Help talk:IPA/Archive 3

I found a couple of symbols whitch are not in this list yet, like ʘ ǂ etc. But they do have a page on Wikipedia, so should I add them to this list? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gyvank (talk • contribs) 14:39, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

We didn't include them because they're so rare that it's unlikely anyone would be directed here for them. We haven't included the entire IPA. But if you have been directed here for them, then yes, they should be added to the list. — kwami (talk) 20:44, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

In "Affricates and double articulation" section it tries to indicate that some form of "tie bar" is wrong. Gives two examples indicating one is wrong. Then it gives various examples in associated fonts.

I read it for seven times. I know my English is not perfect but there seems a problem with the statements in this section. I couldn't understand which is "proper" and "correct"?

Should the tie bar be above both of the characters or should it be et the left side of the two letters?

My browser (Firefox 8.0.1) which is using Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial Unicode MS shows two different forms for the examples. In the first example tie bar is above both of the letters. In the second example it is at the left side of the both letters.

Now I can't understand... If My browser is capable of showing it above both of the letters, why does it show it on the left side for some of the text on wikipedia? Almost for all articles I have seen, tie bar is on the left. But here, tie bar is above both letters for the first example. And the text -as I understood- states that it should be "above" not "on the left". when I google for "tie bar" and "affiriciate", I see that it is "above" too. So "above" should be the correct version.

So, can someone please edit that section so that it can be understood which one is correct.

I would also appreciate if someone tells me what's wrong with Arial Unicode MS? Because in some other help pages of Wikipedia Arial Unicode MS is recomended for Firefox.--76.31.238.174 (talk) 02:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the tie bar should go above. Check the PDF consonant chart in the main IPA article for how it is supposed to look. MS fonts have several goofs in the IPA block, and this is one of them. — kwami (talk) 20:45, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Together with the Charis SIL font? This one is ugly and buggy! Why was this changed? For IPA. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.161.124.138 (talk) 11:10, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

You mean in the CSS specifications? I thought we had Gentium Plus. — kwami (talk) 20:46, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Where's the portuguese version of this article? Nathanael Everton (talk) 18:16, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Do you mean WP:IPA for Portuguese and Galician or are you talking about at the Portuguese Wikipedia? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:15, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I hold strong views either was as long as they still do what they "do" but I'm rather unhappy about the fact this was debated on THIS page with no notifications on the separate pages. I had no reason to watch this page and the first I heard of this move was when I saw the move log. Bad medicine, folks... Akerbeltz (talk) 15:44, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, WT:WikiProject Linguistics would've been a good place to notify. Because the general consensus so far has been that it doesn't matter, I think further efforts to move should be opposed unless there is a clear and compelling reason. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 16:32, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Completely agreed. I don't see many regular contributors to the Linguistics articles commenting here... It's a really weak consensus. Lguipontes (talk) 23:09, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

There are many "editors at large" who are not involved with individual WikiProjects but their input is as equally valid as WikiProject Linguistics participants. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 08:23, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Does the underlining under IPA listings have some meaning? It looks like Morse code but is clearly not. I can find no reference to it. For example, under the first IPA for Tinian, the underline appears as: ---..--..-... Any help appreciated. Marquess (talk) 19:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

No, it's just the text rendering. — Lfdder (talk) 20:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, yes, it appears that some adjoining dots are concatenating into an apparent 'dash', depending on the width of the glyph. So, next question, why is this supposed-to-be-dotted underline there in the first place? Why not just have the hyperlink? Marquess (talk) 18:18, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

It's to hint that there's a tooltip. — Lfdder (talk) 19:32, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

The sounds attributed to the Mandarin Chinese Pinyin diacritic marks under the section "Diacritic Marks" disagrees with the Pinyin article page (https://www.search.com.vn/wiki/en/Pinyin). Please address.

Tiancheng.wang (talk) 02:08, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

This issue is thoroughly confusing as Pinyin uses the same diacritics as IPA, but with a different meaning. However, as far as I can tell, the two articles agree with each other (modulo the fact that the Pinyin article employs tone letters instead of the equivalent tone diacritics in its IPA transcriptions, presumably to alleviate the aforementioned confusion).—Emil J. 16:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

zoos for z is partially wrong, isn't it? IMHO it should be zoo.
--Volker Alexander (talk) 18:23, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Zoos is /'zu:z/. — kwami (talk) 20:00, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi,

I propose to use one of the available web fonts for IPA, probably Gentium. See MediaWiki talk:Common.css#IPA font.

Thanks for your comments. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 12:14, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

What specifically do you propose? — kwami (talk) 20:15, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I would just like to point out that Polish 'ciebie' is you, singular, accusative, and French vous is plural you, if that's of any importance. It doesn't say that in the article. 87.205.175.249 (talk) 16:06, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

|{{audio-pipe|Voiced pharyngeal fricative1.ogg|Voiced pharyngeal fricative|<big>[ ʕ ]</big>}} | Arabic عربي ''(^'''c'''arabī)'' "Arabic" | A light sound deep in the throat.

I think there is a mistake with ^'''c'''. I don't see this symbol as a diacritic or otherwise (it doesn't seem to be a phoneme or a symbol in the consonant table) on the IPA chart from the externalink.174.3.125.23 (talk) 05:23, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not IPA, just transliteration. — kwami (talk) 07:19, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Oh. Then the parentheses shouldn't be italized....174.3.125.23 (talk) 22:01, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Partly done:. I removed the parentheses completely. None of the other transcriptions seem to have them. --Anon126 (talk - contribs) 07:23, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah, great if not better solution174.3.125.23 (talk) 10:20, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I think the example of English adze for [dz] is problematic. adze is an obscure word that would not be familiar to most English speakers. However, as far as I can tell, it is homophonous to adds, which is a common English word. I suggest changing the sample word to adds, or at least another word that is not as obscure as adze. --2001:388:608C:6902:DCEE:EC4C:4515:C5F7 (talk) 06:18, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Done Anon126 (notify me of responses! / talk / contribs) 16:10, 24 October 2014 (UTC)

Where is the IPA help page for Slovenian language?--2.245.241.207 (talk) 19:47, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

We don't have one. You're free to make one, though. — kwami (talk) 20:02, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I made it 5 months ago: Help:IPA for Slovene. Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 17:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

What does y-like mean?--2.246.25.83 (talk) 08:23, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Palatal. Reworded. — kwami (talk) 20:15, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Or palatalised. Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 18:19, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

This is what Dagesh looks like on my phone (Chrome and anything that uses the WebView component (e.g. Naked Browser), Android 4.4 on Motorola Moto X). The IPA in the table is contained in the {{IPA}} template, which is supposed to force use of a font that makes the IPA comprehensible. In particular, it should make [x] (Latin lower case x, for voiceless velar fricative) distinct from [χ] (Greek lower case chi, for voiceless uvular fricative). This is likely a shortcoming of Android's font system or available fonts, but it unfortunately does make some Wikipedia pages appear incorrect. Hairy Dude (talk) 13:05, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Some of the IPA help pages have been nominated for deletion. Input is welcome at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/IPA for X. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

I am not willing to change the contents of this page immediately, because I want to avoid interference, but...the pronunciation of "r" in Netherlandish -a language often incorrectly called "Dutch" (which really is an old word for German)-is not at all like the [R] suggested here in this Wikipedia article: it is way too guttural.When you pronounce r in Netherlandish like that, then you are most likely a Moroccan or maybe a person from Amsterdam of Sefardi descent.NB In German "r" is never pronounced like this guttural [R]! Nowadays Netherlandish "r" aproaches a "w", which is called "Gooise R". Gooise is derived from Het Gooi, the area around Hilversum, close to Amsterdam, where television and radio broadcast facilities are concentrated.My father used to pronounce "r" as a typical German "r" like Ashkenazim do as well. My family and clan are Roman-Catholic "border Germans" of Jewish descent. Amand Keultjes (talk) 12:41, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

@Woodstone: Please justify your edit in which you deleted the duplicate column of symbols. The reason there needs to be a duplicate column is that the IPA symbols of the first column are difficult (impossible) to select with a mouse or cursor in order to copy and paste said symbol into a template. —Boruch Baum (talk) 19:28, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

After I had removed ɧ, there ensued a little disagreement over which letters to include, with User:Erutuon pointing out that ʙ didn't even have an example. I agreed and removed that, too, but on second thought I realize that that symbol is far more common; our article lists 15 languages from very diverse language families that use it. I am therefore tempted to put it back in, but I don't revert well-intended editors as a matter of principle. What criterion can we agree on?

BTW, if we do want to keep ɧ, I think it should be under "H", rather than "S", since it rather resembles a lower case "h". — Sebastian 07:22, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

I reverted to note the fact that the Swedish sj-sound at least occurs in a well-known language. All the languages with the bilabial trill are pretty obscure, except for Ubykh and Pirahã.

I'm not sure what criterion has been used on this page in the past, but a criterion that would make sense to me is whether the symbols are used in transcriptions on Wikipedia, especially of the native-language forms of article names (persons or places, for instance). Not sure how often [ɧ] is used on Wikipedia (I couldn't find any transcriptions when I searched for articles starting with sj-), but at least Swedish is a well-known language and the symbol might be used somewhere. [ʙ] is much rarer and might never be used. So based on this criterion I just came up with, I would include [ɧ] and not [ʙ].

I'm not going to argue more strenuously for it, because I don't care that much. I don't mind you reverting me, since I just wanted to make sure to give my opinion in the edit summary. As you say, at least the symbol is listed in the Swedish IPA page, and that's where someone should be looking anyway. Given that you've also removed tones, which are similarly language-specific, perhaps the sj-sound should be removed too.

I agree about putting [ɧ] with the h-symbols, if it is included; it looks more aitchy to me too. — Eru·tuon 08:21, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the suggestion of the criterion to use existing articles; I agree that that is a very pertinent criterion for whether a symbol requires IPA help. In that light, it also makes sense what you're saying about [ʙ] being only used in "obscure" languages. My counting of language families may mean more to a linguist, but a linguist would use the main IPA article, anyway; that's not the target audience for this help file.

Thank you also for providing the search link. I'm not putting too much significance to the fact that the articles currently have IPA pronunciation; they may get one in due time.

I don't think any criterion has been used on this article in the past. I do think it matters if a symbol is only used in languages that already have specific IPA help, because then there is no direct need to include it in the general help. The main remaining possible argument is completeness of the list. While we currently don't strive to be complete, it seems you would prefer that. I didn't have that goal, because I often feel at Wikipedia that too much information is duplicated. But I admit that it is conceivably justified to have both these lists in parallel, because they have significant differences:

1. they are ordered differently. The alphabetical sequence of this help makes it worthwhile for non-linguists.
2. explanations here are (or could be) more simplistic. E.g. for [ɧ], we could just write something to the effect that it's OK to pronounce it as [∫].

A further benefit of completeness is that it would free us from having to discuss inclusion criteria. If you want to invest time in going that way, I won't object. — Sebastian 09:27, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Please add a link to where one can ask for help with adding IPA or where one can ask for IPA transcriptions, which many people hope to find here (and only find help in the other direction). For example, shud one go to the village pump or the help desk or the Arabic and Persian pages or portals to get the nonsense "pronunciations" i.e. incomprehensible transcriptions fixed on Zahra_(name)? --Espoo (talk) 23:14, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Close-mid front unrounded vowel [e]

---

Problems playing this file? See media help.

It would be of value to have new recordings of many of these sounds. A lot of the vowels were recorded by someone who a) is dragging them out in the English-like way; b) slightly diphthongizing several of them in way that also sounds English-centric; and c) has a curious rapid-fire vibrato at the end of vowels, making it unnecessarily difficult to isolate the unique sound of the phoneme from the individual's unusual voice timbre. Like, his pronunciation of /e/ sounds like the Fonze, "ayeee..."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:41, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I hear no problem with the recording of [e]. The speaker seems to, to a certain extent, change the quality of his voice (perhaps towards creaky voice? I'd transcribe it [eḛ] in the IPA) towards the end of the recording, but that's pretty much it. The quality of the vowel sounds consistent. If there's an offglide at all (which I don't hear), its quality is extremely similar to the first portion of the vowel. Peter238 (talk) 02:51, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Open-mid back unrounded vowel [ʌ]

---

Alveolar approximant [ɹ]

---

Problems playing these files? See media help.

I think I might hear very slight diphthongization in the direction of [i], but it's hard to tell because of the falling pitch (what you two call vibrato and creaky voice) at the end. Even if there isn't, the creakiness is somewhat irritating, and I wouldn't vote against it being re-recorded. I agree that many recordings need improvement. The recording of [ʌ] sounds too central. That's also because of English-centrism, since English /ʌ/ is usually [ɐ]. I already re-recorded [ɹ] because it was postalveolar like the English r. (Unfortunately, it now sounds irritating, as if I have a lisp. But at least it's truly alveolar.) — Eru·tuon 08:32, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Yep, [ʌ] is slightly too front. Peter238 (talk) 14:12, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree that [ʌ] is too near to central. [ɹ] sounds OK - the vowels are slightly odd, but they aren't important. [i] sounds OK to me; [e] is slightly too close, I think. The creaky voice is symptomatic of a high level of vocal tension. Ideally, all the vowel recordings should be checked acoustically for steady and appropriate formant frequencies. Saying the vowel on a moving pitch (as done here) helps with resolving formants on a spectrogram. There are a few issues concerning English-centrism: there doesn't seem to be a stated policy about whether or not illustrations of voiceless plosives should be aspirated or unaspirated, and there is a tendency in some recordings for [ʃ, ʒ, tʃ, dʒ, ɹ] to be produced with lip-rounding in English style. I can't see why long and short versions of vowels are presented - they all sound the same to me, and the IPA has never set a standard length for vowels. I have quite a lot of comments and suggestions for improvement on (about half of) the individual segments and the descriptions of them. I'm not sure how to present these - maybe I could set them out in my sandbox, or on my personal website. RoachPeter (talk) 16:26, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

You can simply list them here (or perhaps in a new section). Peter238 (talk) 16:52, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

OK, but just for a start, I've put the table in my [| sandbox] with my comments in the right-hand column. Please note that I'm not claiming to be right on these points. What I have written should be taken as comments and statements about possible improvements, based on 36 years of teaching this stuff. I'm happy to make some recordings where it's felt necessary. RoachPeter (talk) 19:45, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree that [ɔ] and possibly [ä] (don't know about [a], I thought it was good) don't sound accurate. Looking at the file histories, I've found these:

• Close central unrounded vowel
• Close-mid front unrounded vowel
• Open back rounded vowel

What do you think, Peter? We can restore them any time we want. Peter238 (talk) 21:39, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, will have a listen and do some spectrograms when I have a bit more time. I would certainly be in favour of having [ɒ]. You may well be right about [a] - it's something of a controversial area; I think my own version is extremely front. I'm not clear, by the way, about the relationship between the vowels in this Help article and those attached to the Cardinal Vowel diagram in International Phonetic Alphabet - are there any differences in the recordings? RoachPeter (talk) 17:33, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm not that good with our templates, but looking at how Template:IPA chart/table vowels with audio is written, it seems to use the same audio files as those specified on Module:IPA symbol/data. This article seems to (at least to a large extent) use the same file names that are listed on Module:IPA symbol/data, so I think there are hardly any (if any at all) differences. Peter238 (talk) 20:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I've had a go at making some new recordings and putting them into a copy of this table (very incompetently, but I'm learning). I haven't put in a new row for the open back rounded vowel, which is missing, but my recording is at [[1]]. The rest are in the r.h. column in my sandbox [[2]], along with various observations. Any comments, criticisms etc would be very welcome. RoachPeter (talk) 09:56, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Could somebody do the IPA on the name of this dog? Please. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 17:44, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Someone already did, but the IPA was a bit off. I've just corrected it. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:27, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

There is currently an RfC proposing removing many things from parentheticals in the lead, including IPA. Please join in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:18, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

In response to @Nardog:'s question: I think there is an argument for moving the IPA pages for particular languages back to the Wikipedia namespace. (They used to be there. I don't know why they were moved to the Help namespace.) They function as policy to some extent, at least the more well-developed ones. I've done edits to bring IPA transcriptions of a particular language in articles into agreement with the IPA help page for that language. But the IPA help pages are more in flux than typical policy pages, and they aren't voted on.... maybe that's why they were moved. — Eru·tuon 00:14, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Can someone add the IPA to Tuineau Alipate. I would but it looks complicated. It's pronounced "too-NOW allah-POT-tay" per this article. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@WikiOriginal-9: Done. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:07, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:09, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

A few days ago I was asked if I could add diphthongs to this page, but I'm not sure if that's a very good idea. On the other hand, we seem to use rather broad transcription here, and the lead says For each IPA symbol, an English example is given where possible; here "RP" stands for Received Pronunciation. The foreign languages that are used to illustrate additional sounds are primarily the ones most likely to be familiar to English speakers, French, Standard German, and Spanish. So we could list just the diphthongs of the traditional RP (plus GA [oʊ]) and standard German. These would be [ɪə, ʊə, ɛə, eɪ, əʊ, ɔɪ, oʊ, aɪ, aʊ]. We could change [ɔʏ] to [ɔɪ] on Help:IPA/Standard German and Standard German phonology by the way. It's simpler and that's what the latest edition of Duden's Das Aussprachewörterbuch uses.

If there won't be any objections I'll add them in a few days. Mr KEBAB (talk) 04:46, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

We can also add [ɪi, ʊu, ɒʊ] as these are frequently encountered in transcriptions of RP/GA. Mr KEBAB (talk) 04:58, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I certainly do object to including diphthongs in this page. The page is meant to describe the IPA symbols as defined by the corresponding organisation. Diphthongs are not part of their definitions. Starting to include how combinations of symbols would be pronounced together is an open entry to infinite expansion. −Woodstone (talk) 05:13, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Woodstone: On the other hand though, the relation of diphthongs to simple monophthongal vowels is very similar to the relation of affricates to simple oral stops, yet we do include affricates here. If we could moderate the amount and the type of diphthongs that are included here (basically: only RP, GA and Standard German diphthongs in broad transcription), they wouldn't clutter the page. Perhaps including [ɪi, ʊu, ɒʊ] would be an overkill, but I don't see much harm in adding [ɪə, ʊə, ɛə, eɪ, əʊ, ɔɪ, oʊ, aɪ, aʊ]. Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:18, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Diphthongs are pretty much an open-ended class. If you start adding diphthongs from one language, then other language’s speakers will want to add their diphthongs as well. There are no phonetic reasons why certain combinations of sounds count as a unit. Instead, these reasons root in the phonology of a specific language. Therefore, we should not add them here, but on the dedicated page about the transriptions of certain languages, such as Help:IPA/English, Help:IPA/Standard German, Help:IPA/Spanish, etc.

Same goes for the affricates. I would favour removing the (very uneven selection of) affricates from this page. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 06:10, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Several of the affricates ([ts, tʃ, ɕ, dz, dʒ, dʑ) have a somewhat different standing, because they are officially defined (as ligatures) in the IPA handbook. −Woodstone (talk) 08:51, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Don’t have access to the IPA handbook right now, but according to Wikipedia ☺, the affricate ligatures ⟨ʦ, ʣ, ʧ, ʤ, ʨ, ʥ⟩ are deprecated (or are they not?). I suggest we remove the affricates from the regular list and instead mention the affricate ligatures in the section about affricates. Conveniently, it already exists, so we do not need to make a whole new section along the lines of “deprecated characters”. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 09:12, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

You are confusing this article with the one in article space. The latter has the separate affricate table. Since the IPA organisation defines these affricates explicitly, there is ground to keep them here as well. The deprecation is one of convenience because of on-line technical difficulties, but they still have a name and number. I would personally not be against removing them, but I think it's better to stick with the official list, to avoid endless discussions. None of the diphthongs are listed. −Woodstone (talk) 09:51, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Where does the IPA explicitly define the affricates? It seems to me that it is only Wikipedia that explicitly (and unsourcedly) defines them in International Phonetic Alphabet#Affricates. On the IPA number chart, there are no numbers for the affricates. I also think it is best to stick to the official lists, which means removing the affricates. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 12:04, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@J. 'mach' wust: Look under 'other symbols'. I'm also surprised by your (y'all's) rather narrow set of criteria by which you want to remove affricates from this list. The IPA is not the final authority on sounds. They've contributed a lot to the research on pronunciation, that's true. But they're not the one and only reputable source which we must follow. Read e.g. section 3.3 of The Sounds of the World's Languages. Plus, there are much fewer possible affricates that are in any way common than diphthongs. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:12, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Mr KEBAB:: Look under 'other symbols'. Where? The IPA is not the final authority on sounds. The IPA is not the final authority on sounds, but it is indeed the final authority on the IPA. This page is very clearly about the IPA, not on “sounds”. I am all in favour of describing the IPA according to the IPA. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 05:38, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@J. 'mach' wust: Sorry, on the number chart. Are you really arguing for removing the affricates because they're not defined by the IPA itself? This is really strange. What about the illustrations of the IPA in the Handbook of the IPA? Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:14, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with adding diphthongs or affricates, though I do see the potential problem of bloat that others have brought up. Perhaps just a handful of illustrative examples from English would be sufficient to give readers the idea behind how representations of diphthongs and affricates work.

And, regarding changing [ɔʏ] to [ɔɪ] on Help:IPA/Standard German and Standard German phonology, that should be brought up in those respective talk pages. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 13:11, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: Yes, that's exactly what I meant (we already have a few affricates on the list by the way).

Will do, but I think a thread on Help talk:IPA/Standard German will be sufficient. I'll link to it from Talk:Standard German phonology. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:12, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't think there is consensus to start adding entries that are not defined by the IPA to this article named after it. −Woodstone (talk) 09:21, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Woodstone: "Will do" was about starting a discussion about using the [ɔɪ] symbol instead of [ɔʏ]. Mr KEBAB (talk) 09:24, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

This page should be giving a general idea of what each symbol represents. Since diphthongs are always defined by the phonology of a given language, I don't think they are within its scope. Whenever a question arises, you can always refer to the specific key for the relevant language (Help:IPA/...).

As for affricates, I think the ones currently listed (perhaps except the retroflex ones) are frequent enough across languages that it is reasonable to have them here, especially since it is often counterintuitive for laypeople that they aren't single sounds, which is generally not the case for diphthongs. Nardog (talk) 09:42, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "diphthongs are always defined by the phonology of a given language." How is that different from any other vowel? Are you saying diphthongs are a category purely in the arena of phonology and not phonetics? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 19:04, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: I was referring to whether a sequence of two vowels is two different phonemes or one. Monophthongs are at least defined in the IPA, though their usages vary. Which is true for affricates as well, but it doesn't take much to understand [aɪ] stands for a combination of vowels pronounced somewhere near [a] and [ɪ], while it might for some to understand [tʃ] stands for the sound of church. Nardog (talk) 19:20, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Can someone add the IPA to Iheanyi Uwaezuoke. It has a note saying it needs an IPA. Thanks WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:16, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

The table on the Help subpage for Inuktitut includes the following:

Stress

ˈ

Primary stress on penultimate syllable (placed before the stressed syllable). The stress is always on the last syllable.

The second line contains the IPA primary stress mark (ˈ).Since "penultimate" means "next to last", "Primary stress on penultimate syllable" directly contradicts "The stress is always on the last syllable." IPA places stress marks before the affected syllable rather than after, as many English sources do: for example,

homework

hōm′wûrk′

(American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edn., 2000. ISBN 0395825172)

The writer was probably trying to describe the placement of the symbol, but instead created a hopeless tangle, not comprehensible in any consistent way.

According to this forum page on Unilang Inuktitut probably does not have distinctive stress at all, regardless of how it may sound to an American English-speaker. Many languages do not have distinctive stress. French, for example, has none, though Americans often perceive some apparent stress on the last syllable, possibly by comparison with English, in which the last syllable is often unstressed.

This should be resolved by someone knowledgeable about the language and the sources.

--Thnidu (talk) 04:30, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Don't confuse phonemic stress contrast with an absence of stress. French does indeed have stress where American English speakers hear it, but it's non-contrastive. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:49, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: Thank you.

Yes, politeness is very important. Have I violated that? --Thnidu (talk) 08:36, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

That's just his signature.

If stress isn't contrastive in a given language, then I don't see why we'd need it in the IPA for that language. That would be like including tones in English notations. So the stress on Help:IPA/French can go too, in fact most notations linking to that key don't have it. Nardog (talk) 11:51, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

@Nardog: The same applies to Help:IPA/Hungarian, Help:IPA/Icelandic, Help:IPA/Czech, Help:IPA/Slovak and the future IPA guide for Faroese. But if reputable sources include stress in their transcriptions, maybe it should stay. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:23, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I disagree. Non-contrastive stress is still something that is an important feature of a language, especially for a phonetic guide. French, for example, has some instances of penultimate stress. It's still non-contrastive and fully predictable, but we transcribe it because those not familiar with the pattern will need it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:40, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Hm, I guess you have a point there. If a word ends with a reduced syllable, that's one reason to include stress in the notation.

Going back to Inuktitut though, is the note supposed to mean that the stress need not be included when it falls on the last syllable, which it (almost) always does, but it need be if it falls on the penultimate syllable? I wonder what Ephert meant by it. Nardog (talk) 16:16, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

In my 14:46, September 14, 2012, edit, I used the edit summary "copied over the Mayan IPA as a template and added a citation", and I originally put three question marks "???" next to the stress (') symbol in that edit. In that same 14:46, September 14, 2012 edit, I added the Inuktitut syllabary at Omniglot as a citation. Later, in my 15:40, September 14, 2012, edit, I removed the stress (') symbol with the edit summary "took off unused parts from copy of Mayan IPA help". Later, in my 16:40 September 14, 2012, edit, I added the stress symbol (') back, and I wrote in the article, ""Primary stress on penultimate syllable (placed before the stressed syllable). The stress is always on the last syllable.", with the edit summary "added stress to chart". I checked the October 25, 2012, archived copy of Inuktitut syllabary at Omniglot at the Wayback Machine to see if I was basing that statement on something from that web page, but I do not see information about the stress symbol (') there. I do not know why I added the stress symbol (') back, and I do not know why I wrote, "Primary stress on penultimate syllable (placed before the stressed syllable). The stress is always on the last syllable." In the 04:30 January 11, 2018 edit by User:Thnidu, User:Thindu wrote, "The writer was probably trying to describe the placement of the symbol, but instead created a hopeless tangle, not comprehensible in any consistent way." After checking the definition of the word "penultimate" as meaning "second to the last" right now, I am even further confused as to why I would write, "Primary stress on penultimate syllable (placed before the stressed syllable). The stress is always on the last syllable.". After considering User:Thindu's analysis, I agree with User:Thindu when that user wrote, "The writer was probably trying to describe the placement of the symbol...", since I put "(placed before the stressed syllable)" in parentheses. Regardless of what I meant which is not clear even to me and why I added it there which is also not clear even to me, I have removed it in a January 12 18:18, 2018, edit with the edit summary, "I removed the section about stress per discussion at Help talk:IPA."--Ephert (talk) 18:24, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

@Ephert: Thanks for fixing that, and for explaining the history here.

Mr KEBAB, Nardog: I agree with Aeusoes1 that it's important to indicate phonetic stress even when it's nondistinctive. Hungarian is an excellent example:

Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word, as in the related Finnish languages and in the neighbouring languages Slovak and Czech. There is secondary stress on other syllables in compounds, e.g. viszontlátásra ("goodbye") pronounced /ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/.

Since primary stress is always predictable, it's not phonemic. But it is clearly perceptible, presumably to Hungarians as well as others. For example, if an English-speaker speaking Hungarian stressed Amerika on the second syllable, as in English America, a Hungarian would be sure to find it odd even if everything else in the pronunciation (notably the vowels written ⟨a⟩) were correct.

(By the way, that stress mark is not an ASCII straight apostrophe, it's U+02C8, typeable as ˈ. And my username is Thnidu, not Thindu. It's odd for English, and that's deliberate: I'm a linguist, and that's sort of a professional joke. Even my wife could hardly ever get it right. :-) ) --Thnidu (talk) 23:06, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Word stress in Hungarian and some of the other languages mentioned above is only predictable if you already know where word boundaries are, as speakers do. However it is an important and sometimes indispensable clue for listeners to detect word boundaries. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 23:56, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Help:IPA/Nahuatl says that ɬ, the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative, is equivalent in English to the "l" in "play". However, unless I've misunderstood something, the "l" in play is an alveolar lateral approximant, rather than a fricative. Is something wrong here? I thought I'd ask here, I know a fair amount about phonetics but I'm still an amateur.--AmaryllisGardener ^talk 02:54, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

See Approximant consonant#Approximants versus fricatives, particularly the second paragraph. Love —LiliCharlie (talk) 15:01, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

The IPA pronunciations on the Help:IPA/Malayalam page conflict with the pronunciations provided by the TEMU Malayalam Phonetic Archive^[1]. Should the wikipedia page be edited to reflect this? If so, should the current pronunciations be changed or should the reported pronunciations be added to the existing examples? Agoramachina (talk) 01:47, 12 April 2018 (UTC)