Help talk:IPA/Danish

Table format

@Nardog: mine may not have been an improvement stricto sensu, but do you not agree that listing the large amount of vowels of Danish the way I did may be a lot more immediate to the reader? Also, grouping syllabic consonants in the same list as pure vowels seems to me a little off and a bit misleading in narrow phonetic terms. 〜イヴァンスクルージ九十八［IvanScrooge98］（会話） 23:40, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't. Your version of the key is gratuitously wider, with the "N/A" parts making it even more pointless. I for one find the alternation of short and long vowels easy on the eye. In the vast majority of cases we use "vowels" and "consonants" in the phonological sense, or otherwise we would be counting approximants among vowels. The syllabic consonants in Danish are weak vowels whichever way you look at it. Also, if you're making a separate section for syllabic consonants then it should either include [ɐ] (from a phonological perspective) or exclude [ð̩] (from a phonetic one). Nardog (talk) 01:24, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

I have compared the tables in mobile view on my phone. The long version requires more scrolling, but little swiping. What I like better about the long version is that I can immediately see the consonant part of the table; in the wide version, a first-time reader cannot tell whether they will have to scroll or swipe to find the consonants. So I opt for the older version here.

The unstressed syllabic segments are tricky. It appears counterintuitive at a first glance to have [ə] and [n̩] in the same block, but a division into two parts creates a cutoff problem, especially with respect to where to put [ð̩] then. No strong opinion here. –Austronesier (talk) 12:22, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

[e] for 'ven' and 'mæle' needs to be changed back to [ɛ]

I see that Nardog made this change relatively unilaterally in April 2020 and later tried to present it as consensus in getting me to follow it.

Most transcriptions, as one can see under § Comparison of transcription schemes, transcribe it as ⟨ɛ⟩. Regardless, it's clearly an ⟨ɛ⟩. If you listen to this performance, for example, the close-mid front unrounded vowel ⟨e⟩ in "det", two words prior, is clearly not the same vowel as med or brede, where it is the open-mid front unrounded vowel ⟨ɛ⟩. Wiktionary lists the pronunciation as mɛð, both phonemically and phonetically.

I only found one brief mention by Nardog of this particular change, at the very end of a discussion about something else. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 18:39, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

No, it's was not done unilaterally, but is based on consensus and the result of hard word in Talk:Danish phonology. These transcriptions are supported by multiple sources, cf. the narrow phonetic transcriptions in Basbøll (2005) and Grønnum (2005); you can also check the right column in the pronunciation-guide of the Danske Ordbog, where the vowel in mæle is described as [eː] in nøjagtig (= exact) IPA. The transcription as [ɛː] is merely conventional, but our readers deserve an accurate transcription. –Austronesier (talk) 20:04, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

PS: Brink et al. transcribe this vowel in Den Store Danske Udtaleordbog in their practical Dania-derived notation as ⟨æ⟩, but they describe the sound in the introduction as IPA [e̞]. For Brink et al., Basbøll and Grønnum (and also in our transcription), IPA [ɛ(ː)] is the sound heard in words like male (conventional: [mæːlə]). –Austronesier (talk) 20:36, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

To transcribe a contrast between [ɛː eː e̝ː] with ⟨æː ɛː eː⟩ is really misleading. The cardinal-like qualities of [ɛː] and [eː] are normally given the transcription ⟨æː ɛː⟩, which makes no sense, especially in the latter case. Why on earth would you choose something else than a simple Latin letter ⟨e⟩ for an [e]-like vowel (apart from ⟨ɪ⟩, whenever there are good phonological reasons to use it)? Not to mention that there is a number of other languages (French, Hindustani, German, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene, and even Swedish) where ⟨ɛ⟩ and ⟨e⟩ are used for cardinal-like (or nearly so) qualities, and the contrast between the two is often even described as an "open E" [ɛ] vs. "closed E" [e], mirroring the labels "open-mid" and "close-mid" used by the IPA. The difference between Danish [eː] vs. [e̝ː] is very different to what we can find in those languages (most importantly, [eː] is basically the "closed E" of French, German etc., whereas [e̝ː] is just a little bit closer/higher than that), which are spoken by hundreds of millions of speakers. It is a very bad idea to redefine the symbols ⟨æː ɛː eː⟩ for a language like Danish, which is hardly understood (let alone spoken) by anyone in comparison with the aforementioned languages combined. As far as it is possible, there should be a continuity between IPA transcriptions of various languages - especially if you want to redefine symbols for a (considerably) less known language.

The cardinal-like vowels should be given the corresponding cardinal vowel symbols first, and only then should the rest get their own symbols - with diacritics, if that is needed (I don't think anyone has a problem with the nasal diacritic in IPA transcriptions of French?!). Now, I know that a vowel shift has taken place over the last 50 years or so, but then that should definitely be shown in transcription. It doesn't matter that some of the symbols would overlap (when you compare the reformed transcription with the traditional one), over time people would get used to the differences (and if they wouldn't, tough luck - but some standards should be maintained in IPA transcriptions. Nobody uses ⟨k⟩ to denote an alveolar trill). Sol505000 (talk) 13:57, 10 February 2022 (UTC)