Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key

Literally no normal person understands these LITERAL greek characters or how they sre supposed to be pronounced normally,

Let alone in the ways they seem to be used here. We live in an age where everyone has microphones in their pockets, why not ditch this and use audio pronunciation instead?

2603:900B:405:EF1E:1CEE:EE20:3DE2:C169 (talk) 09:54, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Many people (especially in the UK, where most dictionaries use IPA) understand those characters. Those who don't may hover over the individual symbols for prompts; besides, there already is a fairly intuitive respelling system, and you may add recorded pronunciations. All those formats should be retained as both respelling and IPA have the advantage of being more accurate, not requiring the use of an audio device and being easier for editors to enter; audio pronunciation could also be confusing for people of various accents. The reason IPA may be preferred to respelling is that it is a widespread standard among phoneticians and is familiar to many, specifically Britons. Maciuf (talk) 14:30, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

PRYSE or PRYCE

While reading the rules for the EYE sound, I noticed that the example given, "price" PRYSE, could be seen as having a /z/ sound, pronounced the same as prize. Within the rules of the respelling key, this is unambiguous but for someone who doesn’t know the rules, they could see YSE pronounced like eyes. We already have respellings such as gh, ss and tch to help the reader. I think replacing the s in respellings like PRYSE with a c would be more helpful for the reader. SlimyGecko7 (talk) 19:09, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Oh, it should be written with ss. I’ll change that in the key. SlimyGecko7 (talk) 19:00, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

No, that makes it "priss". I don't know if there is any way to write "price" in our system. There used to be, but currently, like "Balt" and "Maui", that word should probably just be avoided. — kwami (talk) 08:39, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

(Also, should we have an example of "YEYE"? — kwami (talk))

Semi-protected edit request on 21 March 2023

Change the word 'dew' under the 'ew' sound example to 'few'; as 'dew' is pronounced /uː/, and not /ju:/. Thequantaleaper (talk) 23:13, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: That's not true (in our diaphonemic system). Nardog (talk) 00:31, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

The purpose of providing examples is to avoid ambiguity or dialectical/regional variance. American English speakers do not pronounce "dew" as /dju:/, so using it as an example for all English speakers is inappropriate. "Few", on the other hand, is commonly pronounced /fjuː/ across all regions, making it more appropriate for an example here. Thequantaleaper (talk) 01:34, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

No, that's rather the strength of the respelling system and dew better illustrates it than few. Those with yod-dropping will read dew as /duː/, those with yod-coalescence as /dʒuː/, and those with neither as /djuː/. And we want them to. See MOS:DIAPHONEMIC for the idea behind this. Nardog (talk) 01:41, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

The purpose of these specific examples shouldn't be to illustrate anything but the intended phoneme. If the majority of readers are sounding out 'dew' as /du:/ or /dʒuː/, instead of /dju:/, then they are not benefiting from the example. Rather, they're just getting unnecessarily confused by the discrepancy with the other well-suited examples.

Yes, the word 'dew' may very well illustrate the strengths of the respelling system; however, 'few' better illustrates the intended phoneme. The readers who actually need the examples for elucidation (and don't pronounce 'dew' as /dju:/) simply do not benefit from it here. Thequantaleaper (talk) 02:13, 22 March 2023 (UTC)