Talk:English orthography/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

The state of english spelling section

Violates npov (the entire article is somewhat questionable, but this section is just plain biased).

A more balanced, linguistically informed* would state something like: there are advantages and disadvantages to the english spelling system. Phonemic or phonetic orthographies are easier to learn, and learners suffer less from some forms of dyslexia. English spelling is known to be rather more difficult for both child and adult learners than, say, spanish or italian. However, some researches claim that orthographies where the link between the sound of the word and the visual look of the spelling is less evident or largely absent (not just english, but hanzi and the monstrosity that is japanese - english is a medium between the two extremes, whether happy or unhappy is up to you) enables faster recognition of words and therefore faster reading (or something like that, I don't remember exactly). In an age where even writers read far more than they write, this may be an acceptable tradeoff.

Also, something about how english dialects don't share the same phonology (esp with vowels), so which dialect gets to be the one enshined in the orthography. And, of course, our orthography tends to make clear relationships between words that a more phonetic orthography wouldn't. F'rexample, the 'a' in 'sane' and 'sanity' isn't the same sound, but spelling them 'sejn' and 'saenitee' (or something like that, the 'ae' is meant to be that ligature) would be somewhat confusing.

• disclaimer: I *am* a linguist, but have never taken a particular interest in orthographies, and make no claim of being an expert on the subject. Moreover, I appear to have misplaced the couple books I have that discuss this, so I've no references at hand (and don't feel like digging through jstor or something). ~beth A

That about faster reading is not true. Even when people read purely phonetic scripts, they read words instantly like in english, not by translating to sounds.

I think the point may be stronger against systems with unstandardized spelling, which is usually more phonemic. English, for example, spelt many words in a variety of ways until the 18th century; in Middle English, spelling was based closely on the sound system, but was virtually idiosyncratic to the individual writer. As a word could have a different form from writer to writer—even sentence to sentence—that instant kind of recognition would be much more difficult. Most modern orthographies (regardless of phonemicity) are rather standardized, with only small variations allowable, so this is not a problem inherent in rational spelling. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 17:44, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

When we say 'allowed' we should be clear there is no authoritative body as in certain other national/linguistic cultures: although OED has a certain authority, especially for certain types of writing purpose, they reflect language and have guidelines towards clarity rather than constrain it or rule on it whilst industry, publishers/media, and certainly educational authorities such as curriculum setting bodies will all have their own 'house-style' or preferred interpretations of current Standard English without being authoritative: I thought that was the 'official' position? There has also been the advent to txt-speak and general acceptance of lower standards in the fast-type arenas of internet social technology; the older internet etiquette rule put forward was to hold to good standards of English yourself whilst being forgiving and silent on the Written English of others; should this be in the article? I think perhaps it should. I need references! But not got all the time in the world!Kathybramley (talk) 12:27, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Mini-Article and Article Needed on Non-Modern English Orthographies

I'd like to make suggestions for the improvement of this article. This whole article reads like it's been written by non-linguists (it's a kind of scientist, they train them in universities now-a-days), in particular, high school grammar teachers. Hence, the focus of the article seems to be on current modern standard English orthography. So I'm going to have to ask these people to lay off me if I make any "grammar errors".

To have a more useful and insightful article, there needs to be mini-articles and articles on the various modern standard English orthographies that exist today ( British and American seem the two that come to mind, though serious attention should also be given of the hundreds of English-based creoles which more-or-less write English words almost exactly as they sound, even in modern British and American dialects ).

Likewise, modern English standard orthographies have a history that is very useful in understanding their "irregularities", or rather, mis-matches between modern dialect pronunciation and ancient dialect pronunciations and their orthographic representation.  ! It is just outstanding that the taboo in modern linguistics on writing systems has led to such a wikipedia article on "English orthography" ! What a shame. I wish the world language was French or German, because at least they would have an article on their orthography touching on past forms. I'd want a part addressing Middle English spellings and Old English spellings as well.

There are also fossilized borrowings of past and present English orthographies in other major and minor world languages, and these deserve at least a note.

Off the top of my head, English modern standard orthographies are (mostly) based on the King James Version Bible of 1611, which set the standard for its day. Before that, English spelling was much less standardized and looked more like French. English spelling goes back as far as language has been written, but especially Germanic languages. English orthography is not un-influenced by non-Roman Scripts, like the various Runes and Ogham. Anyway, English modern orthography represents one or more Middle English pronunciations. Aside from what I've seen and read on the KJV, I've also heard it said that Caxton did a lot toward standardizing English spelling, though my experience has been contrary to that. Before the standardization of about 1611, it seems that there were local traditions of spelling, which included at some points people just writing like they spoke, or wanted others to think they spoke. This 1611 standardization is actually very late in the game, because Latin was the principal language of all writing until about 1850. It had a standardized orthography since about Caesar Augustus 0 AD (and died in 400 AD), maybe a bit before. Middle French orthography was a big influence. All major languages have standardized spelling today, but most minor languages do not, like some obscure Low German language in Bavaria. This is like how there is no standard phonemic* spelling for Southern American dialects : just as they use Standard American Orthography to write their dialects, so local minor languages know the province or country language and use it for writing, writing their own language more as they see fit.

Many ancient languages don't have standard orthography in terms of every word being spelled the same all the time. It makes doing word frequency counts and interlinear translations frustrating, but it's not so bad. Ancient Egyptian and Old Khmer come to mind. But once empires are reached, orthography usually gets standardized.

• Not "phonetic", "phonemic" : it's a scientific term.

The kind of things you'll see in pre-1611 English are i and y and u and v being switched, extra e's on the end, and a host of other things making it increasing difficult to understand without glosses the farther back you go. Old English had distinct letters for [th] and [dh], whereas Middle English had used Y for [th] and [dh]. Believe it or not, often Middle English and pre-1611 orthographies match modern pronunciations better than modern standard orthographies, possibly because of the writers' dialects or some other weird thing. Maybe the 1611 orthographers wanted an orthography distinct from what came before.

These are the kind of things the article and encyclopedia lack. Non-linguists are especially ignorant and backward on this topic, with their whole "traditional grammar" rhetoric, talk of "silent letters" and such. "Silent letters" were at one time pronounced. All of the endless "rules" of traditional grammars have more logical, more regular explanations deriving from historic realities. Linguists are light-years ahead of the K-12 systems in The West (Europe, Canada, USA, Australia, maybe South Africa, sorry), and it's only because of advances in scholarship of the past 150 years.

English orthography is not only the monumental Standard English orthographies of America vs. the Rest of the Anglophone world. It's also past and present variants in ancestral and sibling (creoles) languages.

And it also has a future ! No doubt, for political reasons, English standard orthographies in 300 years may be completely different. Hopefully they don't treat our spellings the way we treat our ancestors', otherwise they'll end up the way we've ended up.

These are the kind of things the article and encyclopedia lack. Oh, and it's somewhat long and important enough to deserve multiple articles. Dwarfkingdom (talk) 23:05, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Historical orthography

A bit swamped at the moment, but this page seems to lack any treatment of Middle and Early Modern English orthography (in particular, long s and the conflations of I/J and V/U. If I'm not just missing it, could someone whip up something or provide a hatnote or see also link? (If I am missing it, could someone split out a true "history" section so it's easier to find? Right now the history section is—misleadingly—dealing only with "misspellings"... which of course at the time were nothing of the sort.) — LlywelynII 04:22, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

'Ough' words section

"Finally, there is the place name Loughborough, where the first ough has the sound as in cuff and the second rhymes with thorough." This isn't clear - I can't do IPA but in Britain we pronounce it 'Luff - burruh' of 'Luff - bruh' in line with the way British people pronounce 'thorough'; I have heard Americans pronounce 'thorough' as thurrow, and 'borough' as 'burrow', which would suggest to an American reading this that the correct pronunciation of Loughborough is 'Luff - burrow', which it isn't. Can someone clarify this in the text, please? 86.133.209.129 (talk) 10:24, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

In tis section there is reference to "British English". There are a number of dialects in Britain, one of which is RP. In RP borough rhymes with thorough and letter; if "RP" is meant then "RP" should be used. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.149.33.20 (talk) 22:29, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Correspondance tables: Original research?

Hi everybody, althought i like the correspondance tables and would like to improve them, I wonder if they could be considered original research, and someone could ask to remove them! Tomthumb2014 (talk) 15:16, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Spelling irregularities: no final v

What was the reasoning for the spelling convention that prohibited a final v? ZFT (talk) 21:12, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Probably connected with the fact that the [v] sound was originally just an allophone of /f/ that didn't occur at the ends of words, hence final /v/ only came about in words that originally had an 'e' which became silent. I can't fill in the details though. W. P. Uzer (talk) 21:39, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

more detailed environments for /w/ + a

After reading the pronunciations for /w/ + a, I realized that there appeared to be some inconsistencies and I decided to determine how I pronounced all the words containing "wa" in the article. I noticed some rules not represented in the table. waC is generally pronounced /wɑ/, waV is generally pronounced /we/, warC is generally pronounced /wɔ˞/, and warV,waVr pronounced /wɛ˞/, and when /wɑ/ is unstressed it becomes /wɐ/. C representing a consonant or end of word. V representing e/i/y. However, as I am not certain of the consistency of these "rules" across dialects, I don't want to incorrectly modify the article without any sources. Zombiedude347 (talk) 22:00, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Use of (deprecated) /ɨ/

The meaning of the sign /ɨ/ on Wikipedia – and this article does not define it in any other way – used to be ‘diaphoneme that represents either the phoneme /ɪ/ or the phoneme /ə/’. After discussion on Help:IPA for English#The Diaphonemic System (and previously, Help:IPA for English#Note on variable vowels, or Help talk:IPA for English/Archive 14#Sources for non-IPA use of the symbols ⟨ɨ⟩, ⟨ʉ⟩ and ⟨ɵ⟩), we have decided not to use this sign any longer because apparently, /ɨ/ is not being used as a diaphoneme outside of Wikipedia. We have decided to use /ᵻ/ instead because it is really being used as a diaphoneme outside of Wikipedia.

@Afasmit:: You have reverted my attempt at removing the deprecated sign /ɨ/, because with the edit I “end up with duplicate mentions of /ə/”. Assuming that /ɨ/ represents either /ɪ/ or /ə/, that was the case before as well. What solution would you suggest? I see several ways:

1. /ɪ/ or /ə/ – that is what I have done. It leads to some duplicates.
2. /ɪ ~ ə/
3. /ɪ, ə/
4. /ɪ/ (or /ə/)
5. /ᵻ/ – define beforehand that it means ‘/ɪ/ or /ə/’
6. /ɨ/ – define beforehand that it means ‘/ɪ/ or /ə/’, and maybe mention that on Wikipedia, it is usually represented by /ᵻ/ (which already shows up in some instances in this article)

I think maybe the solution 2 or 3 would be the easiest to understand, without the need for any additional explanations. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 17:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree, I don't think we should be introducing additional symbols that few readers will be familiar with, when we can convey the information (relatively) clearly and still quite compactly by using any of options 1-4. W. P. Uzer (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I'm fine with the changes now. While the duplications become obvious in this form (e.g. unstressed "e" can be pronounced /ə/ (taken, decency, moment), /ə/ or /ɪ/ (hatchet, target, poet) or /ɪ/ (erase, erect), we'd lose the ability to point out some specific flexibly pronounced words when replacing the above with: "e" can be pronounced /ə/ (taken, decency, target (some times) or /ɪ/ (erase, erect, poet (sometimes)).

By the way, wikipedia's entry on [ɨ] right now does not suggest it to represent "either /ə/ or /ɪ/", but a distinct close central unrounded vowel. If people attempt to distinguish between "Rosa's" and "roses" it sounds like /ə/ and /ɪ/ to me, but there are many vowels I can't distinguish;-) Or perhaps /ɨ/ represents the one vowel that results from the weak vowel merger in some dialects. Maybe the /ɨ/ entry needs some adjusting.

The reason why the article on ɨ does not say anythin about the use of /ɨ/ as a diaphoneme that corresponds either to the phoneme /ɪ/ or to the phoneme /ə/ is simple: Such a use was specific to Wikipedia. It is not used anywhere else, which means it does not stand the test of WP:VER. Therefore, it is not noteworthy. Ultimately, that is the very reason why we no longer recommend /ɨ/, but /ᵻ/ instead which is being used verifiably in the third edition of the OED. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 10:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

/i:/

'...the vowel sound /iː/ in me can be spelt in at least nine different ways: paediatric, me, seat, seem, ceiling, people, machine, siege, phoenix.' How about 'key' and 'quay'? 78.144.231.218 (talk) 08:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, that paragraph needed some links to the Spelling-to-sound and Sound-to-spelling correspondence sections. Afasmit (talk) 09:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

blancmange

The word blancmange is pronounced /blə.mɑnʒ/. If I wanted to demonstrate the exceptional value of "an" being reduced to /ə/, where would I show this? Or is it perhaps more accurate to represent this as a silent n instead? 2WR1 (talk) 01:32, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

/au/ in sausage

There is a mistake in the last entry (letter y). "supply" is pronounced as /aɪ/ , not /i/

I copied this entry here below

unstressed, word-final /i/ any, city, happy, only, supply (adv) /aɪ/ ally (n) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:1810:C410:F300:CCD2:EBF7:19FE:F158 (talk) 12:57, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Combinations with r

I've basically set up the chart for the combinations with r section, but some help filling it in and formatting it would be greatly appreciated. 2WR1 (talk) 21:20, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I just copied the stuff I'd written in the big vowel table above it into this table. I'm not sure if this section is needed though, as the information is indeed mostly duplicated and anything additional will also fit in the general vowel table. Afasmit (talk) 05:55, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

@Afasmit: Ya, I'm not sure either, it's true though that sometimes r combinations have unique values, and this needs to be represented somehow. Also, one thing that is making this section hard is whether to show the values in GA or RP or some sort of middle ground, the differences here can be great. Any ideas apreciated. 2WR1 (talk) 06:15, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

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placement of fluoresce

I want to add the word fluoresce to the u section as a silent u. The only problem is there seems to be nowhere that fits for this. The section that says before a vowel specifies a "heterosyllabic vowel". Does anyone have any ideas of where to put this exception? Any thoughts would be appreciated. 2WR1 (talk) 05:42, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, according to dictionaries fluoresce(nt) is also pronounced /flʊəˈrɛs/, which makes /flɔːˈrɛs/ a completely predictable variant because of the pour–poor merger. So it's probably premature to deem u in fluoresce silent, until the merger is complete in major varieties of English. Nardog (talk) 13:15, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Well the OED cites /flɔːˈrɛsnt/ as a secondary UK pronunciation, and for the US pronunciations there are none in which the vowel is a diphthong: /ˌflʊˈrɛs(ə)nt/, /flɔˈrɛs(ə)nt/. So an alternative pronunciation still counts as a legitimate value for an orthographic sequence. So either the u is silent (in some dialects/speakers) or 'uo' is a diphthong with these specific pronunciations. I think the former is a better description of what's happening. 2WR1 (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@2WR1: GA doesn't have /ʊə/, the corresponding phoneme (phonemes actually) is a sequence /ʊr/. If the UK pronunciation is /flʊəˈrɛsənt/, then /flʊˈrɛsənt/ is a completely predictable americanized variant. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:48, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: That's a good point, because those sounds are completely merged for me, it's hard to remember when /ʊə/ would be the standard IPA transcription. Thanks! 2WR1 (talk) 22:17, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

RP / UK??

@Mr KEBAB: What's the difference between these two codes mentioned in the article? I thought that they were the same thing, considering this is for the standard orthographies around the world... — ^{they call me} AWESOMEmeeos ... [ˈɔɪ̯]! 11:10, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: I don't know, but I know that RP is an accent. In a certain sense, it has nothing to do with written English. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:25, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

But that's just me playing Captain Obvious, as per usual. So let me rewrite: I'm not sure. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:27, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB: So maybe you're saying RP is for a specific accent and UK is for Anglo accents in general (that includes RP)? — ^{they call me} AWESOMEmeeos ... [ˈɔɪ̯]! 11:29, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos: I haven't checked the article thoroughly enough to be sure of that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 11:41, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

Oh s*** I only realised now that the code UK is only mentioned twice — and they're only used when it's a non-standard pronunciation. Same for GA / US, where US is only mentioned twice. Please pardon my French and my lack of attention — ^{they call me} AWESOMEmeeos ... [ˈɔɪ̯]! 11:59, 4 December 2017 (UTC)

@Awesomemeeos and Mr KEBAB: sorry to butt in to the conversation three months late, but doesn't this then mean that there should be a standard for whether to use the specifications GA/RP or US/UK in the article? I feel like their often used interchangeably, even if technically UK is divergent from the RP (though I feel like US and GA are synonymous), and I know at least on wiktionary, unless the pronunciation is very specifically RP as opposed to what may be the new standard UK pronunciation for a word, generally US and UK are used as specifications for the pronunciations. 2WR1 (talk) 22:23, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

How is "anxiety" an exception?

What is the <x> in <anxiety> supposed to be pronounced with, a velar fricative? Isn't the <x> just /gz/? This falls under the "before /k g/" rule. Mocha2007 (talk) 15:16, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Anxiety is pronounced /æŋˈzaɪəti/ in both RP and GA. The rule for "n" is that "n" is pronounced /ŋ/ before a /g/ or /k/ sound, and neither one is there. Afasmit (talk) 17:46, 3 August 2018 (UTC)

Hyperlinked words in charts section

I just noticed there are some words in the charts section that are hyperlinked to pages (actually just four at the top of the consonants section). It is my thought that this should be removed as it makes the charts look awkward when they're peppered with blue and it doesn't really fit with the point of the spelling charts anyway. I'd like to know other people's thoughts, but if no-one else says otherwise I'll remove the hyperlinks. 2WR1 (talk) 23:22, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Fully agree, the linking doesn't serve any purpose. This page is about the words, not their meanings. −Woodstone (talk) 09:38, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Woodstone Okay, I'm gonna remove them, thanks! 2WR1 (talk) 02:43, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

ou before p

The consonants table needs a new row; saying that oo, not ou, is the major value of the ou digraph before p, as in soup. Any comments?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:31, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Whole article wrong as half English is french or latin

The introduction is utterly misleading. The other half is dialectal variation even from old english times to this day, like weigh and way, things kept in scottish or northern english. Yoandri Dominguez Garcia 22:01, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Missing aspects of orthography beyond spelling

Hello all. It seems to me that this article focuses almost exclusively on spelling. I think that this article could be improved by covering some other aspects of English orthography. In particular, punctuation, spacing, capitalization, and rules for combining words. That is, when should words should be written as one, when should they be written with hyphens, when should they be written separately: for example, housewife, freeze-dried, distance learning. (I pulled these examples from the article English compound, by the way). I also think it would be helpful to provide a short overview of the English alphabet, perhaps with a link to the article English alphabet for a more in-depth discussion. It might be helpful to mention that this article is mostly focusing on contemporary English orthography. (I'd say Modern English, but Shakespeare was already writing (Early) Modern English, and his orthographic conventions are somewhat odd for contemporary readers. Also, we no longer use the "long" s.) Also, it would be nice if we could mention (unofficial) authorities on English orthography. Major style guides, dictionaries, that sort of thing. I believe the MLA and Chicago are relatively influential style guides? And Merriam Webster and Oxford are influential dictionaries? Thanks for reading. JonathanHopeThisIsUnique (talk) 00:17, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Permanent change proposal concerning Rollings' (2004) orthographic generative approach and the Lax/Tense/Heavy/Tense-R table.

An unavoidable consequence of time is a plethora of future theories to explain English symbol-to-sound mapping. Rollins' 2004 analysis of English spelling rules is extremely useful and I believe it represents an ideal baseline for future works. I worry the table in question may be removed to reduce page space and I am preemptively making the argument for that table to remain, even if only as a historical work. 121.45.171.107 (talk) 17:23, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

taoiseach

Should taoiseach be under the exceptions for ao, oi, or under its own row aoi? Or all three? Clearly an exception. --Mocha2007 (talk) 16:34, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

"Several orthographic mistakes are common even among native speakers."

The reference for this is terrible. While I agree with the premise that native speakers can commit orthographical errors (as it is an artificially constructed system as opposed to a naturally occurring one), a news article prescribing certain word usage has nothing to do with that premise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lemonici (talk • contribs) 17:04, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree that's a lousy source. Does the statement really need a source, though, or is it a WP:BLUESKY statement? I think, at least, to native English speakers it is probably a bluesky statement, but perhaps not so to nonnative speakers.. Firejuggler86 (talk) 23:44, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Standard for "standardisation"?

"Like the orthography of most world languages, English orthography has a broad degree of standardisation. This standardization began to develop when movable type spread to England in the late 15th century."

Two versions of "standardization" in the text. One is the current British spelling, the other the US version. Both are correct but it's considered bad form to use both in one piece.SamXT (talk) 06:55, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Switched it to the US spelling, most if not all of the article seems to be using it.--Megaman en m (talk) 11:11, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Rhotic vowels are problematic

they're all written according to non-rhotic pronunciations rather than Wikipedia diaphonemes, i.e. /ɪə/ rather than /ɪər/. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Omoutuazn (talk • contribs) 12:31, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

This is because it states that the pronunciation used is RP. As a non-rhotic speaker I can't be certain, but if I'm not mistaken, the pronunciation of vowel+r is essentially the vowel's pronunciation + r or that vowel but R-coloured, depending on the tightness of the transcription, isn't it? If that is indeed the case, I don't see inclusion of the rhotic pronunciations as necessary, but a short paragraph explaining this would be helpful. Anditres (talk) 03:50, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Question

“Another such class of words includes sign /ˈsaɪn/ and bomb /ˈbɒm/ with silent letters ⟨g⟩ and ⟨b⟩, respectively. However, the related words signature and bombard are pronounced /ˈsɪɡnətʃər/ and /bɒmˈbɑːrd/, respectively. Here, it could be argued that the underlying representation of sign and bomb is |saɪɡn| and |bɒmb|, in which the underlying |ɡ| and |b| are only pronounced in the surface forms when followed by certain suffixes (-⟨ature⟩, -⟨ard⟩). Otherwise, the |ɡ| and |b| are not realised in the surface pronunciation (e.g., when standing alone, or when followed by suffixes like -⟨ing⟩ or -⟨er⟩). In these cases, the orthography indicates the underlying consonants that are present in certain words but are absent in other related words.”

Should this be removed?, I see the point but the reason these words are pronounced the way they are is purely coincidental, a result of their etymology/ how they were borrowed into the language and the proposed "analysis" doesn’t make much sense (I understand it but it’s a weak argument).

78.18.122.69 (talk) 11:34, 9 June 2022 (UTC)

Invisible letters

Moved from Revert of Invisible Letters on English orthography article

Courtesy link: [1]

Hi there! I see my edit was reverted on English orthography and thought I'd touch base to see how Invisible Letters and the examples given could fit into another article. I see the reason is "confusing letters with sound", but as Invisible Letters are the direct opposite of Silent Letters and technically involve the absence of letters I felt it was still suitable in this article. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. CineBrick315 (talk) 08:59, 12 July 2022 (UTC) Bazza (talk) 10:25, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

@CineBrick315: My reason for reverting was that I do not understand how you can have an invisible letter. You gave as an example ⟨w⟩ one. There is no "w" in the word "one", so how can the "w" be invisible? I think you are confusing sounds and letters. Your edit could be considered WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. I am willing to be persuaded otherwise if you supply a reliable source for your assertion. Bazza (talk) 10:30, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Ough in Irish place names

In Irish place names, /ɒx/ (for most speakers merged with /ɒk/) spelled “ough” is a common anglicisation of Irish ach(a), och(a), uach etc., e.g. Glendalough /ˌɡlɛndəˈlɒx/, Ardclough /ɑːr(d)ˈklɒx/, Loughrea /lɒxˈreɪ/, Loughmoe /lɒxˈmoʊ/. But on this page it is listed as an exceptional one word pronunciation in "lough". Maybe it should be added to the "typical pronunciations" list? Also, in Oughterard (another place name), ough represents /uːx/, is this applicable for the one word exception list? 2A01:B340:86:C412:485C:1635:9B2A:A464 (talk) 22:12, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Why is the hover-page preview for this article the Israeli flag?

I suspect this is a side-effect of a link somewhere in the article to an Israel-related page, but it seems rather unusual to have the page image be the flag of a country whose official language is not English. Is there a way to fix this? -- LWG ^talk 01:43, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

No, it's the result of vandalism to a module that was transcluded on the page. It's been reverted and the cache updated so it seems to have gone away. Nardog (talk) 02:10, 18 September 2023 (UTC)