are non-ASCII?

What discussion there was ended 15 months ago and can't be revived. They seem to be unwise changes. If many others have doubts I'd favour reverting for now.
- 1RightSider (talk) 22:04, 7 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Where did this discussion take place? Agree that it should be reverted. And where was the change actually made? There are no recent changes in the template's history. --Un assiolo (talk) 00:22, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion is from April 2023: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation/Archive 11 § Distinction between varieties of English.

You won't see the change in the history of Template:IPAc-en, because the template is simply a wrapper for Module:IPAc-en. The change was actually made to the module: Special:Diff/1233122572. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 06:53, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 8 July 2024

This edit request to Module:IPAc-en has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Revert edit by Nardog. The edit appears to have been made suddenly and without consensus. Users are confused, as English IPA everywhere on Wikipedia now displays differently with nonstandard IPA notation, using non-ASCII double slash symbols rather than the single slash standard which has been used on Wikipedia forever.

Change nonstandard, non-ASCII double slashes (⫽) back to standard IPA single slashes (/). 174.115.78.157 (talk) 04:50, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To editor Nardog: to let you know of this request and to get your take. No action taken thus far. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 05:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I saw this notation on one article and was surprised, as I had never encountered it before, even as someone with some knowledge of IPA. I figured it was a fluke with one article. Looking at more and more articles, I realized that the English IPA template (technically module) must have been changed. I won't claim to be an expert on phonetics so maybe there's some justification for the double slashes, but it's quite a shock as a reader. Skimming the article on diaphonemes (which seems to be related) left me scratching my head.

This may be a small edit, but it is to an extremely visible template. The edit summary pointed to a discussion from April 2023 involving only a handful of users: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation/Archive 11 § Distinction between varieties of English. I think there probably should have been a wider discussion first, but now that the change has been made, I guess more people will be drawn to comment, in line with WP:BRD. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 06:44, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this revert request – the change was not well-considered. The double slash notation is not widely recognizable and is an overly technical way of attempting to draw a distinction, especially for the lay audience finding it on pages unrelated to linguistics (the vast majority of places where the template is used). Also, many pages use both this template and other ways of inputting IPA (e.g. in English-language vowel changes before historic /r/). Suddenly changing only this template means that such pages now use a combination of / and ⫽, in a haphazard way which confusingly appears as if the use of the two notations is contrastive but is actually unintended. Adumbrativus (talk) 07:02, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done, per WP:TPEBOLD, though I note the change was not done boldly by me but was requested by J. 'mach' wust and Wolfdog here. Nardog (talk) 08:21, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm at a loss as to what the pertinence of the double slash being non-ASCII is, given most IPA transcriptions do contain non-ASCII characters. I also find it a bit ironic that the very motivation for using double slashes was to emphasize that the transcriptions produced by this template are in fact "nonstandard" and not the same as phonemic transcriptions you see in any other work. Some of the objection seems to highlight what the change was trying to fix. Nardog (talk) 08:34, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think non-ASCII-ness matters at all, but the the symbol has very poor font support. And it works for emphasising nonstandardness, but it does absolutely nothing beyond that. It does not, in particular, make it any less ambiguous what kind of transcription it is or which standard does it conform to. – MwGamera (talk) 20:24, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have opened a request for comment to discuss the matter: ~~Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#RfC: Should we keep our non-standard use of single slashes to enclose diaphonemic transcriptions?~~ Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics#RfC: Should we keep delimiting diaphonemic transcriptions with single slashes? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 21:36, 8 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request 20 September 2024

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Description of suggested change:

Hello, I suggest to update a tooltip:

Diff:

It seems highly unintuitive to apparently suggest the sound of the word "on" (and then a word some learners are liable to rhyme with "John") instead of something closer to the final sound. The suggested "even" seems as basic and neutral a word (though you may prefer hyphen, happen, heaven, alien...). 77.147.79.62 (talk) 16:34, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{Edit template-protected}} template. Nardog (talk) 18:57, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"ei" is a diphthong, and "eː" is an elongated pure vowel

The word face in most dialects of English is pronounced /feɪs/, while in Scottish English, it is often pronounced /feːs/. These sounds should not be grouped together. Grouping them would be similar to grouping 'bait' (/beɪt/) and 'beat' (/biːt/) together, which represent distinct vowel sounds. Zaurus (talk) 08:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Grouping them would be similar to grouping 'bait' (/beɪt/) and 'beat' (/biːt/) together ... There would be some similarity to that if Scottish English had a separate /eɪ/ phoneme contrasting with /eː/, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This template is used only for diaphonemic transcriptions and /eɪ/ is indeed a monophthong in many varieties of English despite of what the symbol might suggest. The notation /eː/ belongs to a different system. – MwGamera (talk) 14:10, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

/eɪ/ is indeed a monophthong in many varieties of English ... Not according to the *Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary*^[1] and the *IPA Handbook*^[2], which list /eɪ/ as a diphthong in English. The monophthongal variant (/eː/) exists, but it's specific to certain dialects, like Scottish English or some Southern Hemisphere accents. --Zaurus (talk) 16:55, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The transcription system this template outputs is diaphonemic. Please read Help:IPA/English. Nardog (talk) 04:55, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Jones, Daniel. *Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary*. 18th edition. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
^ International Phonetic Association. *Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet*. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Pronunciation code "pron"

The pronunciation code pron seems to be implemented to output a space, instead of "pronounced:", as I would have expected. Is this intentional?

I just removed it from the page Denisovan, where before it rendered like this:

( /dəˈniːsəvə/

From this:

({{IPAc-en|pron|d|ə|ˈ|n|iː|s|ə|v|ə}}

— W.andrea (talk) 14:33, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, looking at the template documentation, pron seems to be a feature of {{IPA}}, not {{IPAc-en}}. Dr Greg talk 21:55, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's not mentioned in the {{IPAc-en}} documentation, but it still does something, which is strange. My best guess (not having looked at the code) is that Module:IPAc-en uses Module:IPA and there's some way that pron slips through. — W.andrea (talk) 22:03, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Jones, Daniel. *Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary*. 18th edition. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

[2] International Phonetic Association. *Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet*. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

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