User talk:Hortimech2014

An elementary phonetics primer — how 'Clitheroe' is (and isn't) pronounced

So, I think you're confusing IPA /ə/ with /æ/.

The problem, I think, is that you're basing your assessment of my IPA transcription of Clitheroe on the mouseover tooltip for /ə/, which gives the example of 'a' in 'about'. Which is as good a choice as any, but any example one could choose would have the same problem: /ə/ is a weak vowel, and for any weak vowel in the English sound system there's a corresponding strong vowel you use when you emphasize the pronunciation. In other words, /ə/ is the 'uh' in "uh-BOWT", not the 'aa' in "aa-BOWT". In an ordinary English sentence context, you'd weaken the first syllable and say 'uh-BOWT' /ə.ˈbaʊt/. You might think of it as 'aa-BOWT' /ˌæ.ˈbaʊt/ in an emphasized context, though.

The first change I made eliminated the possibility, that was suggested by the original transcription, of a pronunication 'KLIDH-ee-ROE'. You reverted that, then someone suggested /ər/ instead, which was almost what I had except that it divided the symbols differently, grouping the ər together instead of placing them in separate template arguments, which I objected to on a principle related to syllabification: in general, when splitting a transcription into syllables, consonants are grouped with the stronger/more stressed of their neighbouring syllables, a rule which this division defied. So I separated them again, then you reverted that change.

The transcription I gave is a correct one. You just need to understand the IPA before you start meddling with it. I've also lived in Clitheroe all my life, and I know it's not pronounced 'KLIDH-aa-ROE'. Hopefully my explanation will make me seem less of a prat. :-)

DavidPKendal (talk) 00:36, 18 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I’ve been watching your disagreement over this issue and have some comments:

Even after reading this explanation and re-reading WP:IIPA I still can’t tell who is correct.
IPA is of interest to such a tiny number of readers I can’t see that it hugely matters what is says or if it is even in the article at all.

At the moment I’m leaning toward Hortimech’s later idea that it should be removed if it is disputed. --Trappedinburnley (talk) 17:36, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's no dispute over the pronunciation itself. It's the transcription of the pronunciation which is at issue. Hortimech seems to be basing his assessment of my choice on a misunderstanding of the transcription system resulting from a poor choice of tooltip text for the schwa IPA symbol. To that end, User:Dr Greg has started a discussion proposing changing it at the IPA template talk. DavidPKendal (talk) 18:04, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Post script: The relevant help page is Help:IPA_for_English, not WP:IIPA. DavidPKendal (talk) 18:12, 24 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

IPA is a discredited system, it was discredited before DavidPKendal was born. They tried to teach school children to read and write phonetically but the only problem was once they taught them that way, they then had to teach them how to read and write properly and it confused them, so the experiment was abandoned. Yes there are several ways of spelling words, but you learn the way for the country you live in, if you try to introduce phonetics into this, you will only make things worse. If you need to show how to pronounce a word, use syllables. Hortimech2014

It is Wikipedia policy to use IPA as the primary pronunciation method: see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation. Other secondary methods may be used as well as, but not instead of, IPA. I think the comment about school children is irrelevant; we're not teaching children how to read, we're teaching English speakers how to pronounce an unfamiliar word. In the case of Clitheroe, it seems to me that it is pronounced as it is spelt, so it's not that important to have a pronunciation specified; however, maybe people whose first language isn't English might not find it so easy to pronounce. For example, from the spelling it could plausibly be pronounced with a long "i" /aɪ/ (as in "tithe"). The Clitheroe case reveals that there's currently a defect in Wikipedia's implementation of hints for how to pronounce /ə/; the solution to this is to work out a better implementation rather than abandon IPA. -- Dr Greg talk 15:42, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Your recent editing history at Clitheroe shows that you are currently engaged in an edit war. Being involved in an edit war can result in your being blocked from editing—especially if you violate the three-revert rule, which states that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Undoing another editor's work—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert. Also keep in mind that while violating the three-revert rule often leads to a block, you can still be blocked for edit warring—even if you don't violate the three-revert rule—should your behavior indicate that you intend to continue reverting repeatedly.

To avoid being blocked, instead of reverting please consider using the article's talk page to work toward making a version that represents consensus among editors. See BRD for how this is done. You can post a request for help at a relevant noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases, you may wish to request temporary page protection. -- Dr Greg talk 19:58, 25 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Will you please stop threatening me. If you have to wade through pages of stuff to try and understand how to understand how to pronounce something you have been pronouncing for nearly sixty years, then something is very wrong. I think that my decision to remove the thing that we are arguing about is the right thing to do, it is a very small edit and stops all arguments, or so I thought. What I would like to know is, what gives you more rights to edit wikipedia than I do, I did not start this 'war' as YOU call it, I edited an incorrect pronunciation (as it was on the page), my edit was reverted, Then changed. I still think that something that does not sound like what I have been pronoucing for years should not be on the page. I think that the best outcome would be if you would accepted that we are NEVER going to agree on this and in this instance, agree to the IPA being removed. Hortimech2014

Again, I'm quite sure that we do agree on the pronunciation, but you've just misunderstood the transcription system. If you read the IPA properly, here's what my transcription sounds like. I hope you agree that we're pronouncing it the same, since I've never heard it said any other way either. DavidPKendal (talk) 09:16, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly, a system that is so easily misunderstood should not be used, please remove the phonetic way of pronouncing Clitheroe until IPA sorts out how to pronounce Clitheroe i.e. Klith-er-o. The page at the moment (if you mouse over the IPA bit) shows that Clitheroe is pronounced with an 'a' sound i.e. klith-ar-o, the better end of the poor may pronounce it this way, but the majority of Clitheronians do not! Hortimech2014

I agree with you that IPA is understood by a fairly limited number of readers, until this dispute I’d never found sufficient motivation to get involved with it. But I’m afraid that the Clitheroe article is not the place to debate the validity of phonetics, or if wiki should use IPA. But I thought you should know that this issue has led to discussions in more appropriate palaces that may well see changes made to the IPA help pages and relevant tooltip.

If there is still debate over the transcription it would save a lot of time to check with a reliable source as has been recently suggested on the talk page. With many thousands of contributors on a daily basis content disputes are frequent. The content on Wikipedia is not the knowledge, views or opinions of its users, it’s supposed to be an accurate representation of the available reliable sources.--Trappedinburnley (talk) 11:09, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am not saying that IPA should be abandoned, just that the patently wrong interpretation of Clitheroe should be removed until IPA is corrected. My feelings are that only something that is 100% correct should appear on a Wikipedia page, otherwise you are spreading incorrect information. Hortimech2014

Let me suggest a positive way forward. The sticking point seems to be the hint for pronouncing /ə/, which at the time of writing is "'a' in 'about'". Here are some alternative suggestions:

'e' in 'boomerang'
'e' in 'geranium'
'e' in 'operation'
'e' in 'the car'
'i' in 'pencil'
'o' in 'eloquent'
'o' in 'haddock'
'o' in 'producer'
'o' in 'production'
'u' in 'supply'
'u' in 'support'
'y' in 'sibyl'
'a' in 'about'
'a' in 'aware'
'a' in 'award'
'a' in 'awake'
'a' in 'a mission'
'a' in 'Russia'
'a' in 'comma'
'a' in 'sofa'
'a' in 'Rosa's'

Which of those would you accept? Ideally, reply at Template talk:IPAc-en/Archive 1#Mouseover for 'ə', but reply here if you must. -- Dr Greg talk 15:31, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, but what planet are you on ? the 'e' sound in Clitheroe, does not sound like 'a' 'y' 'u' 'o' or 'i' so that rules out most of your list. the sound that you are looking for is the 'er' sound in 'boomerang' or 'geranium', and that I think is the problem, phonetics is trying to rewrite the word letter by letter, is there not a symbol for the syllable 'er' ? if fact what is is wrong with using syllables instead, Clitheroe is pronounced 'Kli-th-er-o' what is wrong with that, instead of your hyroglyphics ?? Hortimech2014

The problem with those suggestions is that they both precede the letter 'r'. Wikipedia's IPA transcriptions have to be accent-neutral (this is one of the reasons we use the IPA instead of, as you call them, "syllables"). /ə/ occurs in lots of other places in English pronunciation, and it's not always followed by 'r'. As a typical British English speaker, you don't pronounce the 'r' in words like 'letter', but most Americans do, as well as English people in the south-west, and those with Scottish and Irish accents. The best example I can think of where there's very little chance of confusion with any other sound is 'e' in 'the car'. DavidPKendal (talk) 18:53, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am a typical Clitheronian and I can assure you that I do pronounce the 'r' in 'letter' I most certainly do not pronounce it 'lette'. We are discussing the pronunciation of a place name, so in my opinion, you have to take accent in to account. This is where you are going wrong, the phonetic that you want to use must take this into account, it must show how the residents pronounce the name of where they live, not how you would like it to sound, take 'Masham' for instance, I would hate to see how you would show that in phonetics, or 'Harewood' nr Leeds. Hortimech2014

Heh, no, I didn't quite mean like that. Most British people don't say the letter 'r' as an 'r' before a consonant, so for most of us, the word 'farther' sounds exactly the same as the word 'father', and 'pander' sounds exactly like 'panda'. For Americans, though, those words sound different because they always say the letter 'r' (usually exactly like the letter 'r' in 'red') in those words. The transcription example for /ə/ has to be suitable for the final 'a' in 'panda', in that example.

If you're a "typical Clitheronian" you almost certainly have a different accent to me. I speak the Received Pronunciation, and you agreed (well, didn't disagree) that my pronunciation was the "same" as yours, and correct, though you would probably have used very slightly different vowels. Those very slight difference in spoken vowel quality — differences which are the same in every word featuring a given vowel — are the basis of what we perceive as accents. They're irrelevant for the purposes of showing how to transcribe a particular word or place name. DavidPKendal (talk) 19:28, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And, to answer your question: Masham /ˈmæsəm/, Harewood /ˈhɛərwʊd/ DavidPKendal (talk) 19:41, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there you go, you must come from the better end of the poor, a genuine Clitheronian would pronounce their 'r's and as for saying that accents are irrelevant to a place name, well I cannot agree with you there. How a place name is pronounced is dictated by the people who live in that place and the majority of Clitheronians would not pronounce it the way that you seem to do, oh and you got both of the place names wrong, Masham is Mash-am and Harewood is Har-wood! This conversation is over, we will never agree, do not contact me again. Hortimech2014