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Linguistics: Phonetics

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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.

Bengali IPA editing suggestion

জ which is /dʒ/ should also include /ɟ/ (it doesn't have to be a affricate; rather I'd say it is more a plosive than an affricate) ঝ which is /dʒ/ should also include /ɟʰ/ চ which is /tʃ/ should also include /c/ ছ which is /tʃʰ/ should also include /cʰ/ The second ones can be better. Reference: https://ipa.bangla.gov.bd/ipa_allignment this site has some mistakes but I think in case of জ, ঝ, চ, ছ atleast, they are right. Even if you reject my proposal please inform me; I'd look forward to know what happened. AbdunNafiAlif (talk) 05:23, 4 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the first two, but in my opinion, চ and ছ are fine as they are 182.48.221.136 (talk) 19:07, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification on "ts" letters

I was looking at the IPA chart in the Hopi Dictionary and it says that the "ts" sound (voiceless alveolar affricate) in Hopi is transcribed in IPA as t^s (with the "s" as a superscript). I haven't found t^s on any other IPA charts, and it seems that the current chart uses t͡s instead. The dictionary was published in 1998, so perhaps that letter format is no longer used? I came across this while transcribing the pronounciation for Koyaanisqatsi. Was hoping for some clarification, thanks. –Dream out loud (talk) 08:14, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a link to the page of the dictionary I'm referring to. You can "borrow" the book for free through the Internet Archive. –Dream out loud (talk) 08:16, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it ever was one of the alphabet's official ways to represent an affricate, but it is nonetheless seen, especially when the author wants to emphasize the frication is brief, allophonic, etc. Currently ⟨ts, t͡s, t͜s⟩ are the only official ways, so you were right to use ⟨t͡s⟩. Nardog (talk) 22:20, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks NARDOG! Love the name by the way... I'm actually in the middle of an episode of The Office as I'm writing this! Anyway, would you be interested in working with me on creating the page Help:IPA/Hopi? I started adding Hopi IPA to a few more articles, so maybe its own IPA help page would be benenficial? I have the IPA chart from the 1998 Hopi Dictionary but I'm no liguistic expert and would like to find someone here who could help with that. –Dream out loud (talk) 10:46, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Malayalam IPA editing suggestion

ഉ which is /u/ should also include /ʊ/. I am only a student, but I think the latter is an allophone in many Malayalam dialects (e.g. pronunciation of ഉപ്പ്). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.46.133.227 (talk) 04:18, 3 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tunisian Arabic Romanization

What is up with this? The Tunisian Arabic IPA Help page uses latin-script in its examples rather than Arabic, and worse it is an extremely strange transliteration scheme. Eel of Oppo (talk) 20:58, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tool

I'm not an expert on the subject, I would just like to know if there's a tool to have the pronunciation of a word automatically. JacktheBrown (talk) 10:24, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]