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Criticisms and suggestions

I am a longtime editor and recall when some of our linguists suggested using IPA as a professional, machine-readable, world-standard pronunciation scheme. While I agree that IPA can be unwieldy and excessively beyond the scope of anyone's particular phonology, I disagree wholeheartedly with the ways of spelling this respelling key is based on.

I'm here to earnestly suggest a complete reworking of this system into a new one, one which is closer to a Latin-based and phonologically scientific system and not in the idiomatic and idiosyncratic ways found exclusively in English spelling. I think we can find a good balance between this system and IPA by using what is essentially a subsystem of IPA built around a controlled phonology of only the most common symbols and sounds in the Romance and other major language systems.

English Wikipedia articles should be seen as the basis for an international readership —one that expects quality and professionalism in our articles.

-Stevertigo (w | t | e) 01:02, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Wow, now I'm really curious. Look forward to seeing your suggestions. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:00, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

My suggestions come as a whole new system. I will put together an overview shortly, but just to state some of its principles, it should be built as a compromise between IPA and this system. We will use what is sensible in IPA and offer people what will amount to being an enhanced Roman alphabet with similar conventions. It will be usable even for foreign language terms in place of IPA, or alongside IPA that is more detailed or phonologically faithful in its transcription. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 21:50, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

System B (templated)

Comments (untemplated)

I don't see the point. The problem with the IPA is the provincial education that most Usonians receive. They find it as unfamiliar as the metric system. Respelling keys are designed for them, and perhaps for other native English speakers. Foreign speakers are mostly familiar with the IPA, since nearly every country apart from the US uses it. So why take a system designed to be more comfortable for English speakers who are unfamiliar with the IPA, and replace it with something unfamiliar, in order to make it more accessible to readers who are already familiar with the IPA? (Sorry if I missed the answer when skimming over the above.) — kwami (talk) 05:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

1. Kwamikagami wrote: "I don't see the point. The problem with the IPA is the provincial education that most Usonians receive. They find it as unfamiliar as the metric system." - I don't understand arguments like yours which regard the "Usonian" intellect as "provincial" and then stand up for that same provincial attitude by promoting work based in and catered to such provincialism. Wikipedia is a global project of academic standing, and we can do better than a provincial-style key.
2. Kwamikagami wrote: "Respelling keys are designed for [provincial Usonians], and perhaps for other native English speakers. Foreign speakers are mostly familiar with the IPA, since nearly every country apart from the US uses it." - I agree that IPA is not the best pronunciation scheme. That's why I'm suggesting we use one that's similar to it but much simpler and intuitive to even provincial Usonians.
3. Kwamikagami wrote: "So why take a system designed to be more comfortable for English speakers who are unfamiliar with the IPA, and replace it with something unfamiliar, in order to make it more accessible to readers who are already familiar with the IPA?" - First of all I don't know where you get your information about foreign readers being "already familiar with the IPA." A quick look around other language wikis tells us IPA has not caught on for usage on other language encyclopedias. There is perhaps a spectrum of reasons for that, but the general sense is that IPA is to them also too foreign. Hence the concept is that when even given a professional system of transcription, provincial sentiments among even other cultures decline its usage - regardless of arguments for its professionalism or encyclopedic value. My opinion is that this current "System A" ree-SPEL-ling kee is not of encyclopedic value. For one, Wikipedia is not a dictionary, among which we would find an varied assortment of equally provincial schemes. Thats one of the main problems. Wikipedia needs to stick to things which are based in sound linguistics and aren't just respellings with emphasis.
4. The criticisms of IPA are not so illegitimate as to ascribe them all to simply dislike of "provincial" Usonian indoctrination, and the very existence of this "KEE" suggests that views critical of IPA are substantial. Given the right implementation of a System B, even the least worldly Usonian can gain an intuition for the system. System B can stand on its own, work alongside IPA, and at the same time be a gateway into learning IPA. System B has only a few extra glyphs and a few more differences from English and yet its still directly orthogonal with IPA. Regards, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 06:32, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much anyone who's picked up a dictionary in a country other than the US has been exposed to the IPA. As for catering to provincial ignorance, that's why we provide Imperial units next to metric, and you're doing the same thing with this new key. The objections, BTW, are almost exclusively Usonian. That at least was the input that got me to create this (old) key.

So you're proposing this as a learning tool for the IPA, sort of as a "Basic IPA"? If you want to simplify the use of the IPA for English, why not just propose simplifications on the IPA key page? But it won't make it more familiar to people who don't know it.

I don't see an actual proposal, however, and without that, I don't know how we can discuss this intelligibly. — kwami (talk) 06:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

If IPA is not universal outside the United States, as suggested by International Phonetic Alphabet, and by the fact that a Finnish-language book that I have seems to prefer Finnish-based PR (pronunciation respelling) over IPA, then I recommend that in non-English-language Wikipedias, too, IPA be phased in and PRs phased out. I have little sympathy for provincial ignorance, at least when it comes to IPA and the metric system. In an increasingly internationalized world, we need de-provincialized people, and the elimination of unreasonable communication barriers such as PR.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:40, 20 May 2013 (UTC)

I understand that you've put a lot of work and research into "this (old) key." I see this scheme as valuable, just as you do, and for the same reasons you do — it would not exist if others considered it unnecessary. But I think it can be improved on, by elevating the science behind it a bit. Forthcoming discussions will certain involve people at the IPA end of things, but its not practical to propose changes to IPA. It is what it is, and though improvements could be made to it, I am not aware of any activity in that area at the International Phonetics Association. For what its worth I would be more than interested in any information you might have to share on that subject. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 07:36, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I haven't put all that much work into this, and I wouldn't mind if it were found unnecessary and all transclusions of it deleted. But its purpose is for people who are unfamiliar with the IPA, but familiar with respellings. What you are proposing seems to be half-way between, which I expect would satisfy no-one.

No, I wasn't thinking of reforming the IPA itself, but of changing our conventions for transcribing English in the IPA. When we came up with the key, I argued for /r/ rather than /ɹ/ and /oʊ/ rather than /əʊ/ because I thought they would be more accessible to those having trouble with the IPA. There may be further simplifications we could make. But we specifically excluded /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ because people (and dictionaries) traditionally use those symbols for different things (/i/ for both 'seat' and 'sit', /e/ for both 'pet' and 'pate', etc.), and we therefore could never depend on them being what they're described in the key as. — kwami (talk) 08:50, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree with Kwamikagami's point. The whole purpose of this key is to provide a pronunciation guide that will be immediately intelligible to English-speakers who don't know IPA and don't want to learn any new symbols. Your suggested replacement does not work: for example /eitʃ/ will be no more intelligible to such a user than the full-IPA /eɪtʃ/. Grover cleveland (talk) 01:17, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

1. Kwami: "Actually, I haven't put all that much work into this, and I wouldn't mind if it were found unnecessary and all transclusions of it deleted." - Awesome. I'll start work on that right away. ;-) -S
2. Kwami: "..its purpose is for people who are unfamiliar with the IPA, but familiar with respellings." - There are a few different "re-spelling" keys I've seen, mostly among the various dictionaries and language-teaching books, and all of them I suppose can be said to work. But there are annoyances, and in any case it is the ideal that one need learn only one system when going from book to book. The real commercial-book world doesn't work that way. I had thought it was refreshingly important that we began using IPA, and I think our usage of it here has helped to promote its learning. I think the real issue is that IPA learning here is clumsy and, like uploading an image to Commons, fraught with the problem that one need read all sorts of front-matter —that just to learn the difference between /i/ and /iː/ and /ɪ/. (The ː long vowel glyph would be superfluous if it wasnt' used for the canonical Latin vowel sounds). So, in thinking about how IPA learning could be less clumsy, I suggest largely promoting IPA for English, through a supersimplified guide. There are problems with IPA. That's the real issue here. And to its credit, this key would perhaps be improved if it stopped using SHOUTCASE, and instead used something like IPA's accent marks - apostrophes would be better, for example "hawn'door.us" Yes, the oo's are ambiguous - that's the point of using unique glyphs. -S
3. Kwami: "What you are proposing seems to be half-way between, which I expect would satisfy no-one." - No one is satisfied now, I think. There are the Usonians who are somewhat happy (as happy as Usonians get) with a familiar tool, but in point of fact I could refute their requirements for a non-professional key by simply citing WP:WIND. Dictionaries are where one finds those keys, and we generally have striven for higher standards, not Usonian ones. -S
4. Kwami: "No, I wasn't thinking of reforming the IPA itself, but of changing our conventions for transcribing English in the IPA." - Interesting. Sounds sort of like what I'm saying. -S
5. Kwami: "When we came up with the key, I argued for /r/ rather than /ɹ/ and /oʊ/ rather than /əʊ/ because I thought they would be more accessible [..] There may be further simplifications we could make." - Exactly. We can use common sense, and still give people a little better insight into IPA, even though its extreme in complexity and they're never going to use it beyond the basics. In fact I doubt there are many at all who can speak the entire range of IPA. -S
6. Kwami: "But we specifically excluded /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ because people (and dictionaries) traditionally use those symbols for different things." - Well they are morphophonemic, and that's what makes them powerful and simple for those initiated in their usage for particular systems. But they aren't too differentated among Romanization systems, from Romaji to Pinyin to whatever. That English speakers are well familiar with morphophonemic vowels, and don't need differentiated ones, is probably the bulk of the Usonian argument for using English keys. But to succumb to English speakers that just want English-familiar things is counter to our internationalist and professional mandate. So I disagree that using the canonical vowel glyphs is too ambiguous or confusing for the Usonians - we just haven't crafted the right teaching tool. Just getting English readers to understand basic Spanish-like non-morphing vowels is probably halfway there, and that can be the tip of the sword for what can be a very simplified IPA teaching tool. -S
7. "Grover" wrote (??): "I have to agree with Kwamikagami's point. The whole purpose of this key is to provide a pronunciation guide that will be immediately intelligible to English-speakers who don't know IPA and don't want to learn any new symbols." - I cannot go along with this idea that we should hide things that readers don't already understand. That's not what learnin' is about. -S
8. "Grover" wrote: "Your suggested replacement does not work: for example /eitʃ/ will be no more intelligible to such a user than the full-IPA /eɪtʃ/." - There are IPA glyphs which make sense and those that don't. I was on the fence about using it in System B. The "sh" is a digraph, and probably a very very common one (havent looked it up yet) but in a system like IPA that tries to or thinks it always has to use a 1:1 glyph to phoneme ratio, it makes sense to use a new glyph. I personally think its intuitive and it took me only one lookup at the reference to see that it transcribes to "sh." Not bad. There are other glyph choices in IPA which don't seem as graphically intuitive, and yes I agree that one cannot blame the end-reader who doesn't particularly want to learn them.-Stevertigo (w | t | e) 05:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I fully understand your position, but it seems to me that you disagree philosophically with the whole idea of a pronunciation respelling key being in Wikipedia. That is fine, but I think you are making a mistake in proposing your suggested "System B" here. "System B" is simply not a "pronunciation respelling key" in the sense used in this page, but rather differs only in minor detail from the current Wikipedia:IPA for English schema. Like Kwami, I find it pointless to maintain transcriptions in both the current Wikipedia:IPA for English and your "System B": if you would like to propose "System B" for use in Wikipedia, then logically it would only make sense as a replacement for the current Wikipedia:IPA for English. You may wish to suggest it on the talk page there (I should emphasize that I am not currently taking any position on whether "System B" ought or ought not to be adopted in place of the current IPA scheme, just suggesting that it would be a more appropriate forum for discussion of this idea). Cheers. Grover cleveland (talk) 21:45, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I respect your views. I'll take a raincheck on directly answering them, and that's to a certain degree because your argument has substance. Regards, -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 20:33, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

I completely agree with kwami. This Pronunciation respelling key's sole purpose is to dumb Wikipedia sufficiently down so that a certain segment of the US population is not scared away by words with more than five letters. I am annoyed and disgusted to see something like this in an encyclopedia. IPA is official while PRK is entirely made up by Wikipedians. Who invented this nonsense anyways? ♆ CUSH ♆ 12:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with kwami and CUSH. Not only do I dislike pronunciation respelling keys, as explained below, but I am disgusted about how provincialized Americans are. We use feet and inches, can only speak English, and use pronunciation respelling even though IPA can be learned with minimal effort.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 15:15, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Double ss

I would always read "eyess" (for ice) as a two-syllable word. So the recent addition to require double ss is of doubtful validity. −Woodstone (talk) 15:08, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

That's part of a general problem for -ye/eye for /ai/. That spelling has always been problematic. — kwami (talk) 18:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

How about "OO?" Ambigious. Door / DOOR. Floor / FLOOR. The idea of relying on using all caps to disambiguate digraphs like these is something I see as a weakness in this system, though the all caps serve two purposes of emphasis and phoneme shift. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 20:37, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

We don't use caps to distinguish digraphs. — kwami (talk) 09:20, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Hm. So what how does one write "tandoori," or "honduras?" -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 00:27, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

PRICE and FACE vowels in closed syllables

It seems that for the PRICE and FACE vowels a different spelling is required for open and closed syllables. Under the current conventions, these words would be transcribed as PRYESS and FAYSS, but both spellings (especially the former) are extremely unintuitive and arguably misleading. Given that the whole purpose of this page is that pronunciation should be intuitive and immediate given the spelling, why not just transcribe them PRICE and FACE, where there is no possibility of confusion? My formal suggestion is: When the PRICE or FACE vowels appear in a closed syllable, they should generally be transcribed cIcE and cAcE respectively (where c represents appropriate consonants). In open syllables, we should continue with the current convention because it works well there. Examples for the PRICE vowel follow (those for FACE are analagous and I've included a few):

• before /p/, WIPE -> WIPE; WIPING -> either WIPE-ing or WYE-ping (depending upon choice of syllabification; first example is closed syllable -- second is open)
• before /b/, VIBE -> VIBE; VIBRATE -> vye-BRATE
• before /t/, LIGHT -> LITE; LIGHTEST -> either LITE-ist or LYE-tist
• before /d/, WIDE -> WIDE; WIDEN -> either WIDE-en or WYE-den
• before /dʒ/, SAGE -> SAGE; (note, before e g nearly always represents /dʒ/).
• before /k/, BIKE -> BIKE; BIKING -> either BIKE-ing or BYE-king
• before /g/, VAGUE -> VAGUE; (note must add a u to clarify)
• before /f/, WAIF -> WAFE; WAFER -> WAFE-er or WAY-fer
• before /v/, SLAVE -> SLAVE
• before /θ/, SWATHE -> SWATHE
• before /ð/, LATHE -> LADHE or LAYDH
• before /s/, RICE -> RICE; RICIN -> either RICE-in or RYE-sin (note use of c rather than s; RISE would be ambiguous between /s/ and /z/.)
• before /z/, RISE -> RIZE
• before /ʒ/, BEIGE -> BAYZH is probably better than BAZHE
• before /m/, NAME -> NAME
• before /n/, MAIN -> MANE
• before /l/, MAIL -> MALE

I suggest that these spellings are, in general, far more intuitive than the current system (with WYEPP for WIPE etc.). Grover cleveland (talk) 01:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The FACE vowel is not a problem as AY. And as you point out w "BAZHE" and "VAGE", the alternatives are not good. (I suppose we could switch to AI, but no need for two transcriptions.) But we really don't want "depending on your choice of syllabification". People are completely inconsistent with that, and we want transcriptions that, given the key, people can agree on. So although I'd like a more intuitive transcription, I don't think this is the answer. — kwami (talk) 09:18, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

PS (from below):

• WIPE -> waip.
• VIBE -> vaib.
• LIGHT -> lait.
• WIDE -> waid.
• SAGE -> seidg
• BIKE -> baik
• VAGUE -> veig.
• WAIF -> weif
• SLAVE -> sleiv.
• SWATHE -> sweith.
• LATHE -> leith.
• RICE -> rais.
• RISE -> raiz.
• BEIGE -> beizh
• NAME -> neim
• MAIN -> mein
• MAIL -> meil

-Stevertigo (w | t | e) 21:17, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• In sensible orthography, "prIce" would be "prais" and fAce would be "feis" (where caps are alphaphonetic). The issue is not so much with the /ei/ and /ai/ vowels but with the final "s" requiring some kind of accentuation. The solitary final "s" often shifts to a "z" sound, so "prais" might read like "prize" and "feis" like "faze". "Praiss" and "feiss" seem clearer, but that digraph has ambiguities as well. Note that IPA doesn't rely on English orthographics to hint at the pronunciation - "s" is "s" and "ss", and "z" is "s" where appropriate, but for English readers using "s" instead of "ss" here would be more ambiguous. Maybe using a period would work too: "prais." and "feis." Perhaps this is common in English orthography, how alphaphonetic vowels ("I," "A") and "-ce" work together to give a final "s" sound, where a plain "s" ("prIs", "fAs,") would be ambiguous. "I" and "A" are easy enough to transliterate as "ai" and "ei," So "-ce" here is the essential point - IPA seems to be missing a character for the final "-ss" or "-ce." -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 20:37, 25 May 2010 (UTC) (note PS, above)

The IPA character you are looking for to represent "-ss" or "-ce" is unequivocally [s]. IPA leaves not doubt that [s] is unvoiced and [z] voiced. −Woodstone (talk) 21:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

• True. The point here is to deal with the argument that this KEE is necessary because its orthographies are claimed to be intuitive (to English), and because IPA is claimed to be too ambiguous or counterintuitive (for English readers). I think Grover's above modes of transcription are themselves too ambiguous, though not too much moreso than other parts of the key, and that's in large part because they rest on English alphaphonetics (a=/ei/, e=/i/, i=/ai/). I happened to find something interesting in that a simple stop symbol "." could, for English readers, intuitively represent the difference between /s/ and /z/. (PS: For /ð/, using th or th ("that" or "that") would also probably be intuitive). -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 22:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Intuitivve for whom? Not me, certainly. Grover cleveland (talk) 23:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

To which concept are you referring? The stop symbol idea, the use of a striked out th for /ð/, or the use of canonical vowel digraphs in place of English alphaphonetics? Or all of the above? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 23:56, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry for the ambiguity: I was primarily referring to the stop symbol. Grover cleveland (talk) 00:19, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

There is room for disagreement on that point, so I'll set that one aside, just on your suggestion alone. What about the other two? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 00:25, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

(To Stevertigo, above) Possibly, but I repeat that we are not dealing with "sensible orthography", unfortunately. We are stuck with the orthography of the English language. Grover cleveland (talk) 23:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

(To Woodstone): this page is not about IPA. If we were looking to use IPA then we should be looking at WP:IPAEN, not here. Cheers. Grover cleveland (talk) 23:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

(Regarding Stevertigo's list, above) Remember that this key should to the greatest possible extent be understandable by English speakers without looking up a key, based solely on normal English orthography. I suggest that "ai" usually indicates the FACE, not the PRICE vowel in English orthography (consider "main", "maid"). "Ei" most often indicates the FLEECE, not the FACE vowel (consider "seize", "conceive", etc.). Word-final "s" is generally ambiguous between /s/ and /z/. I repeat my suggestion above that the system you propose is more appropriate as a possible replacement for WP:IPAEN than for this key. Grover cleveland (talk) 23:40, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

But we do have a problem with the long-i vowel. I wish I could think of s.t. simple for it that would work in closed syllables. — kwami (talk) 01:00, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

/ii/, as in Hawaii? (Though ii (digraph) doesn't tell us much). There's always "E" as in '"E"-gregious', which should make the Usonians happy as it's purely alphabetical. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 01:16, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

• Kwami: Assuming that by "long-i" you mean PRICE, is my proposal above not simple enough? I don't think anything else will work. Avoiding closed symbols wherever possible would also help (e.g. TIGER -> TYE-gər). I can't think of (m)any English words where the PRICE vowel is following by preconsontal or word-final /ɡ/ or /ʒ/, so that shouldn't be much of an issue. See the new section I added below.Grover cleveland (talk) 01:33, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Grover wrote: "We are stuck with the orthography of the English language." - The point of a respelling key is to look at pronunciations from a different dimension, and it makes much more sense to use systems that try not to repeat the same idiomatic and idiosyncractic patterns that cause people to require pronunciation guides in the first place. And the ways you suggest above are just as ambiguous. Saying that "ei" most often indicates /iː/ seems inaccurate ("reign," "feign," "vein,"), and contradicts the "i before e, except after c" (and only "c") rule ("piece" -> "ceiling"). The digraph "ai" as in "rain," or "refrain," is that way because its alphaphonetic, but there are plenty of incorporated usages in where "ai" follows the /ai/ norm, and are not ambiguous: Saigon, Cairo, Hyundai (!). I will take your suggestion and look more into dealing with the IPAE side of things. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 01:04, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Steve: I don't think that we should use "ei" or "ai" at all. I am suggesting that your use of those digraphs is ambiguous. And, by the way, the i before e, except after c has very little connection to actual English spelling, as the article itself explains. Grover cleveland (talk) 01:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

The problem of preference and weight

The selenium article made me think of another problem with the KEE:

Selenium (pronounced /sɨˈleːniəm/ or /sɨˈliːniəm/ sə-LEE-nee-əm).

The latter pronunciation /sɨˈliːniəm/ is also transliterated into the KEE, but the actual common pronunciation /ɛsɨˈleːniəm/ doesn't have one. The KEE gives emphasis and undue weight to the provincial, wheras in balance the IPA transliterations would be regarded as nominally equivalent. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 20:48, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

The IPA was wrong for one of the two pronunciations at Selenium. I've fixed it. Grover cleveland (talk) 23:44, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the /e/ should have been lower and shorter: /ɛ/. -Stevertigo (w | t | e)

Revised proposal for the PRICE vowel

• Wherever possible, syllabify so that the PRICE vowel is in an open syllable. For example, "tiger" should be syllabified TYE-gər, not TYEG-ər or the like.
• Wherever the PRICE has to be in a closed syllable, follow the following examples based on the following consonant:
  • before /p/, IPE, e.g. WIPE -> WIPE (not WYEP)
  • before /b/, IBE, e.g. VIBE -> VIBE (not VYEB)
  • before /t/, ITE, e.g. LIGHT -> LITE (not LYET)
  • before /d/, IDE, e.g. WIDE -> WIDE (not WYED)
  • before /dʒ/, few/no examples
  • before /tʃ/, no examples
  • before /k/, IKE, e.g. BIKE -> BIKE (not BYEK)
  • before /g/, no examples
  • before /f/, IFE, e.g. LIFE -> LIFE (not LYEF)
  • before /v/, IVE, e.g. LIVE (adj.) -> LIVE (not LYEV)
  • before /θ/, very few examples
  • before /ð/, very few examples
  • before /s/, ICE, e.g. RICE -> RICE (not RYES)
  • before /z/, IZE, e.g. RISE -> RIZE (not RYEZ)
  • before /ʃ/, no examples
  • before /ʒ/, no examples
  • before /m/, IME, e.g. LIME -> LIME (not LYEM)
  • before /n/, INE, e.g. LINE -> LINE (not LYEN)
  • before /ŋ/, no examples
  • before /l/, ILE, e.g. MILE -> MILE (not MYEL)
  • before (rhotic) /r/, IRE, e.g. CHOIR -> KWIRE (not KWYER)
• Comments welcome :) Grover cleveland (talk) 01:57, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

In general I like this, but the problematic cases are still, er, problematic. How would you treat German Fleisch, for example? I think -ITHE is borderline okay for /-aıð/, given lithe and scythe. --Atemperman (talk) 17:32, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

As for the problematic cases, well, we can't square a circle. I don't think there exists a good way of doing pronunciation respelling, that doesn't involve learning some system, for Fleisch; it's not that we haven't found it yet. For the problematic cases, it would add a lot of clutter to the beginning of an article to have something like, "like fly plus an SH sound", so I guess if editors feel like adding a pronunciation respelling, they can add it as a footnote, or get into a argument on that particular article's talk page about whether to have the clutter in the main text or in a footnote or not to have it at all and make people realize that English spelling just doesn't cut it for certain sounds and sound combinations. --Atemperman (talk) 17:41, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Mostly I've just been deleting respellings when they're too misleading to be useful. It's not just the EYE vowel, but several other situations too. But I suppose we can try I_E for closed syllables. — kwami (talk) 20:47, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

That's a good idea. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 05:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Um

Curious. How would some of these be respelled according to the KEE? -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 01:12, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

Especially and preferably in IPA, "Ladefoged", of whose pronunciation I ironically do not have the faintest idea. −Woodstone (talk) 11:40, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

LAD-i-foe-gid /ˈlædɨfoʊɡɨd/. Though LAD-ə-foe-gid /ˈlædəfoʊɡɨd/ would be closer to the Danish.

WP:IIPA

Per our earlier discussion, Ive just scrambled some notes down at Wikipedia:IPA/Introduction, and I thought I'd make a note of it. The idea here is 1) to get the point and 2) keep it as simple as possible. For Usonians, this means using hand gestures and even the waggle dance if necessary. -Stevertigo (w | t | e) 05:48, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Added the other vowels and consonants, made some IPA corrections, and copy edited. Added some, cut some. — kwami (talk) 21:26, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Comma between IPA & respelling looks bad

Comment is solicited on the following related discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(pronunciation)#Comma_between_IPA_.26_respelling_looks_bad --Cybercobra (talk) 21:23, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Palm and Start

In the table, 'palm' and 'start' have two different pronunciations. To me, and everyone else I've ever heard, pronounces the sounds in these words exactly the same. What is the difference? McLerristarr | Mclay1 14:52, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You are a non-rhotic speaker, which means that you don't pronounce the "R" in "start", and you probably pronounce "father" and "farther" identically. Try talking to Scottish, Irish or North American speakers. They will clearly pronounce the "r" in "start", and they will differentiate between "farther" and "father" by pronouncing the "R" in the former but no the latter. Believe it or not, everyone in England used to speak like this too. Grover cleveland (talk) 18:01, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

I can't imagine how it would sound. I pronounce an R at the end of a word if followed by a vowel, but I doesn't sound right to put it in the middle of a word. Thank you for illuminating me on that. McLerristarr | Mclay1 23:04, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

You could try this website to hear words pronounced by speakers from around the world. Grover cleveland (talk) 02:22, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you McLerristarr | Mclay1 02:28, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

force, north, orange

I think the the pronunciations given here are characteristic of some British usage, and perhaps a minority of American usage (some places near the east coast?) but are not representative of most Americans' speech. In my case, which I think is quite typical, force and north have exactly the same vowel, as does orange, although I am well aware that a minority (seems to be in the north-east somewhere) say ahr- instead of ohr-. Jakob37 (talk) 02:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a word that you would pronounce incorrectly by using the key? — kwami (talk) 06:12, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I think he's mainly talking about "orange" having the THOUGHT vowel (in his dialect) rather than the LOT vowel (as in the key). For non-cot-caught-merged speakers, these words (which in RP have LOT plus intervocalic R) are variable over the entire US. Grover cleveland (talk) 07:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, by using the key, I should be saying "force" with a longer vowel, but really it's the same. And "orange" is not something different. I believe my pronunciation is pretty common; if you check http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/vowels.html for example, you'll see it describes the same system. Also http://www-old.ling.uni-potsdam.de/atl/forschung/publikationen/docs/green/r_colored_vowels.pdf same thing (informative article, BTW). So my question is, just what and where is your description connected with? If we just say "American English", it should be the most general, commonly heard type. Jakob37 (talk) 06:05, 2 September 2010 (UTC)

Jakob37, I'm having a little trouble understanding exactly what you're saying here, but it may help to take a look at Horse-hoarse merger. The author of http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/vowels.html evidently has the merger, and I guess you do too. The key is not trying to tell you that you "should" be making this distinction -- it's just saying that, if you do have this distinction, then here is how we indicate it. If you don't have the distinction then you can just treat the two respellings as equivalent. Grover cleveland (talk) 07:34, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I guess my main point is that the "Notes" column makes a stab at explaining some of the varying ways that the abstract categories are actually pronounced, but does not do so in a very thorough or organised way. There seems to be plenty of room to expand the "Notes" area a bit, perhaps a group of 3 or 4 columns would be useful, then you could list major variants in the US, Scotland, RP etc. By the way, the tables don't mention that the "aw" vowel is found with short "o" in certain special environments in American English (e.g. lost, boss, office, long, dog, gone, chocolate) but is no longer found in most British accents, where they just pronounce a simple short "o" (while of course still retaining the "aw" in thought, wall, law etc.). However (according to Wells), the special American pronunciation is still found in certain very conservative RP accents. - As for horse/hoarse, I hope you realise that VERY FEW Americans make this distinction, it is not at all characteristic of American speech. Jakob37 (talk) 04:39, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

/ʍ/ and /hw/

Kwami, I reverted your edit. I don't know if your dialect has /ʍ/ or not, but phoneticially it is not at all the same thing as the sequence /hw/. Indeed that sequence is typologically rare and tends to /xw/. /ʍ/ is more akin to /ɸ/ than to /h/ or /hw or /hʷ/. It is s voiceless /w/, like blowing out a candle, not a labialized /h/. -- Evertype·✆ 08:57, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

In fact I suggest that only /ʍ/ should be given, and not /hw/ at all. -- Evertype·✆ 09:01, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I know full well what it is. [r] and [ɹ] are not the same either, but that's irrelevant. And the rhotic vowels--where do we even start? But WP:IPA for English has decided to use the common analysis of English [ʍ] as /hw/, and that is therefore the appropriate entry for the IPA-for-English column in this chart.

Also, when an edit is challenged, please take it to Talk first, rather than edit warring. (See WP:Bold.) I will restore the consensus version of the article. — kwami (talk) 09:05, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

You did not respond to my phonetic discussion. WP:IPA for English isn't a person and it does not "decide" things, either. You are the one who first deleted /ʍ/, without discussion. -- Evertype·✆ 09:09, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I did respond, and your phonetic discussion is irrelevant. These are phonemes, and [ʍ] is commonly analyzed as /hw/. No-one said anything about labialization, and anyway your "phonetic" description (actually phonemic: phonetic transcriptions use square brackets), assuming it were relevant, is inaccurate. You might want to read The Sounds of the World's Languages, §9.3, for an overview.

Regardless, that rubric for that column directs the reader to IPA for English as an explanation. Therefore the symbols should be consistent with IPA for English. Now, if you wish to change that convention, the place to do so is on its talk page. If people agree with you, then we can change this and every article which depends upon it.

(Personally, I would prefer /iːr/ for /ɪər/, but I lost out on that argument.) — kwami (talk) 09:16, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Your tone is arrogant, Kwami, which certainly borders on the uncivil, as does your suggestion "You might want to read". I have had linguistic training, even if (to be charitable) it may have differed from yours. See Wikipedia_talk:IPA_for_English#/ʍ/_and_/hw/. And be nice. You don't own the phonetics garden of the Wikipedia. Other editors have rights to an opinion. -- Evertype·✆ 09:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

And raising rhotic vowels is another topic entirely. -- Evertype·✆ 09:30, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

If I'm uncivil, I apologize; it may be because I remember our last discussion.

Who said anything about ownership? This is a consensual convention. Rhotic raising is not another matter: we're talking about unilaterally changing this convention. I won't with rhotic raising, and you shouldn't with /hw/. If you wish it to change, convince the other editors who use it. — kwami (talk) 09:51, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I raised an issue. You dismissed it. You did not entertain convincement. -- Evertype·✆ 01:02, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

BBC respelling key

The BBC uses a respelling key very much like ours.[1] Apart from additional digraphs for foreign sounds, the differences I notice are the following:

WP	BBC
ah, aa	aa
ar	aar
oh, oe	oh
ohr	or
or
oo	oo
oo	uu
ye, eye	y
ə	uh

They also say, "Our respellings acknowledge word-final or pre-consonantal R, as in words like party and hair, which is pronounced in some accents of English (rhotic) and not in others (non-rhotic). Therefore Parker is transcribed as PAAR-kuhr, not PAA-kuh, and the rs will be pronounced or not according to the speaker's accent."

Same syllabification: "The way the words are broken into syllables in the respelling is not an attempt to reflect actual syllabification in a given language. Instead, it is a tool to reinforce vowel pronunciations and to ensure the most intuitive transcription. When a vowel is long, the following consonant will be placed after the hyphen, as in PEE-tuhr for Peter. When a vowel is short, the consonant goes immediately after the vowel, before the hyphen, as in JEN-i for Jenny."

Some of these are worth considering, esp. the "y", and maybe the "oo/uu". The only problem is that, while they use "i" for Jenny and we use "ee", neither are completely unambiguous. I think the BBC convention might be better, though. — kwami (talk) 05:42, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

Looks good; would clear up the messy ye/eye and the difficult to see and remember bolding in oo/oo. Cant't we keep JEN-ee? &minus:Woodstone (talk) 06:29, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

"Jenny" would be JEN-i, whereas "Bowie" would be BOH-ee. That's not an exact parallel to the IPA key, but IMO it's closer. But you're right, it would require some discussion here and agreement. Besides, it will take a while to clean it all up.

Any problems with "icicle" being Y-sik-əl ? Or do you think that would be read as "wye-cicle"? Maybe keep "eye" when /ai/ is a syllable of its own?

I also think oo/uu needs some discussion. Does that look good to people?

Came across another word this key doesn't work for: cobalt. That's KOH-bolt, not *KOH-bawlt, but if you write that, people read it as KOH-bohlt, and change it to KOH-balt, as if it were pronounced like alt-itude.

The one thing I actively dislike about the BBC key is uh for /ə/. And I see no point to aar.

Wow, we're up to 2000 transclusions of this key. But it wouldn't take too long to switch over with regex and AWB. I'd just want to get any changes settled on first. — kwami (talk) 07:26, 7 September 2010 (UTC)

The syllabification suggestion I totally agree with (indeed it's similar what I suggested above for PRICE vowels). I don't see anything else as an improvement on the current scheme. Like you, I actively dislike using uh for /ə/. For the PRICE vowel in open syllables, I think EYE is preferable to Y. I would interpret Y-sik-əl as "wye-cicle". For the FOOT/GOOSE vowels there is really no good solution. Perhaps the BBC's uu is better in that it doesn't rely on font styles (bold vs. regular). On the other hand it's more remote from normal English spelling. (Oh, btw I have always pronounced "cobalt" with the THOUGHT vowel in the second syllable -- is that really not listed in any dictionaries?) Grover cleveland (talk) 21:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

The OED has HOT, dict.com THOUGHT.

Would by-sik-əl not work? Ye does not work in closed syllables because it could be /jɛ/. — kwami (talk) 22:47, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Why not bye-sik-əl? I don't personally see any possibility of confusion with /bjɛ/. /bj/ can only occur before the GOOSE or CURE vowels in normal English words. If closed syllables are required (they aren't here), then bice-ik-əl seems the clearest possibility. Grover cleveland (talk) 00:58, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

The problem with "ye" and "eye" is that they suggest an additional syllable. Spelling eye-sik-əl could easily be mistaken for e-ye-sik-əl, and bice-ik-əl for bi-ce-ik-əl. That outweighs the risk of reading Y-sik-əl as "wye-cicle". We should however check carefully if the overloading of "y" as both a vowel and a consonant causes any ambiguities. Are there any words that combine them in one syllable? (By the way I agree that we should retain "ə" in favour of "uh".) −Woodstone (talk) 04:19, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

There are very few. The OED lists only 13, all in the last syllable. However, the majority are mineral names, which are the kind of thing we'd generally want the IPA for.

hautefeuillite, ki-yi, mascagnine, mascagnite, rézbányite, szaibelyite, veszelyite, vignite, yike, yikes, yipes, yite, zunyite. — kwami (talk) 07:09, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

How about bigh-sik-əl? Grover cleveland (talk) 05:11, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

"fighn" for "fine"? — kwami (talk) 08:14, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Trying out just "y" on some of the examples mentioned in earlier discussions leads to:

• BY, HY-ər, LYF, LYT, LYV, RYS, RYZ, SYZ, TY-gər, VYS, WY, Y-oh-dyn, YS

All looking quite understandable. −Woodstone (talk) 09:31, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

I would interpret LYF as having the KIT vowel. LYFE would work, though. Sigh... Grover cleveland (talk) 17:01, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

You should compare to what's the current rule, giving:

• BYE, HYE-ər, LYEF, LYET, LYEV, RYES, RYEZ, SYEZ, TYE-gər, VYES, WYE, EYE-oh-dyen, EYES

In this list there is likely misinterpretation by generating two syllables at least in:

• LY-ef, LY-et, LY-ev, RY-es, RY-ez, SY-ez, VY-es, EYE-oh-dy-en, e-YES

And similarly of course LYFE etc. are likely to be read as LY-fee

All in all, I think just "Y" is a much better choice than any mix of "YE" and "EYE".

−Woodstone (talk) 06:52, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Can we poll where we're standing, to see if there's any particular preference?

/aɪ/ vowel

• current ye/eye
• BBC 'y'
• BBC 'y' with exception for 'eye'
• iCe for closed syllables
• igh
• other

/uː, ʊ/ vowels

• current oo, oo
• BBC oo, uu
• other

Well, since I've made my views clear already, I may as well vote. For /aɪ/, I like either the current ye/eye or igh for open syllables and iCe for closed syllables (favoring open syllables wherever possible). Personally I don't see any danger of misinterpreting the extra "e" at the end as a separate syllable.

For /uː, ʊ/ I'm not sure that any solution is fully satisfactory. I'm going to vote "other" make a very tentative suggestion of

• where possible, put the vowel in a closed syllable.
• CooCC (with doubling of the final consonant) for FOOT in a closed syllable
• CooCe (with additional "e") for GOOSE in a closed syllable
• Coo (or perhaps Cooo or Cooe) for GOOSE in an open syllable.

Thus full would be respelled "fooll" while fool would be respelled "foole". pull would be "pooll" while pool would be "poole". foot would be "foott" while loot would be "loote". Does anyone find this at all intuitive? If not, I really have no preference between the current model and the BBC. Grover cleveland (talk) 21:41, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't find that the least bit intuitive. At least with the BBC convention, you know something odd is going on, so it's memorable, but "pooll" vs. "poole" are not that visually distinct and would just confuse me. — kwami (talk) 01:26, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

OK: fair enough. Grover cleveland (talk) 07:44, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Can we turn this into a tabled preference statement? See next section. −Woodstone (talk) 05:34, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

I discovered while setting up the table that my preference in oo/uu is just opposite from the BBC, and keeps the WP oo, while oo becomes "uu". −Woodstone (talk) 05:34, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Given that some readers will be familiar with the BBC system, I think it's a bad idea to have the opposite convention here. — kwami (talk) 06:43, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps, but having it at odds with IPA is troublesome as well. Since I can never remember which is which in oo/oo, I did not notice till now that BBC had oo/uu reversed.

It's at odds with the IPA either way, as are many other symbols. But it's broadly consistent with the BBC, which would make discrepancies more troublesome.

Also, /ʊ/ is a rather uncommon vowel, especially in the kinds of words we transcribe, which are heavy on Greco-Latin borrowings. (Greco-Latin words in general lack /ʊ/.) The BBC convention means that the odd 'uu' is significantly less common than the more intuitive 'oo', and therefore less likely to cause trouble. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Since FOOT is an uncommon vowel, and since we are already borrowing the schwa symbol from IPA, perhaps we should just borrow ʊ as well? Although this does somewhat contradict the aim of the respelling system, the fact that there is no unambiguous way to denote FOOT means that any system we use for FOOT will have to be looked up. Given that, we may as well make it clear to us.Grover cleveland (talk) 07:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Another ambiguity: bailo vs. Byelorussian. The difference would be BYE-loh vs BYEL-oh, which is not very clear. — kwami (talk)

Or it would be BY-loh versus BYEL-oh, somewhat better. −Woodstone (talk) 09:23, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I meant with the current system. — kwami (talk) 09:46, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

We're still not clear about /jaɪ/ as in "vignite" and "yike". The current system would make them VIN-yyet and YYEK, almost sure to confuse readers. VIN-yeyet and YEYEK is even worse. The BBC system would make them VIN-yyt and YYK, slightly but not much better. How to solve these? −Woodstone (talk) 12:18, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

VIN-yite and YIKE would be my suggestion. Grover cleveland (talk) 17:40, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Those would work, but I don't think we should twist the system too much for the occasional refractory transcription. There are some words that this is simply not going to work well with, and in those cases, we can use rhymes or ad-hoc respellings which don't link to this key.

We could go with a VCe convention for 'long' vowels, but I suspect there may be a practical reason that I've never seen a respelling system that does. Maybe it's only intuitive for final syllables? — kwami (talk) 20:23, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

What words is it not going to work well with? I have iCe for the PRICE vowel in the table below, so this isn't just an ad hoc suggestion. In any case, it clearly works a darn sight better than eye or ye or y in ALL closed syllables. Grover cleveland (talk) 04:28, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

What about ninths "ninthse"? The BBC's "nynths" strikes me as more straightforward in that case. Or heighths: "hithse" vs "hyths"; hives "hivze"~"hyvz"; tights "titse"~"tyts"; heists "histse"~"hysts"; cripes "kripse"~"kryps"; Heinz "hintse"~"hynts"; finds "findze"~"fyndz". It's not so much that a literalistic interpretation won't get you the proper result, as that people will reject those interpretations for more intuitive ones. VCe isn't very intuitive when C is more that a letter or two long. Generally, no matter which conventions we choose, there will be resulting strings which are words in their own right, but with pronunciations different from the intended reading, as with KOH-bolt for cobalt. — kwami (talk) 06:25, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

OK: you're right that where there is a closed syllable ending in a consonant cluster, iCe doesn't work. On the other hand, I would interpret nynths as KIT rather than PRICE so I'm not sure there's any good solution here. "Nighnths" is the best I can think of. I agree that the general principle of intuitiveness giving the right pronunciation is more important than rigid application of any kind of scheme. Grover cleveland (talk) 05:29, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

"I would interpret nynths as KIT rather than PRICE". That's the experience I'd had with other respelling systems, and the reason I chose ye for this one. However, now that I've seen it in action, I wish that I hadn't. The problem with other systems was that they had no key, and left you guessing as to which vowel "y" or "oo" was. However, we do have a key, linked from every transcription, so I don't think that's a problem. A reader will quickly pick up that "y" is the vowel in "my"; the only likely problem, IMO, are strongly counter-intuitive transcriptions where English orthography will tend to override what one reads in the key. (That's why I'd like to keep "eye" for a stand-alone /ai/ syllable, and why I deleted the respelling of cobalt.) — kwami (talk) 06:27, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Preference table

IPA	/ɑː/	/ɑr/	/oʊ/	/ɔər/	/ɔr/	/uː/	/ʊ/	/aɪ/	/ə/	/i/#
lexical set	PALM	START	GOAT	FORCE	NORTH	GOOSE	FOOT	PRICE	schwa	CITY
current WP	ah, aa	ar	oh, oe	ohr	or	oo	oo	ye, eye	ə	ee
BBC	aa	aar	oh	or	or	oo	uu	y	uh	i
Woodstone (talk)	ah	ahr	oh	ohr	or	uu	oo	y	ə
kwami (talk)	ah	ar	oh	ohr	or	oo?	uu?	y, eye	ə	i
GC (talk)	ah, aa	ar	oe, oCe	oar, ore	or	oo, ooCe	ʊ	eye, ye, iCe	ə	y

• Comment: Could we stick to choosing between what we currently have and the alts at the BBC? Anything else IMO should be a separate proposal. Making new proposals simultaneously with comparing WP and BBC looks likely to result in an incoherent collage with no consensus for anything. — kwami (talk) 06:20, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any case where the BBC scheme is clearly better than the current WP schema. In PRICE and schwa the BBC scheme is, to my mind, clearly worse. Grover cleveland (talk) 21:26, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's all I'm asking. Is the PRICE vowel better? Or maybe a compromise between the two? Is the FOOT vowel better? Those are the two big differences. Is there anything else? Should we go w the BBC just because it's an outside source? Etc. — kwami (talk) 00:14, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

As to the last point: how official is this BBC key? The ref given above is a blog. Can't we find a better ref? −Woodstone (talk) 06:55, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

It's not 'official' at all. But it might be familiar to some readers. The 'y' for /ai/ convention I've seen many times before; that's certainly more widespread than the BBC. The 'uu' convention, however, was new to me. — kwami (talk) 07:15, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

However, a better ref is here. −Woodstone (talk) 07:38, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, much better. All the ar-colored vowels are listed too (amazingly, the same as ours!), which helps, and they don't have that funny <aar>. Here are the diffs:

Unique to us

• ə : we all seem to agree on keeping this.
• stressed ər, plus ir, er, ur : allows us to make Scottish distinctions (ir, er, ur) the BBC and IPA-en do not. Downside: we almost never take advantage of this, so it might be better just to use <ur>. [note dict.com uses <er> for unstressed ər, <ur> for stressed ər.]
• ah : more common than <aa>
• ew : useful to avoid the bolding in yoo. Even if we abandon oo, it would be useful in avoiding y = /ai/; more importantly, IMO, transcribing dew as \dew\ would avoid problems with American readers who insist that it's *\doo\, not \dyoo\.
• ih : maybe useful?
• oe : ? (confounded with BBC's oe)
• or/ohr/awr : we make this distinction in IPA-en, but do we have any need for 'awr'?
• eye : useful for /ai/ as its own syllable
• -ye : I prefer the BBC's 'y'
• oo/oo : I prefer the BBC's oo/uu, which is more cut&paste-friendly.
• wh : the BBC doesn't list this distinction
• ss : useful at times

Unique to BBC

• tch : use?
• hl : useful if ever needed
• oe, ue : IMO, ö, ü would be better as they're more obviously foreign and more readily recognizable
• (ng) : I don't like this at all. We don't use it, & I would prefer a superscript ⁿ if we ever do.

My recommendation would be to adopt the BBC conventions unless we have some agreed reason not to, such as the schwa. Personally, I would vote for keeping our schwa, ah, ew, ohr (alternately awr), eye, wh, and occasional ss, and not accepting their French vowels. Ih and tch I don't care much about. — kwami (talk) 08:19, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I disagree per above. To be honest, I'm worn out expressing my opinion and then having the goalposts moved yet again... Grover cleveland (talk) 22:57, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I wasn't expecting to have so many alternate suggestions that they would swamp the original question. — kwami (talk) 00:17, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Pref table take II: Please choose form WP or BBC

IPA	/ɑː/	/oʊ/	/ɔər/	/ɔr/	/uː/	/juː/	/ʊ/	/ɪ/	/ɜr/	/aɪ/	/ə/	/i/#	/s/	/tʃ/	/hw/	/ɬ/	/y, ʏ/	/ø, œ/	/Ṽ/
lexical set	PALM	GOAT	FORCE	NORTH	GOOSE	UNION	FOOT	SIT	FUR/FIR/FERN	PRICE	schwa	CITY	SIS	CHURCH	WHICH	LLOYD	Fr. u	Fr. oe	nasal V
current WP	ah, aa	oh, oe	ohr	or, awr	oo	ew	oo	i, ih	ər (ur/ir/er)	ye, eye	ə	ee	s, ss	ch	wh	--	--	--	--
BBC I [& BBC II[2]]	aa	oh	or [awr]		oo	yoo [ew]	uu	i	ur	y	uh	i	s	ch, tch	w	hl	ue [ü]	oe [ö]	V(ng)
— kwami (talk) (I don't object to paren.)	ah (aa)	oh	ohr	or ?	oo	ew	uu	i (ih)	ur	y, eye	ə	i	s, ss	ch (tch)	wh	(hl)	ü	ö	(VN)

The 2nd BBC scheme uses diacritics to try to remain as close as possible to the orthography. I left those out, as that's not what we're aiming for here. (That's more like {{USdict}}.) But there are some suggestive alts, such as awr and ew. — kwami (talk) 21:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

• Problematic transcriptions w "EYE/YE" that are currently transcluded to this key:

/jɛ/: Yeaton YET-ən, Bergelmir bər-YEL-meer, Samoyed SAM-ə-yed

/aɪ/: Aitne EYET-nee, Pied Cormorant PEYED, Blaengwrach blyen-GRAHKH, Borsheim's BOHR-shyemz, einsteinium eyen-STYE-nee-əm, gigabyte GIG-ə-byet, Liechtenstein LIK-tən-styen, Madeleine MAD-ə-lyen, marmite MAR-myet, meitnerium myet-NUR-ee-əm, chalcopyrite KAL-koh-PYE-ryet, granophyre GRAN-ə-fyer, Queensrÿche KWEENZ-ryek, Weisz VYESS/VEYESS (I deleted that one), Kurzweil KURZ-wyel, Niswanger NYEZ-wong-ər, sugilite SOO-gi-lyet, thylacine THYE-lə-syen, Vegemite VEJ-ə-myet

— kwami (talk) 09:36, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

This whole set convinces me even more that any system that obfuscates syllable boundaries is unsuitable. So the forms "eye" and more general "VCe" are a poor choice. −Woodstone (talk) 11:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, "EYE" only works as its own syllable, but it does work well there. Do the following work?

YT-nee, PYD, blyn-GRAHKH, BORH-shymz, yn-STY-nee-əm, GIG-ə-byt, LIK-tən-styn, MAD-ə-lyn, MAR-myt, myt-NUR-ee-əm, KAL-koh-PY-ryt, GRAN-ə-fyr, KWEENZ-ryk, VYSS, KURZ-wyl, NYZ-wong-ər, SOO-gi-lyt, THY-lə-syn, VEJ-ə-myt

Another one: OH-jyev →? OH-jyv

But remember too that we have final /ai/ in things like Bondi, where BOND-eye or BON-dye might work better than BOND-y / BON-dy. It's the coda Cs that cause the problem. — kwami (talk) 23:13, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

No response, so I'll go ahead and change those dozen or so articles. (Just check my contribs for the next 10 min if you want to check or revert what I've done.) — kwami (talk) 11:07, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

At the end of the day...

I think this "Pronunciation re-spelling key" is complete nonsense and nothing but a dumbing down of the Wikipedia. It's an encyclopaedia, for goodness' sake. People who come to it expect to learn something. IPA is all that is necessary or required, and it is not difficult to learn. It is a disservice to readers to suggest that they cannot learn it, which this "key" does implicitly. Re-spellings, BBC or Berlitz or otherwise, are always unreliable when it comes to speakers of different dialects. The word pedal as spoken by an American and pearl as spoken by a Scot may be completely identical phonetically ([pɛɾəl]). The attempts here should be scrapped as misleading and redundant. -- Evertype·✆ 00:20, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Totally agree. "Pronunciation re-spelling key" only exists because of the failure of the US school system. There is absolutely no need to dumb down Wikipedia. Using the "Pronunciation re-spelling key" is completely unencyclopedic. ≡ CUSH ≡ 17:30, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

What does your American-Scots example have to do with this key? Apart from us not covering Scots, I mean. It doesn't matter theoretically which symbols are used. If both /tʃ/ and ch are defined as the consonant in 'itch', then they are equivalent. We could use playing-card suits and chess pieces and convey the same info. — kwami (talk) 00:34, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Why are re-spellings any more unreliable than IPA, as long as the re-spellings are clearly defined through example words? And what is the relevance of pedal-pearl? If anything, that example shows that the use of phonetic IPA would be misleading. Grover cleveland (talk) 00:50, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

(Sorry if my Scottish analogy was less than isomorphic to what I was trying to say.) An IPA spelling represents one sound. A spelling based on the sound of a word in some English dialect will we pronounced differently by readers. You may wish to say that [aɪ] can be represented by igh, let's say, as in high. But that word may be pronounced [haɪ] and [haː] and [hɔɪ] and [həɪ]. So igh and similar BBC and Berlitz re-spellings is unreliable when it comes to different dialects. -- Evertype·✆ 18:23, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

That's a feature, not a bug. The idea is that we enable people to know how to pronounce the words in their own accent. The same applies to WP:IPAEN. Grover cleveland (talk) 19:21, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

"It's an encyclopaedia [...] People who come to it expect to learn" is poor logic to defend the IPA or attack this proposal. As a reader, I do indeed come to an encyclopaedia to learn, but only about a specific topic: I do not need to be forced to learn about a completely unrelated one. As an editor, when I write about a term, I don't expect readers to learn a new alphabet. Certainly, I could write the pronunciation in katakana, or IPA, or some other alphabet, for the cognoscenti, but I must assume that the majority of readers are not in that group, so merely linking to the katakana page and expecting them to learn how to read it would be as rude as if I linked a programming snippet to the page on the programming language, without explaining for the English-reading layman what the code did. DewiMorgan (talk) 04:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the argument that we should teach the IPA is ridiculous. That's not our job, though we provide keys for those who are interested. We use the IPA for the same reason that we use the metric system: it's the international standard. If many readers' education is so defective that they do not know the metric system, or the IPA, or how to read, that's unfortunate, but there's only so much we can do to accommodate them. By default we use the IPA, just as by default we use centimeters and grams; in some cases, we provide conversions to more provincial systems, such as inches and ounces, or {{USdict}}, but that's a lot of work that could be spent writing, researching, or expanding articles. We could also demand that every article be converted into Special English, because "I didn't come here to learn academic English", and anyone is welcome to do so, but I'd rather spend the majority of my time on what I like to think are more substantial things. For all the "outrage" against the IPA, where are the battalions of volunteers to add respellings or AHD transcriptions to the 11,000 articles with English-language IPA? — kwami (talk) 07:02, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

I find myself reluctantly convinced by your arguments. Sure, comparing IPA to metric is very unfair to the metric system, but so far as I can see, there IS no decent "metric system" for pronunciation. All there is, is the IPA, which is at least comparable to the old English units. Better standardised barleycorns and hogsheads and IPA, than measurements like "twice as big as my head" and pronunciation guides like "Slough: pronounced like slap and cow". —Preceding unsigned comment added by DewiMorgan (talk • contribs) 12:50, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Ohhh Wikipedia...

Oh how classist you are. Constantly arguing over which pronunciation to use when the smartest thing to do would be to use both. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.219.104 (talk) 14:02, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Um, we do. — kwami (talk) 18:29, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I actually wanted to say bless you all for having this more dictionary-style pronunciation key rather than the IPA-guide that the vast majority of Wikipedia visitors aren't going to bother to learn. Now if we could only do what the Merriam-Webster website does and add pronunciation sound files (including a few with alternate pronunciations), for those of us who learn better that way --then we'd have something perfect. --Bobak (talk) 19:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

People are slowly working on it. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Pronunciation task force and Category:Articles including recorded pronunciations, eg Schadenfreude and Kozubová. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 21:32, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Is it just me?

Isn't pronunciation pronounced (or at least, acceptably pronounced) prə-NOWN-see-AY-shən? It is the way I have always pronounced it, and everyone within earshot has always pronounced it. If it's any help I am Australian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.218.73.246 (talk) 07:01, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

In the UK and the US that is considered substandard. Historically it's NUN. The uh vowel is the short version of the ow vowel; we get the short vowel in syllables more than second from the end. This is the same pattern we have in divine—divinity, serene—serenity, nation—national, etc. So, unless you say di-VYE-nity, se-REE-nity, and NAY-tional, it would be consistent to pronounce it pro-NUN-ciation.

I can't think of many other uh—ow pairs. One would be ounce—uncial. Hm, denounce—denunciation, renounce—renunciation, announce—Annunciation. Oh, here's one: gout—gutter. But that's a pretty obscure connection.

(Cf. also the spelling/pronunciation disconnects in country, double, trouble, touch, young. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 12:44, 1 February 2011 (UTC))

(The reason we no longer spell them the same is the influence of French.) — kwami (talk) 08:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

There's also south and southern. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:24, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Good example. Hey, also out—utter.

Can you think of reflexes of the ME mid back vowels? I figured I'd add a table to the history of English vowels. — kwami (talk) 19:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Check out phonological history of English. There are a lot of tables that I put there showing the development of English vowels. Benwing (talk) 23:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

"About" as an example for schwa?

Hey, native English speaker from Cambridge, UK here. I was so confused by your example for the schwa being the first sound of 'about' that I initially assumed that the page had been vandalised. In southern UK, at least, 'about' starts with an /æ/ sound; the BBC 'uh' for the schwa makes an awful lot more sense to me. How about using the beginning of 'unless' as a less ambiguous example? 7daysahead (talk) 15:06, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

I grew up in Southern England, and I have never heard anyone (either in Southern England or anywhere else) pronounce "about" with the /æ/ sound: indeed /æ/ is almost never found in unstressed syllables. "Unless" would be more, not less ambiguous, because some people may realize the first syllable with syllabic /n/. Can you link to any audio or video showing the pronunciation of "about" you are referring to? Grover cleveland (talk) 22:03, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Proposed minor change

I saw that there's a bolded "oo" (/uː/), one of only two exceptions to this key's rule that "it does not use special symbols or diacritics". The reason for this rule is to specifically get out of the main problem with IPA, incomprehensibility for the average guy. Obviously the other exception, the schwa, is far from being problematic, since it is well recognisable (the "uh" sound), has no problems being mixed up with other symbols, and is already used in a number of latin-based alphabets.

However the oo does pose certain problems. It is easy to mix it up with a simple oo, and its bold aspect can be seen as a sign of secondary stress (even though this is not and never has been the case). On the other side the oo represents /uː/, and the symbol uu is not used. By using uu for /uː/, we will get rid of the problematic bold, eliminate confusion with other symbols (here the simple oo), and increase logic and legitimacy in this system by using two "u"s for the long u sound (/uː/).

Voomie (talk) 13:47, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Per the BBC, it would be best if we used uu for the FOOT vowel, and then dropped the bolding from the GOOSE vowel. I would support this, and even go through all the articles and make the change, if others agree. — kwami (talk) 01:15, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

A discussion on this is still visible further up in this page. It would be good to get rid of formatting carrying meaning. I would favour ‹oo› for /ʊ/ and ‹uu› for /uː/ as being closer to IPA , but since the BBC uses the reverse I do not object to that choice either. −Woodstone (talk) 14:08, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Changed the table, switching over the transclusions. — kwami (talk) 01:24, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. A lot of people hadn't bothered with the bolding anyway. Rescanning to see if I missed any oos. I changed ʊŋ to uung. But there isn't a contrast, is there? A more familiar-looking oong might be better. — kwami (talk) 19:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Now you mention contrast, perhaps a silly question, but are there any minimal pairs of the new /oo/ and /uu/? I'm not a native speaker and would not be able to find them. −Woodstone (talk) 07:16, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Rather few. Putter (as in 'one who puts') and pooter, could and cooed, should and shooed / shoed, would and wooed, cook and kook, nook and nuke (for speakers who drop the /j/), look and Luke. — kwami (talk) 07:23, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

These all seem to have a length difference as well and could have been distinguished in IPA as /u/ vs /uː/. Transition of [u] to [ʊ] seems to be conditioned by the shortening. But all this has no impact on the issue at hand here. −Woodstone (talk) 09:53, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't know what you mean by your comment "not clean minimal pairs". They're perfect minimal pairs. Yes, transcribing them /u/ vs /uː/ is common, as is /ʊ/ vs /u/ and /ʊ/ vs /uː/. Depends which features you wish to highlight. Yes, it was conditioned by shortening. But historical short /u/ moved on to [ʌ], as in putt, cud, shut, cut, nut, luck. That's why there are relatively few minimal pairs with /ʊ/. — kwami (talk) 18:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

By not clean I mean the opposition is not truly minimal in the sense that two aspects of the phone change at the same time: long to short and /u/ to /ʊ/. −Woodstone (talk) 11:40, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

They're still minimal pairs because these are the phonemes we have to work with. To speak in terms of lexical sets, we have the FOOT vowel and the GOOSE vowel, and there are minimal pairs between them. The fact that they differ from each other in more than one phonetic property doesn't mean the minimal pairs that distinguish them are "not truly minimal". The phonemes /f/ and /g/ differ from each other in a lot of phonetic properties, but foe and go are still a true minimal pair. —Angr (talk) 23:49, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

When the stress is on the last syllable

How about adding a parameter for words when the stress is on the last syllable? I.e. instead of {{respell|un-də(r)-<small>STAND</small>}}, we could have {{respell|ls=1|un-də(r)|STAND}}, or even better {{respell|#ls|un-də(r)|STAND}}. Simply, if the first variable is #ls, then the stress is on the last syllable. Voomie (talk) 11:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

• But what about secondary stress: ə-COM-ə-DAY-shən is {{respell|ə-<small>COM</small>-ə-<small>DAY</small>-shən}} right now, but what would it be with #lss in it to turn both stressed syllables into small capitals? ZanderSchubert (talk) 02:26, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Voomie, would this be an easier way to do it? :

If the word has final stress, simply end the template with an extra pipe. (that is, with "|}}".) That would make the final syllable the 'penult' as far as the encoding is concerned, and wouldn't affect how prior stressed syllables are displayed. All we'd need to do is make the final hyphen dependent on whether the final parameter is empty (does not display) or full (does display). IMO that would be easier to remember than a code word like "#ls".

If you can write the if:then code to make the final hyphen respond properly, I'll go through and convert our 2,300 transclusions. — kwami (talk) 06:34, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

VERY bad implication!

There is a phrasing here that very much bothers me. This phrase in the opening:

"On the other hand, the IPA (being designed to represent sounds from any language in the world) is not as intuitive for those chiefly familiar with English orthography[...]"

This has an immediate implication that it is not intuitive for those familiar with English, but is intuitive for those of other languages. NO SUCH EVIDENCE EXISTS (look for it---I have). The implication reeks of a weaselly worded phrasing; That somehow the only people who don't easily adapt to this are English speaking. This must be rephrased.Tgm1024 (talk) 15:25, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Of course it is not intuitive for those who are only familiar with English pronunciation of letters, because the letters represent sounds that are not those commonly assigned to the respective letters in the English alphabet (or rather the pronunciation thereof). ♆ CUSH ♆ 15:40, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

"ew" as opposed to "yoo"

I apologize for bringing up old stuff; I had not been aware of WP:PRK before now.
The following is copied verbatim from my post at Talk:Aluminium#Pronunciation of British spelling, where I had failed to notice the response directing me here to PRK:

The "respell" pronunciation of Aluminium is currently shown as "A-lew-MI-nee-əm". The problem with this spelling is that in many US dialects "lew" is pronounced exactly the same as "loo", just as the names "Lewis" and "Louis" are usually pronounced identically.

For this reason I would suggest showing it as "Al-yoo-MI-nee-əm" instead, to show the "y" sound indicated by the IPA "j". Otherwise it tends to come out as

• "A-lew-MI-nee-əm" = "A-loo-MI-nee-əm".

I see that kwami has brought up this issue, above, but I'm not sure where it was resolved. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:34, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Looking at this again now, it seems to me that the "l" (lower case L) is the real problem here. If it were displayed as "Al-ew-MI-nee-əm" instead, the pronunciation might be clearer. Is there a rule specifying whether a consonant must precede or follow a vowel in syllable breaks? When I say the word, I say "al-yoo", not "a-lyoo". Milkunderwood (talk) 06:47, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

I usually maximize the codas of stressed syllables, so I would actually write AL-ew-MIN-ee-əm. Angr (talk) 09:33, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

You're quite right - this is exactly the way I say the word, "MIN-ee", rather than "MI-nee". Thank you. I'll go ahead and change it to "Al-ew-MIN-ee-əm", and see if anyone wants to revert. I appreciate your input here. Milkunderwood (talk) 17:29, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Since this is sometimes contested (w claims on theoretical grounds that the C must always syllabify w the following V), here's the syllabification rules for English braille, which are operate on the same principle: [3] — kwami (talk) 07:41, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, kwami - that's very helpful, and easy to remember. Milkunderwood (talk) 09:31, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

One check on usage of respell: "needs IPA"

Just tagged some 98 pages that do Respell but have no IPA pronounciation. See Template talk:Respell. -DePiep (talk) 18:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposed cleanup of possible uc/lc issues

Using extra template {{respell}} code, we can list (in a category) pages that have "wrong" uppercase or lowercase input (for stressed/unstressed syllables). See Template talk:Respell#Cleanup uc/lc issues for a discussion. -DePiep (talk) 23:42, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Is This System As Vigorous As IPA?

I have a question: Ustrasana

In this diff: a user adds the pronunciation from this source:

[4]

Now from what I understand from Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key, is "oohs" a permissible syllable? I see:

"oo"=/uː/ as in "food"

and

"oh"=/oʊ/ as in "goat"

Is it possible to use these 2 vowels and diphthong in a {{respell}} cell?. Of course it isn't breaking the template, but within the transcriptions rules of this Respell system, is this possible?Curb Chain (talk) 10:15, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

No, "ooh" is not defined. Editor error. — kwami (talk) 11:40, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

Follow-up question on the same Ustrasana pronunciation, but this time on syllable division:

• At present, the IPA is given as (/uːˈstrɑːsənə/, whereas the respell as recently edited is oos-TRAH-sə-nə. I would tend to give the respelling instead as oo-STRAH-sə-nə, not only to more accurately reflect the IPA, but also as what seems to me a more natural division between syllables as they are actually enunciated.
• I guess a secondary question would be, is there any perceived problem with starting a syllable with the three-consonant combination "STR"?
• And a third would be, might it not be helpful to either add some discussion here at Syllables and stress, or at least to link with a note, referencing Syllable structure?

Milkunderwood (talk) 04:57, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

For example, at the section "ew" as opposed to "yoo", above on this page, User:Angr says "I usually maximize the codas of stressed syllables" as one such way of dividing in a given circumstance, which seems entirely logical to me. Perhaps onset should also be mentioned, as in stressed vs. unstressed syllables. However, it may be that no general rule can apply, and individual words need to be treated differently. Milkunderwood (talk) 05:29, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, str- is fine.

I tend to treat an intervocalic C as a coda when the preceding V is short/lax, as an onset otherwise, and as an onset if the following syllable is stressed. But English syllabification is a contentious affair. Wells would divide nitrous as NITR-ous, for example, which would strike most people as odd (unless you pronounce tr like ch). — kwami (talk) 06:03, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. :-) Your response raises more questions (for me) than it answers. "Intervocalic C"? Do you mean the letter c, as s or k? I'm not sure who or what "Wells" is, but NITR-ous makes no sense to me at all - it would have to be NI-trous. Who would say NICH-ous? Or even if I did pronounce it that way, I would still say NI-chous. (You can tell I'm a rank amateur at all this.)

Also, is there any authoritative source for WP's syllable divisions in its IPA renditions, or is this just catch-as-catch-can by individual editors? It would seem in any case that the respell ought to follow the same breaks as the displayed IPA, so for Ustrasana the respell should be changed to oo-STRAH-sə-nə. I'll go ahead and do this.

Finally, has there been any discussion here of giving some guidance on syllabification in this article? I think it would be very helpful. Perhaps a recommendation for following OED or M-W? Areas of contention could be mentioned. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:56, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Hm. I note I still didn't follow Angr's suggestion of "maximizing the codas of stressed syllables", leaving it as u-STRA-sa-na rather than u-STRAS-a-na. Personally I would say it the first way. (Edit: Well, for that matter, that's exactly the same "rule" as Wells has used with NITR-ous. Not so good a "rule" for me after all. I think I tend to start a syllable with a consonant or consonant string when one is available, as though I were sounding it out for a child learning to read.) Milkunderwood (talk) 07:06, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I haven't checked the other {{respell}}s on the other asana articles and would greatly appreciate the proofreading:-)Curb Chain (talk) 07:23, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't seem that hard for you to do, since you know the articles - I had never heard of this one. Just keep the respell project page open in a separate window as you go. Best to follow the same syllable breaks as the IPA, unless those seem wrong to you. In that case I would try a good dictionary. Milkunderwood (talk) 08:00, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't quite sure what to do with ustrasana, so if other people want to juggle with the syllable boundaries I won't complain. If there had been no pronunciation info at all to begin with, I would have simply added "Sanskrit pronunciation: [uˈʂʈrɑːsən̪ə]" and wouldn't have attempted any English pronunciation or respell at all. Angr (talk) 09:50, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

Milkunderwood, the problem, as you have pointed out, is where to place the syllable boundaries. There is no easy answer to this question. With IPA, we can ignore it most of the time; only the stress marks require us to make a decision, and syllabification of the onset of a stressed syllable is easier than elsewhere (though it can also be a problem sometimes). With respelling, we have to make that decision everywhere.

"Intervocalic C" is short for intervocalic consonant. C & V are consonant and vowel. Sorry 'bout that.

For many people, when a stressed syllable has a long vowel (such as ah, oh, oo, ee, eye, oy, ow, aw, ay) followed by a single consonant (or a cluster which can start a word, such as str), the intuitive break is V-C. So it would be oo-STRAH-sə-nə. But if the vowel is short (a, e, i, o, u, uu), then the following consonant becomes the coda; so with the CAT vowel, it would be oo-STRASS-ə-nə. But Wells would argue that the S should be in the coda in both cases, and others here have argued that it should be in the onset in both places. — kwami (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Appears the syllabification rules for English braille operate on the same principle that we do: [5] — kwami (talk) 07:41, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Vowel duration is ignored

An important feature of vowels in English is their duration. For example, dye and dice have the same vowel sound, but the duration markedly differs. There needs to be a symbol to indicate an elogated vowel. This is a problem area for nonnative speakers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Encyclopedant (talk • contribs) 22:21, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

This pronunciation respelling key shows only sounds that can contrast with each other (phonemes), not differences that are predictable from their environments, such as the length difference you mention. Including such predictable information in the transcription would make the transcriptions more complicated and would open the door to transcribing a host of predictable differences (the p in pat is aspirated, but the one in spat isn't; the a in pan is nasalized, but the one in pad isn't; and so forth). It would be impossible to do all of that while still maintaining a system that's supposed to be fairly intuitive for people unfamiliar with the IPA. Angr (talk) 22:49, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Encyclopedant, we made a decision not to transcribe the DYE / DICE distinction because, although it is unpredictable in a small number of cases, such cases are not likely to crop up in our articles, and the distinction is not reflected in dictionaries and therefore would be too difficult to implement. If there's a particular case where people would expect the wrong vowel, I think it would be better to simply put that in words. — kwami (talk) 19:48, 14 April 2012 (UTC)