Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet

See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation, Help:IPA, Help:IPA/English, and their respective talk pages for the use of IPA on Wikipedia.

Community reassessment

International Phonetic Alphabet

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Delist I agree with Colins position that not everything in a GA needs to be cited, but Fiamh has acknowledged this and given an example of something which needs a citation. Since this has not been rectified and this has been open for over 4 months I am going to delist it. AIRcorn (talk) 22:59, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

There are long chunks of unreferenced sentences. I have identified and tagged, removed or corrected some OR and inaccuracies from time to time,^{[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} but problems persist. IMHO it does a poor job particularly of differentiating what is the official, canonical IPA as set out by the International Phonetic Association and what are applications of the IPA; for example, [brackets] and /slashes/ are the only enclosing symbols recognized by the IPA, but the article only distinguishes them and other conventions as "principal" and "less common", with hardly any citation.

It may have deserved GA in 2006 when it became one, but I don't think it meets the standards we now expect from GAs. Nardog (talk) 20:36, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

• I'm not seeing reason to delist. It seems understandable that a fairly prominent article like this would get some noisy contributions from time to time, but the diffs you linked don't seem like major issues. Something like this for example is a fine correction, but it's quite a small detail - the 'wrongness' of the previous wording isn't such that it would affect my thinking about GA status. The content you showed that you had removed for being unsourced or tagged with {{citation needed}} don't seem like they belong to one of the categories of statements for which the WP:GACR require inline citations. You clearly have a lot of expertise on this topic. On the one hand, that gives you a better ability than me to sniff out factually questionable claims or missing coverage. But it might also lead you to hold the article to higher standards than an average reader (or reviewer) would. I don't think I follow your issue about differentiating "official, canonical IPA" and "applications of the IPA" in the current state of the article - but I'd be interested in reading more if you'd like to elaborate. Colin M (talk) 22:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
• I have to agree with Nardog. The essence of verifiability as I understand it is that the average reader can read any sentence in the article, find the source, and verify the information. Inline citations are not required for GAs, and that can be verifiable if it's a short article with relatively few sources. Some of the passages missing inline citations, such as the paragraph starting with "For example, while the /p/ sounds of pin and spin are pronounced slightly differently in English ..." are something you could find in any intro linguistics textbook, and I'd be willing to let that slide for the purpose of GA reassessment. But what about more obscure facts? For example, the passage "Superscript diacritics placed after a letter are ambiguous between simultaneous modification of the sound and phonetic detail at the end of the sound. For example, labialized ⟨kʷ⟩ may mean either simultaneous [k] and [w] or else [k] with a labialized release. Superscript diacritics placed before a letter, on the other hand, normally indicate a modification of the onset of the sound (⟨mˀ⟩ glottalized [m], ⟨ˀm⟩ [m] with a glottal onset)." Of the sources listed for this article, which of these has this information? How do I find it? And if I can't, how do we call it "verifiable"? Delist, since this has been sitting here for months without improvement. Fiamh ^{(talk, contribs)} 05:13, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

General classification of consonants and vowels of speech

People of all races and nationalities have the same structure of the entire body, including the speech apparatus and the same structure of the nervous system. Therefore, the sounds of speech must be combined into a single classification of consonant and vowel sounds-signs of speech-thinking-worldview-ideology-faith.

Such a classification (6 types in each of the 5 zones of physiologically optimal articulation) has already been developed by the Russian physician Alexander Makeev during 1984-2010 and clarified the details in subsequent years. The result of this long-term scientific work has been published: Общая классификация согласных и гласных звуков-знаков речи-мышления / А.К. Макеев // Культурология, искусствоведение и филология: современные взгляды и научные исследования: сб. ст. по материалам XXXIV Международной научно-практической конференции– № 3(30). – М., Изд. «Интернаука», 2020. - 108 с. С. 65-75. ISSN 2541-9870 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alex makeyev (talk • contribs) 09:58, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Overarching diacritic?

At Talk:Circumflex#Sylvius' circumflex, Muleiolenimi asked did anyone know of an overarching diacritic. I've just come across this:

• /d͡ʒ/

Would someone explain how the arc is achieved? 𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 09:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I've been trying to reproduce it with MS Word, unsuccessfully so far, but where (ie online or ?) did you come across it? Muleiolenimi (talk) 08:31, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Look up d͡ʒ in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Voiced postalveolar affricate, I guess (no idea how I got there). I see that Wiktionary has it too, maybe they can help? --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 17:24, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

@Muleiolenimi:, I have reposted the question here: I mistakenly posted it at the disambig talk page, which is maybe why no-one responded. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 19:49, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

See wikt:◌᷍◌. I'll answer on original post. — kwami (talk) 21:32, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

ʁ is WRONG on every single wikipedia page

Major issue in my opinion. The voiceless uvular fricative [ʁ] is automatically inverted when used on Wikipedia. It is very confusing. On the page of that sound itself, it’s blatantly displayed to be mirrored in in the text but correct in the image.

If you try to edit it, the correct symbol is already there, so it really has to do with weird formatting settings that ordinary users can’t change. 2003:CB:8737:F678:50E3:BC10:8D30:AD2B (talk) 12:53, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

If you're talking about the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ], what do you see? If you don't see an inverted smallcap R, it might be an issue with your device. –Austronesier (talk) 18:30, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

It is indeed an issue with their device, the culprit being Apple's San Francisco. The obvious solution is to change the browser's default sans-serif font to something else (not Helvetica, which has a similar bug with ⟨ɶ⟩), or to register an account and set a font for the .IPA class in your personal CSS. Nardog (talk) 18:40, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Add Dental Stops

why aren't they on the table :( 49.182.86.196 (talk) 11:07, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Because ⟨t, d⟩ represent dental, alveolar, or postalveolar stops. The lack of border between cells indicates this. Nardog (talk) 04:14, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

About grapheme rotation

Multiview_orthographic_projection Sabrina.ponsi (talk) 23:06, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

What about it? Do you reckon this article could be improved by a link to that one? —Tamfang (talk) 04:39, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

grapheme ≠ letter

A letter is a grapheme in a grammar - syntaxis and lexicon, cfr. lemma - system, which means that the letter is conventionally defined according to logical-mathemathical rules beyond hearing, phonation, and vision, that is beyond physics. Gnoseological and onthological rules, that is psychological and scientifical observations according to which lexicon, grammar and syntaxis are constructed. Sabrina.ponsi (talk) 23:19, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Do you have in mind a specific improvement to the article? —Tamfang (talk) 04:41, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

order ≠ sequence

A word is a conventional sequence of phonemes and/or graphemes and/or letters.

Cfr. Bijection Sabrina.ponsi (talk) 23:29, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes? —Tamfang (talk) 04:42, 24 September 2023 (UTC)

The chart here is different from the official IPA chart. Shouldn't that be pointed out?

At least the consonant chart in this article differs in many ways from the most recent one published in 2005 and shown on the IPA's homepage (apart from insignificant layout changes in the years since then). For example, there are separate rows for sibilant and non-sibilant fricatives and the main difference between the meaning of the signs ɕ and ç is shown as being between the presence and absence of a sibilant quality, rather between an alveolopalatal and palatal place of articulation as in the official chart. Since the readers would naturally assume the chart they see in an article on the IPA will be one endorsed by the International Phonetic Association, shouldn't there be a note saying that this is a modified version that Wikipedia's editors have created? 87.126.21.225 (talk) 12:43, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Wrong transcription in pic

The [p] in "IPA" is unaspirated, e.g. the correct transcription is [aɪ piː eɪ], not [aɪ pʰiː eɪ]. ― Ö S M A N  (talk · contribs) 13:24, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Just about every source I can find indicates that voiceless stops are aspirated word-initially in most English dialects. Do you have a source for your claim? It could ultimately be that you speak a dialect in which this is not the case. AviationFreak💬 18:00, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

P is called [ˈpiː] according to Oxford and Merriam Webster. ― Ö S M A N  (talk · contribs) 16:50, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Those dictionaries are both using a broad phonemic level of transcription; they never mark aspiration since English speakers know voiceless stops are always aspirated in this position. The image is using square brackets, with a narrower level of transcription. Umimmak (talk) 16:58, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

"Iconic extensions of standard IPA letters that are implicit in the alphabet"

I've read "Iconic extensions of standard IPA letters that are implicit in the alphabet" three times and still don't know what it means. ("Extensions" in which sense? "Iconic" in which sense? In which alphabet? What does it mean, to be implicit in an alphabet? Is it the extensions or the letters that are implicit?) -- Hoary (talk) 07:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Ypsilon as a consonant in Greek

The most extreme difference is ⟨ʋ⟩, which is a vowel in Greek but a consonant in the IPA.

Is it worth mentioning that that's not strictly true? It functions as a consonant in the digraph ⟨αυ⟩ as in "αυτός". — W.andrea (talk) 17:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Vandalism

This page is very deformed on my screen and it has "User:Cheezdeez ON TOP" spammed in the references. I did a quick scroll through the history but couldn’t find when it was done. 2001:BB6:B84C:CF00:25D4:36E8:765A:6396 (talk) 19:58, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Funny, I don't see it, and have not noticed removal of such a thing. I seem to remember seeing a similar complaint somewhere yesterday; was that you too? —Tamfang (talk) 23:30, 29 April 2024 (UTC)