Template talk:IPAc-en

	; Archives (Index) ;
	1; 2; 3;
	This page is archived by ClueBot III.

To help centralize discussions and keep related topics together, Module talk:IPAc-en redirects here.

Template:IPAc-en is permanently protected from editing because it is a heavily used or highly visible template. Substantial changes should first be proposed and discussed here on this page. If the proposal is uncontroversial or has been discussed and is supported by consensus, editors may use {{edit template-protected}} to notify an administrator or template editor to make the requested edit. Usually, any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes or categories.

Any contributor may edit the template's sandbox. Functionality of the template can be checked using test cases.

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the IPAc-en template.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3: 6 months

view · edit

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.

The IPA should be specific to a particular national standard, and the national pronunciations should be listed separately.

Listing multiple national pronunciations after every Wikipedia entry word quickly becomes unwieldy, and listing only one leads to accusations of bias. Therefore, we use a system that aims at being pan-dialectal. Of course, if a particular dialect or local pronunciation is relevant to the topic, it may be listed in addition to the wider pronunciation, using {{IPA|und|...}} or {{IPA|en|...|generic=yes}}.

The use of /r/ for the rhotic consonant is inaccurate. It should be /ɹ/ instead.

The English rhotic is pronounced in a wide variety of ways in accents of English around the world, and the goal of our diaphonemic system is to cover as many of them as possible. Moreover, where there is no phonological contrast to possibly cause confusion, using a more typographically recognizable letter for a sound represented by another symbol in the narrow IPA is totally within the confines of the IPA's principles (IPA Handbook, pp. 27–28). In fact, /r/ is arguably the more traditional IPA notation; not only is it used by most if not all dictionaries, but also in Le Maître Phonétique, the predecessor to the Journal of the IPA, which was written entirely in phonetic transcription, ⟨r⟩ was the norm for the English rhotic.

"ei" is a diphthong, and "eː" is an elongated pure vowel

The word face in most dialects of English is pronounced /feɪs/, while in Scottish English, it is often pronounced /feːs/. These sounds should not be grouped together. Grouping them would be similar to grouping 'bait' (/beɪt/) and 'beat' (/biːt/) together, which represent distinct vowel sounds. Zaurus (talk) 08:09, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Grouping them would be similar to grouping 'bait' (/beɪt/) and 'beat' (/biːt/) together ... There would be some similarity to that if Scottish English had a separate /eɪ/ phoneme contrasting with /eː/, but that doesn't seem to be the case. This template is used only for diaphonemic transcriptions and /eɪ/ is indeed a monophthong in many varieties of English despite of what the symbol might suggest. The notation /eː/ belongs to a different system. – MwGamera (talk) 14:10, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

/eɪ/ is indeed a monophthong in many varieties of English ... Not according to the *Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary*^[1] and the *IPA Handbook*^[2], which list /eɪ/ as a diphthong in English. The monophthongal variant (/eː/) exists, but it's specific to certain dialects, like Scottish English or some Southern Hemisphere accents. --Zaurus (talk) 16:55, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The transcription system this template outputs is diaphonemic. Please read Help:IPA/English. Nardog (talk) 04:55, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Jones, Daniel. *Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary*. 18th edition. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
^ International Phonetic Association. *Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet*. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Pronunciation code "pron"

The pronunciation code pron seems to be implemented to output a space, instead of "pronounced:", as I would have expected. Is this intentional?

I just removed it from the page Denisovan, where before it rendered like this:

( /dəˈniːsəvə/

From this:

({{IPAc-en|pron|d|ə|ˈ|n|iː|s|ə|v|ə}}

— W.andrea (talk) 14:33, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell, looking at the template documentation, pron seems to be a feature of {{IPA}}, not {{IPAc-en}}. Dr Greg talk 21:55, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, it's not mentioned in the {{IPAc-en}} documentation, but it still does something, which is strange. My best guess (not having looked at the code) is that Module:IPAc-en uses Module:IPA and there's some way that pron slips through. — W.andrea (talk) 22:03, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request 5 February 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Description of suggested change: Let articles using this template be added to Category:Pages with English IPA.

Diff:

BigBullfrog (talk) 16:27, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not done for now: The whole point of the category is to surface uses of {{IPA}} for English so they can be converted to IPAc-en, which doesn't need a category because it's for only one language unlike {{IPA}}. This request makes the category useless. Nardog (talk) 11:27, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Introducing superscripts

I’ve opened a discussion on the possibility of introducing superscript symbols to the key. Opening a thread here for any discussions on the technical feasibility of their implementation in the template. ~ IvanScrooge98 (talk) 14:11, 5 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Consistency

Given how /lj/ as in 'lute' is included on the list, why isn't /rj/ as in 'rude' also on the list?

I don't use either in my dialect but, for the sake of objectivity and dialectal neutrality, if one is to be included then the other should be too. 1.126.110.116 (talk) 11:11, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In what accent is rude pronounced with /j/? Nardog (talk) 13:48, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some conservative Welsh accents. Wells (1982) gives the minimal pair 'rheum' (with a yod) vs. 'room' (without a yod). However, all of the examples he gives would be covered by this system's example of /juː/: 'u' in 'cute', but that's also true for all of the examples he gives for /lj/. But as I just pointed out in my own topic, a better example for /lj/ is 'million' - and that's not followed /u/. 1.127.104.240 (talk) 17:10, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's not /juː/ but /ɪʊ/, a diphthong not covered in the guide. It sounds like /ɪ/ followed by /w/, so it doesn't involve even a phonetic [j]. /lj/ doesn't work for "million" as /lj/ patterns with /nj tj dj sj zj/ which occur only before /uː/, sometimes /ʊ/. "Million" has /l/ followed by /j/, so two units by diaphonemic standards. Sol505000 (talk) 15:49, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Welsh accents are conservative. They retain /ɪ/ for the yod, having never shifted it to /j/. It's used in words like chews and threw (as distinct from choose and through). 1.127.110.31 (talk) 21:56, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Avoid Unnecessary Complexity

Why is the example word 'spheroidal'? As it's the 'er' part which matters, using 'spheroid' alone would be simpler and easier for most readers to understand. 1.126.109.66 (talk) 17:19, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are two entries that use 'spheroidal' as an example. The stress is probably of little importance for tooltips, but I agree that it would be a good idea to change the ɪəˌr one to something that has only secondary stress in the syllable following it like in 'spheroid' /ˈsfɪəˌrɔɪd/. Ditto for the 'plurality' in ʊəˌr which could be 'plural'. But something with the primary stress there seems better for ɪəˈr and 'spheroidal' /sfɪəˈrɔɪdəl/ works fine. Although it could also be something more common like 'theoretical'. – MwGamera (talk) 23:14, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Theoretical is /ˌθiːə-/. And since we don't use secondary stress after primary stress within the same word, spheroid does not have secondary stress. Plural doesn't have secondary stress even in analyses that permit it, as the last vowel is a weak one. Nardog (talk) 13:50, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, okay. I any case, I don't see any problem with spheroidal for ɪəˈr. But I imagine a word that actually needed the ɪəˌr for its transcription could be a better example of it and it appeared to me OP's spheroid would be one. No idea what I was even thinking when I typed plural. – MwGamera (talk) 19:07, 28 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Missing Diaphoneme

The non-rhotic /ɪə/ sound in "vehement" /'vɪə̯.mənt/ is missing from this list. Nobody includes the /r/ consonant in that word. It is the r-less form of the NEAR vowel. Some dialects also use it in the word "vehicle". 1.126.109.66 (talk) 17:54, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's not a problem with this template or its documentation. As described at Help:IPA/English, this sound is transcribed as /iːə/ under the system used here. – MwGamera (talk) 22:20, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The disyllabic sound /iːə/ is clearly a different phoneme to the monosyllabic /ɪə̯/. 1.127.104.240 (talk) 16:58, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

/iːə/ -> [ɪə] in "vehement" follows the same logic as /aʊə/ -> [aə ~ ɑə] (or [aː ~ ɑː]) in "power". The glide gets dropped and the schwa becomes non-syllabic (or is deleted and the first vowel gets elongated), it's just that the established symbols for /iː/ and /uː/ are wrong, as shown by Geoff Lindsey. They should be transcribed /ɪj ʉw/, where the gliding is shown explicitly. Thus /ˈvɪj.ə.mənt/, which logically precedes [ˈvɪə.mənt], with one syllable less. Sol505000 (talk) 17:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

/lj/

Wouldn't the 'li' in 'million' be a better example for /lj/ (i.e. the Voiced palatal lateral approximant) than the 'l' in 'lute'? Lots of people drop the /j/ in 'lute' but nobody drops it in 'million'. 1.127.104.240 (talk) 16:48, 31 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which is exactly why "million" has /l/ + /j/, not the diaphoneme /lj/. It doesn't work as an example. Sol505000 (talk) 16:16, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Now I understand what you mean. Thanks. 1.127.110.31 (talk) 21:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Jones, Daniel. *Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary*. 18th edition. Cambridge University Press, 2011.

[2] International Phonetic Association. *Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet*. Cambridge University Press, 1999.

[1]

[2]