Help:IPA/Conventions for English

When dictionaries give alternative pronunciations, they may mean that people disagree. For example, some people pronounce bath /bæθ/, with the vowel of bat, while others with the same accent pronounce it /bɑːθ/, with the vowel of bra. This is the kind of difference celebrated in "You like to-may-toes; I like to-mah-toes". On Wikipedia, we would normally need to transcribe both, unless only one is considered correct, as may be the case for personal and place names.

However, often variant transcriptions reflect distinctions between accents, and these we do not need to transcribe, since our IPA key already covers such distinctions. For example, Merriam-Webster transcribes merry as "/ˈmɛri/" and marry as "/ˈmɛri, ˈmæri/". The two transcriptions of marry are meant to show that some people pronounce it the same as merry; it does not mean that there are two pronunciations of marry among those who either do or do not make this distinction (see Mary–marry–merry merger). It would not be possible to have the song lyric "You say marry and I say merry", because only those people who say those words differently would be able to sing it. Therefore on Wikipedia we would only have one transcription for each: merry /ˈmɛri/, marry /ˈmæri/. Since the IPA key defines the orthographic conventions of /ɛr/ and /ær/ according to basic English words, readers who do not make the marry–merry distinction will see /ɛr/ and /ær/ as being equivalent, much as the spelling pronunciations YOU-clid and EWE-clid for "Euclid" would be seen as equivalent.

Consonants vary little between dictionaries. The ones which do are those in the words:

rich, char /r ~ ɹ ~ (r) ~ (ɹ) ~ ∅/;

which, /ʍ ~ hw ~ (h)w ~ w/;

and new, /juː ~ uː/.

Wikipedia editors have decided to go with /rɪtʃ/, /tʃɑːr/, /hwɪtʃ/, /njuː/ for these words.

A few dictionaries, such as dictionary.com, use "/y/" for /j/, which is at odds with the official IPA usage, which defines /y/ as close front rounded vowel (as in French tu or German über), and appears as such in transcriptions of French and German, as well as some dialects of English.

The following tables compare the broad IPA pronunciation scheme of some dictionaries to the one used on Wikipedia. The overview is not exhaustive, but major pronouncing dictionaries have been included. Highlight colors:

• Green highlights pronunciation symbols that are the same as on Wikipedia (disregarding a syllable divider when it does not mean a two-syllable pronunciation, but only that the /r/ belongs to the next syllable, and disregarding different symbolizations of the syllable divider or of /r/);
• yellow highlights pronunciation symbols that differ only in the use of the length symbol ⟨ː⟩, in parentheses, in superscripts, in non-rhotic dropped /r/, or in inserting an optional sign;
• red highlights pronunciation symbols that use different signs.

Other conventions:

• A question mark (?) means that the sound has not been found in the respective dictionary.
• A blank cell means that the dictionary has not been checked.
• A slash (/) separates variant pronunciations signs. The order of the variant pronunciation symbols is the same as in the source.
• Smaller text (like so) highlights variant pronunciations that are not preferred (only some dictionaries make such a distinction).
• A comma (,) separates different pronunciation depending on the word or depending on the region. The differences are explained in a footnote or by broadly specifying the region.

Checked vowels

Free vowels

Reduced vowels

Stress need not be included in the notation of a monosyllabic word since it is self-evident. In phrases, however, it is advised to include stress even of a monosyllabic word because a lack of stress may indicate a different pronunciation than intended. For example, in the name Zack de la Rocha, Zack and Rocha have stress, but de la does not: /ˈzæk dɛlə ˈroʊtʃə/. It would therefore convey an incorrect pronunciation to leave the stress mark off Zack.

OED2 does not indicate stress on monosyllables, but uses the stress mark to disambiguate disyllables: higher (ˈhaɪə(r)) vs. hire (haɪə(r)). On WP, the distinction is made with the aid of the syllabification mark: /ˈhaɪ.ər/, /haɪər/.

Dictionaries also disagree on secondary stress. Generally, any stressed syllable prior to the last is marked as secondary (/ˌzæk dɛlə ˈroʊtʃə/), and that convention is followed here. However, several dictionaries also mark full (unreduced) vowels as having secondary stress when they come after the primary stress, even though they are not actually stressed: cerebrate, dict.com /ˈsɛrəˌbreɪt/, OED2 (ˈsɛrɪbreɪt). This practice is avoided on Wikipedia; if you have a word transcribed /ˈCVˌCV/, it should probably be /ˈCVCV/: /ˈsɛrɪbreɪt/.

• Jones, Daniel (1930) [1917]. An English Pronouncing Dictionary (Revised ed.). London, Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons.
• Jones, Daniel (2003) [1917]. Peter Roach; James Hartmann; Jane Setter (eds.). English Pronouncing Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kenyon, John Samuel; Knott, Thomas Albert (1953). A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam.
• The Macquarie Dictionary. McMahons Point, NSW, Australia: Macquary Library. 1982.
• Wells, J. C. (2003) [1990]. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Longman.
• Windsor Lewis, J. (1972). A Concise Pronouncing Dictionary of British and American English. London: Oxford University Press.