Help talk:IPA/French

Rhotic

Reece Llwyd has added this note. I don't doubt the information's accuracy, but considering that this page is designed to assist editors in transcribing French for Wikipedia articles, I think we should ignore the dialectal variations in the rhotic's pronunciation and use one for all of our transcriptions. Thoughts?— Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:26, 9 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. These "IPA for X" help pages (why were they moved out of Help: space?) are quick-and-easy guides to IPA transcription, not full-fledged discussions of languages' comparative phonology. —An gr 21:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Roundeds

I don't understand how the "rounded" end, way and see reflect their French counterparts, surely we can do better.

The ø page says that the closest English equivalent to a close-mid front rounded vowel is the open-mid central unrounded vowel, ɜ. I agree. (I can't imagine what dialect makes "way" sound like that!)

Open-mid front rounded vowel is more of a problem because ø and œ sound identical to me. But as this is just a cheat sheet, we could probably say that ɜ is a decent English approximation for either of these.

u and y could be better approximated in English with book and food. (No, it's not very accurate, but it conveys the difference slightly better, I think.)

And using vin blanc as an example just begs the question! But I don't have any particularly good alternatives. Nick (talk) 17:50, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with [ɜ] is that it doesn't work for rhotic dialects. But French [ø] is further back than [e], so it's not very precise to say it's a rounded [e] either. kwami (talk) 07:04, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Schwa?

I know it's customary to transcribe e muet as a schwa. But that does give English speakers a bad accent, since e muet is rounded, and English schwa is not. Granted, [ə] is not defined for roundedness, so it can go either way, but mightn't it be better to use [ɵ]? kwami (talk) 07:04, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that would be confusing. The rounding is barely noticeable at normal speech rates, and when it is emphasized, it's more like [œ] anyway. +An gr 08:49, 25 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

And in any case, standard French practice is always to use [ə]. --seberle (talk) 17:45, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Long vowels

Many French vowels can be long, but the chart only mentions ɛ as possibly being long. Why is ɛ singled out for mention and why are other long vowels ignored? The article should be consistent and include all or none. --seberle (talk) 17:39, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Do the others have a phonemic distinction between short and long, as in faite vs. fête? +An gr 19:30, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

According to French phonology, a long /ɛː/ contrast with short /ɛ/ is the only phonemic contrast between two vowels distinct only by quantity. Other instances of long vowels are contextual allophones. Not all dialects have /ɛː/ even if [ɛː] shows up as an allophone of /ɛ/, which may be the source of seberle's confusion. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 23:30, 23 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that would explain it. Thanks. Now that I think about it, I do remember once reading about a possible distinction between maître and mettre, but I've never heard it. I suspect it is very rare in contemporary French. --seberle (talk) 00:48, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's effectively obsolete in Parisian, but it's still taught. kwami (talk) 02:12, 24 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The long /ɛː/ hasn't been used in standard French for about a century. It definitely doesn't belong in this chart, as the only dialect to still use it is Québec French, and perhaps a handful of metropolitan French patois. And it is *not* taught (maybe it is to foreigners whose French teacher uses a 19th century dictionary with ancient phonetics, but nobody knows about that sound in France for standard French). It is incorrect to say that "many French vowels can be long", as it is only the case for /ɑ:/ -- which is, as the note says, often replaced by /a/. It's a fairly recent evolution, but 99% people born after the 1960's replaced by as /a/. Same goes for the distinction between /ə/ and /œ/. As much as you still find /ə/ in current French dictionaries, it is more and more replaced by /œ/. Nobody under 30 knows there's supposed to be a difference. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.168.89.30 (talk) 07:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree with my fellow countryman above about the long /ɛː/. It does not exist anymore, and there is no reason to add it here as an example of regional dialect (Québécois), otherwise you would have to add ALL the idiosyncrasies of ALL regional vairants of French. And if the person who keeps putting this archaic sound back on is still not convinced: just look at the "French phonetics" page in French and you'll see it's not on there. It's probably best to leave this pronounciation page up to native speakers, isn't it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.51.215.62 (talk) 08:24, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe we should include "idiosyncrecies." We already have the nasalized mid rounded vowel and both open vowels. Are there any others that we're missing? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Pronouncing õ

So I'm trying to learn how to pronounce Poisson, as in the Poisson distribution. The intro says it's pronounced [pwasõ], but there's no õ on this page. Is that just a stress symbol, and if so, why wouldn't it be the normal type? II | (t - c) 08:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Somebody got lazy, I guess. I've fixed the article accordingly. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 09:02, 7 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

/õ/ is technically wrong, it should be written /ɔ̃/, like in the chart. Then again, in modern French the sound is actually much closer to /õ/ (which is exactly how I do it, actually). To pronounce it, just nasalize a /o/ sound. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.168.89.30 (talk) 08:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Marginal consonants"?

I don't understand this section. As much as the /ŋ/ makes sense, why the others? They're only used for English words but French doesn't release those as affricates, and for us they are just successions of 2 consonants, nothing else. In English dictionaries they are separate entries in the phonetic section, but not in French. They should be removed from this page, otherwise one should start putting in all the common consonant successions native to French, like "tr", "pr",... which is of no interest since the individual consonants are already all in the charts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.168.89.30 (talk) 08:13, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point. If they're just sequences of a stop and fricative, and they're indicated orthographically, can we expect both editors and readers to get it right without listing them here? — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:47, 2 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think 88 is right. Take for instance the Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé. In their word search form they also have a phonetic input section (method 3 here, although I'm not sure the link works for you as it does for me), which allows entering a word using the sounds it's made of, by clicking buttons. There is a "NG" button there for the sound [ŋ], but none for our other marginal consonants. This is a clear indication that the authors of that dictionary considered those other consonants as simple sequences.

Also, the pronunciation given for words like tsunami, tzar, djebel, tchao in the same dictionary does not suggest that those consonants are to be understood in any way other than as sequences.

I would suggest removing those 4 consonants from our table, or at most mentioning them in a note. — AdiJapan 06:53, 3 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

stress

What's the policy on stress marks? Some articles have them (e.g. Arthur Rimbaud), some don't (Paris), and Nicolas Sarkozy has a note saying "Please do not add a stress mark: French is not stressed in this way".

(I hardly ever use this template myself, but it's a topic of general importance.) Lfh (talk) 20:49, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

French doesn't have lexical stress, so we shouldn't be marking stress on French words. +An gr 21:08, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Maybe there should be a note to clarify this somewhere, because quite a few articles do feature the stress mark. Lfh (talk) 21:59, 5 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

There are two legitimate POV's here: true, French does not have phonemic stress. But it does have phonetic stress, and this is a phonetic transcription, not a phonemic one; readers approaches a pronunciation guide under the assumption that it will tell them how to pronounce the word. However, as Angr points out, the stress is not lexical, and it is words that we are transcribing, so adding stress implies that the stress is lexical. At least, that's the idea that people come away with: it's a common myth that French has word-final stress, and by marking coincidentally word-final stress, we reinforce that misunderstanding.

We have essentially the same problem in Engish: there is no lexical difference in English between primary and secondary stress. Nonetheless, we mark that prosodic difference, even though our English transcriptions are allegedly phonemic, because it's standard to do so in dictionaries. At least marking French stress isn't factually wrong, just misleading. kwami (talk) 02:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have yet to see a French dictionary (for natives or for non-natives, it doesn't matter) that marks the stress position in its phonetic transcriptions. So, verifiability-wise speaking, neither we should be marking the stress. I believe it wouldn't help readers pronounce more correctly anyway. On the other hand, we should give a short explanation about the stress in French on this guide page, for those who wonder why there is no stress marker in our French IPA's. — AdiJapan 04:07, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've deleted stress from French transcriptions myself. I'm just acknowledging that those who advocate adding stress marks have a point, though if we go that route, we should be careful that we only stress phrases, not every word/name. kwami (talk) 05:43, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with not transcribing stress, but perhaps we should put something that indicates how stress works in French. Something like "Word stress is not distinctive in French. In general, only the last syllable of the last word in a phonological phrase is stressed, unless it contains schwa, in which case stress falls on the penultimate syllable." — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 08:17, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We're not transcribing word-final e muet, though, are we? Être is [ɛːtʁ], not [ɛːtʁə], so there won't be any final schwas to worry about. +An gr 08:42, 6 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Links

Linking to a phone's article makes sense, but we shouldn't link to the article on vowel length or nasalization. Also, because the rhotic varies from dialect to dialect, we shouldn't link to an article for that, either. If we want these sounds to be explained to people, we can explain them in this article. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks.

"we shouldn't link to the article on vowel length or nasalization" - Why not? I can't see any harm. We could at least link the IPA symbols for nasalization and length, or "nasal" in the description.

"the rhotic varies from dialect to dialect" - Fair enough, but then we have to make it clearer in the article. I propose we change the note to say something like, "sometimes transcribed as [ʁ], sometimes as [ʀ]". Adding specific regions where this is the case would be best of course.

Finally, what about /a/ and /ə/?

Thank you 205.228.108.185 (talk) 00:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If the meaning behind the links is "this is a page that talks about this specific sound" then linking to nasalization or vowel length varies with this. If a reader is to expect that meaning from each link, they won't necessarily know which links go to phone-specific articles and which go to general articles. You're right that, in the description, we can use the links; I'm only in opposition to linking the specific characters.

You are right that we can modify the description for the rhotic. I don't know the specific distribution of which kinds of rhotics.

I took out the link to open front unrounded vowel because that can be front or it can be central but I remember now that that article talks about both as if they're the same, so it is okay to link to that article. However, French /ə/ is a vowel that has variable pronunciation depending on speaker ([{French phonology]] talks about this a bit). — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 02:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, integrated, see how you like it.

"French /ə/ is a vowel that has variable pronunciation depending on speaker" - it would be nice to be more specific and link to the phones.

Thanks 205.228.108.185 (talk) 04:29, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've clarified it a bit now. Part of the problem with French schwa is that it's unclear (at least from what I've seen) what exactly its phonetic nature is. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 09:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Brackets vs Slashes

A conversation about the representation of French words is taking place at Template talk:IPA-fr for anybody interested. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Liaison, syllable breaks

This page should include syllable breaks ‹.› and liaison ‹‿›, shouldn't it? I'm not sure how to concisely describe liaison in a box, though... Also, should we encourage the use of syllable breaks like at French Wiktionary, or only use them when truly necessary, like with English IPA on WP? — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 06:12, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I hesitate to incorporate syllable breaks if we can do without them, so we shouldn't use them everywhere. Do you have examples of where this might cause confusion?

Liaison can be used with the {{liaison}} template, which doesn't get a lot of use currently. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 09:20, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've only seen a syllable break used for diaeresis, as in Haiti, and it's useful there. Words with liaison have been resyllabified, as in en plein air, which as the phonetic realization is IMO probably best for a phonetic transcription. — kwami (talk) 06:04, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AWB maintenance

I'm reviewing all transclusions w AWB. Not looking for much: illegal characters, more than one stress mark per prosodic unit, N/_C, and nasal V/_N. Mostly I've found uvular trills; only a couple stress, length, & nasalization problems (such as <ã>).

A few you might want to check: [œ] to schwa in Degas; a [ɔ] left in a "Paul" somewhere (I can't find it now), Bujumbura (nasal vowel?), Niamey (palatal nasal?), Molenbeek-Saint-Jean (/ənb/?), Bajocasse ([j]?), Citroën Traction Avant (no liaison?), Staffelfelden (not French?),

Let me know if there's s.t. else I should be on the lookout for. — kwami (talk) 06:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Being prosodic, not lexical, I don't think we should be marking stress in French words at all. You're probably looking for these, anyway, but here are some (orthography-influenced) things that might be problematic:

[ɛ, e] for [ə]
word-final schwa [ə]
[o] for [ɔ]
[u] for [y]
[i, u, y] for [j, w, ɥ]
confusion of [œ] and [ø]
[s] for [z].

In most of those cases I'm not sure AWB is particularly helpful, but I figured I'd chime in with some possible problems. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 06:51, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, thanks. Those would mostly need to be done manually. I've mostly been looking at phonotactically illegal combos, as I'm not good with personal and place names. For example, Bajocasse is transcribed with a [j]. Is that an error for [ʒ], or an irregular spelling? I have no idea.

Apart from transcription conventions, such as "[r]", most of the transcriptions are quite good, unlike say Spanish. Presumably that's due to the lack of much allophony in French.

As for the stress, people have disagreed on that, so I've left it alone, unless it's wrong prosodically. — kwami (talk) 07:57, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree with not marking stress on French words. I always take stress marks out of French words where I see them, and this page notably does not include stress marks among the symbols used in the transcription of French. As for Bajocasses, I have no idea whether it's pronounced with /j/ or /ʒ/, but I suspect Bayeusains has /z/ rather than /s/. I can believe there's no liaison in Traction Avant. Liaison doesn't happen between any word ending in a nasal vowel and any word starting with a vowel; the two words have to be in a certain syntactic relationship to each other. +An gr 10:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We could always add stress with a note that it's prosodic. I think people have a legit point that an English speaker is going to want to put stress somewhere, and the least we can do is tell them where it would be appropriate prosodically.

Stuff like /s/ vs /z/ I haven't even been looking for. Some langs (i.e. Portuguese) have a lot of transcription variants, and that's what I wanted to clean up first.

I've also left a few transciptions that were marked as Quebecois, as at French heraldry. — kwami (talk) 16:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]