Talk:Sound correspondences between English accents/Archive 6

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Table is wrong

In Australian English, the o in no is pronounced very differently to the o in cold.

The vowel sound in soul, roll, cold, fold, mould is very different to the vowel sound in no, toe, hoe, soap, goat, wrote.

Someone should note this in the table. Also, folk and soak rhyme in Australian English. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.171.228.189 (talk) 07:55, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, it's [ɔ] in much of the US. It was overlooked in the table. kwami (talk) 09:00, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Unless you pronounce "called" and "cold" the same, it's not the [ɔ] sound. "oʊ/o" is most appropriate in my opinion ("cold" is like saying the first part of the "no" diphthong).

"Called" and "cold" are pronounced differently in Canadian English, but "cold" definitely takes on the [ɔ] sound, as it does in "cord" as well. A written 'o' before an 'l' or an 'r' are the only places in Canadian English where the [ɔ] sound is found. In Canadian English "called" is pronounced with either the [ɒ] or the [ɑ] sound, depending on the speaker, or with the longer held versions thereof (ɒː/ɑː). It's likely the same for the US. The chart is most definitely wrong. D P J (talk) 16:13, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

If "go" (the first part if you have a diphthong) and "cord" have the same sound, then your pre-r [ɔ] is actually most likely [o] ("go" with [ɔ] would sound really awkward, same for "cold"). I remember reading that many, if not the majority, of cot-caught merged speakers only have [oɹ] and no [ɔɹ]. Can't find the source, though. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 21:48, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Why hasn't this been changed yet? This was first noted in December 2008; it's now March 2011. The following words are incorrect (in my opinion as a native Australian English speaker) and should be changed as shown:

Current (16 March 2011)			Suggested fix
Diaphoneme	AuE	Examples	Diaphoneme	AuE	Examples
ɒ	ɔ	not, wasp	ɒ	ɔ	not, wasp
ɔː	oː	law, caught, all, halt, talk	ɔː		halt
				oː	law, caught, all, talk
oʊ	əʉ	no, toe, soap	oʊ	əʊ	no, toe, soap
		tow, soul, roll, cold, folk			tow, folk
				ɔʊ	soul, roll, cold
aʊ	æɔ	now, trout	aʊ	æʊ	now, trout

This makes halt "holt", soul "sowl", roll "rowl", cold "cowld" (all using the short "o" from not), now "nauw", trout "trauwt". If ɔ makes the vowel sound in not it is definitely not in now or trout. If my understanding of ʊ is correct as a sort of vowel "w" sound then it is more appropriate.

Danielklein (talk) 02:04, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Halt

Halt has the same vowel as hold in New Zealand English, the two words only differ in the voicing of the final consonant.

If I understand correctly, hold is pronounced something like [hɒɯd] in New Zealand English as a result of l-vocalisation. This would seem to imply that halt should be transcribed phonemically as /hoʊlt/, with /oʊl/ pronounced by New Zealanders as [ɒɯ] like gold or mold. This is not the way RP speakers would transcribe it. What I don't know is whether this makes halt a special-case with two pronunciations or whether halt is an example of a lexical set that is pronounced differently by RP speakers and New Zealanders. If it's a special case then it makes a bad choice for the table. If it's part of a lexical set then we should add a new row to the table.

Ben Arnold (talk) 07:38, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

As far as Australian English goes, I would like to suggest that generally the vowel in words such as "not" would be /ɒ/ -not /ɔ/ as detailed in the table. I would use /ɔ/ to show a more British accent. <Paul> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 125.24.161.15 (talk) 14:24, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak for NZ English, but here is what the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary (1988; ISBN 0-19-554619-9) says about ‘halt’ (p. xiii):

In RP ŏ [i.e. IPA-for-english ɒ] is a recognized variant of the sounds also pronounced as aw and o͡r [i.e. IPA-for-English ɔ and ɔr] when followed by l or r. In Australia this variant is the dominant pronunciation in such words as alter, assault, fault, salt, coral, or floral.

Incidentally, ‘hold’, ‘gold’ and ‘mo[u]ld’ are poor example words, in that some people pronounce these (and ‘bold’, ‘cold’, ‘fold’, ‘sold’ and ‘told’) as -ōld (i.e. like holed, goaled, etc.) (and indeed this is the only pronunciation that said AusOED gives for each these eight words), while other people (including I) pronounce each of them as -ŏld (like the vowel of ‘bond’, ‘conned’): so sold & soled are distinct in my accent. It's not just -old words, but also e.g. ‘bolt’, ‘colt’, ‘dolt’, ‘jolt’ (-ōlt according to AusOED, -ŏlt for me). Thus (combined with Ben's mentioning both /oʊ/ (typically associated with ō) and [ɒ] (typically associated with ŏ)), I'm not certain whether Ben claims that NZE ‘halt’ is hŏlt or hōlt. (I believe he claims the latter.)

Said AusOED doesn't list hōlt as a pronunciation for ‘halt’, it gives only hawlt and hŏlt.

Pjrm (talk) 09:19, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

What's up with the gaps?

There are gaps in the Irish English column, and the entire South African English column is blank. Why? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 15:58, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Because no one has found (possibly, no one has looked for) reliable sources on which to base the information. —Angr 19:09, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Wouldn't it make more sense to remove the SAE column altogether until such a source is found, then? (As for IrE, which source mentions some sounds and not others?) -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 20:19, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, leaving the gap is a good way to "invite" someone to fill it. If you remove the column the information will probably never be added. I'll post a request for help over on the South Africa Project page. Roger (talk) 16:28, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Should we add a column for Indian English, Caribbean English, and any other dialect of English we can think of, then? -- Army1987 – Deeds, not words. 13:15, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

If it is a "standardised" dialect with at least one widely accepted authorotative dictionary - Yes. Roger (talk) 14:17, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Is South African pronunciation reflected by at least one widely accepted authoritative dictionary? —Angr 14:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes. The Oxford Dictionary of South African English [1] It is compiled by the The Dictionary Unit for South African English at Rhodes University in Grahamstown.[2] Unfortunately I don't own a copy, nor do I know IPA well enough, otherwise I could have made a start at filling in the "offending" column. Roger (talk) 16:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately neither Amazon nor Google Books has a preview of the inside contents. I'd be interested to see if it even contains pronunciation information (I notice Amazon's product description says nothing about pronunciation), and if it does, to what extent it differs from RP - because while South African English differs phonetically from RP considerably, the phonemic differences (which is what would be shown in a dictionary, and on this page), are I believe very slight. —Angr 16:34, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

(<-) ...the key difference being the South African bit-kit split. This article has more serious issues, however. It clearly violates WP:OR, since

• Articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not clearly advanced by the sources. This article attempts to do something that has never been done before. There has never been such a thing as an "IPA chart for English dialects."
• Much of the content is actually flat-out OR. For instance, no previously published IPA transcription for American English allows for Canadian raising of PRICE. And Irish /r/ is in most cases a retroflex approximant and not a flap.
• Some columns, such as Irish, Canadian, and Welsh, are unsourced and will always be. Does Irish English have an authoritative dictionary? I think not. Is Irish English standardized? Not at all; there's a lot of regional and social variation. Is Irish English worth studying? Absolutely! As far as dictionaries are concerned, the Canadian Oxford Dictionary does use IPA, but its IPA scheme is not intended to be an accurate phonetic representation of the sounds of Canadian English. Likewise, the Australian scheme devised by Harrington, Cox, and Evans is not used in the Macquarie Dictionary, which sticks to the more traditional (and phonetically inaccurate) RP transcription. Therefore, for the purpose of this article, what dictionaries do is irrelevant.
• Last but not least, the table is difficult to read.

I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 01:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, while I agree with you that there's no single set of rules that will apply to every English speaker within a given population, I believe that there are certain trends that make, say, New Zealand English different from General American English. On my desk right now is Handbook of Varieties of English, edited by Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004). It is a thousand-page book, very informative, that phonologically analyzes all the dialects in this chart and many more. I think it's a fine resource for this chart, and I'm planning to add South African English and fact-check the other dialects when I have time, if that's all right with everyone else. Hopefully you'll agree with me, because I think this is a VERY valuable chart (and, by the way, I don't find it difficult to read at all).66.71.70.66 (talk) 01:44, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, Handbook of Varieties of English is a wonderful book. I was thinking about using it too. You can view a lot of it online. Thegryseone (talk) 02:26, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Then again, the HOVOE features detailed phonetic charts for every single dialect, while the purpose of this page was to show phonemic transcriptions for English. I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 00:14, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Actually, according to Phonetics, HOVOE would be considered a phonological description (or "phonemic" to use the old school term). Phonology deals with abstract systems of sounds and gestural units and their allophones. In addition, the first book has "Phonology" written on the side. What's confusing is that allophones are written using what's called "narrow phonetic" transcription. However, showing the different allophones of a phoneme is a part of phonology and not the study of phonetics. Thegryseone (talk) 11:36, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

True, that's what I was thinking too. It seems that South African English (White South African English) isn't very well-studied. This makes sense if you think about it, because very few people speak it compared to say, American English. Thegryseone (talk) 00:37, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, the Handbook has lengthy articles as well as IPA charts for several North American dialects, including New England, the South, Newfoundland and so forth. I assume your "this makes since" was actually supposed to read "this makes sense." It makes sense, since you have the pin-pen merger. :) I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 02:54, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

LOL...you cot me or should I say...caught me. Very clever indeed, Jack. I always enjoy a bit of linguistics humor. See that's proof that I wasn't lying to you. That damn merger screws up my spelling quite often. Immigrate and emigrate are the worst. On a related note, I read on some science Web site that people with the pin-pen merger and people without it have different patterns of brain activity. Ah, here it is. Thegryseone (talk) 03:31, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

But people with the kit-bit split are the brainiest of all. LOL! I don't agree that South African English is not well studied, there are several South African universities with very active English departments and don't forget the dictionary unit at Rhodes University in Grahamstown. I think the problem we have/had in this article is that IPA is not very well known or widely used in South Africa. (I for example had never heard of it until I found Wikipedia!) Roger (talk) 13:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

I stand corrected. What the problem is is that no one knows how to transcribe South African English phonemically. It seems that no one has ever done it before. That's what I was getting at. So while it may be well-studied, we don't know how to transcribe its vowel phonemes. Thegryseone (talk) 18:45, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

John C. Wells has, in Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. He uses all the same symbols as for RP, except for /ə/ for the words like bit, and /əɪ/ rather than /eɪ/ for the FACE vowel. —Angr 19:06, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Why can't we use that as a source then? Thegryseone (talk) 19:16, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

(<-) Well, Wells's tables are not really intended to give an account of what the various dialects sound like, which is what our article is supposed to do, I guess. I mean, we basically have Wells and the HOVOE at opposite ends of the spectrum, and what we have to do is figure out an intermediate approach--but that would be original research. This means we're stuck in a rut. I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 02:48, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Sort by similarity

Is there any way to order the table columns by related dialect, or number of shared features? This would help clarify similarities and contrasts in related dialects.

I imagine that RP and US English would be the two major poles, dialects with transitional features between them, and outliers beyond RP. I realize this is not a 1-axis range, and the relationships are complex, but there are obviously dialects with more shared features, and putting these next to each other will help the reader.

I'm no expert, but here's a start for discussion. —Michael Z. 2009-02-09 22:41 z

1. SAE
2. NZE
3. AuE
4. WaE
5. RP
6. IrE
7. ScE
8. CaE
9. GA

For example, Trudgill (in International English) says we basically have two major types of accents, an "English" type (England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa), and an "American" type (U.S., Canada), with Ireland being somewhat intermediate and Scotland being by itself. I'm Jack^(Lumber) and I approve this message. 02:51, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea! I took the time to actually compare how similar all the English variants are. South African English is more similar to Australian than New Zealand English. Scottish is more similar to RP and Welsh than other varieties. Irish could go before RP and SSE could then go between RP and CaE (SSE aligns the most with GA, CaE and RP; which makes this order perfect). IrE is the hardest to find a good spot for (due to high similarity with very dissimilar variants). This is what I think it should look like:

1. NZE
2. SAE
3. AuE
4. WaE
5. ScE
6. IrE
7. RP
8. SSE
9. CaE
10. GA

Careful - to reach the conclusion from the chart that Scottish is more similar to RP than other varieties does not, of course, mean that Scottish and RP are similar! The few vowel sounds which are listed as identical can sound very different and are not represented with complete phonetic accuracy (e.g. the 'i' sound in 'bit', 'sit'; the 'e' sound in 'bed'). Indeed, the representation of the 'ow' sound in Scottish as identical to RP is utterly wrong... Ceartas 22:06, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

---

Rough proposal for a new table. Added a Southern American English because in my opinion it's different enough from GA to deserve it's own spot. in India, if someone can name a place that has english as the majority native language, it should be added. I think it's a nice order because it keeps the shared features fairly close together, and also has a good indication of area (brittish isles → america → southern hemisphere). if you compare it with æ or eɪ, it's also pretty close. Not just relating to this specific table, but the article page seems extremely cluttered. Are the reduced vowels really necessary to have here? They have their own article. Consonants should be split into normal and marginal(retroflex t, flapped t, trilled r, wh, ch, etc) because there is still a general "correct" way to pronounce them, whereas the vowels are a lot more variable.

Thank you. Southern American English in its several but related varieties is probably spoken by at least twice the combined populations of Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and (white) South Africa, or double the number of Canadians, and half again as much as the population of England itself, yet is always ignored as if it didn't exist.—dshep/2010.01.22

Here are Kenyon & Knott's (A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English) entries for the Southern pronunciations of the keywords on the chart (in order): æ/ɑ/ɑ/ɔ/ə/ɪ/ɪ/i/e/ɛ/ɜ,ɝ/ə,ɚ/ʌ/ʊ/u/aɪ/ɔɪ/o/aʊ/ɑ:/ɪə(r,ɛə(r/æə(r,ær/ɔə/oə/ʊə(r/jʊə(r. I believe the proposed chart below is more accurate for the examples shown, but Wikipedia policy insists upon published sources rather than individual observation, however better the latter may be. The above list does not convey an impression of there being any real difference (from GA) that matters, perhaps because of the keywords chosen, but anyone hearing a Southerner speak instantly notices a (and sometimes profound) distinction.—dshep/2010.01.26

Dialect	"oʊ"	"ɒ"	"aɪ"	"ɜr"
RP	əʊ	ɒ	aɪ	ɜː
WaE	ou/oː*	ɒ	ai	ɜː
ScE	oː	ɔ	aɪ	ʌɾ ɛɾ ɪɾ
IrE	oː	ɑ~ɒ	ɔɪ	ʌɾ ɛɾ ɪɾ
CaE	o~oʊ	ɑ~ɒ	aɪ, əɪ	ɝ
GA	oʊ	ɑ	aɪ, (ʌi)	ɝ ʌɹ
SaE	oʉ (?)	ɑ	äː, əɪ	ɝ
AuE	əʉ	ɔ	ɑe	ɘː
NZE	ɐʉ	ɒ	ɑe	ɵː(ɾ)
SAE	œʉ	ɔ	aː	øː

First actual attempt at contributing to a Wikipedia article :) 83.80.137.241 (talk) 19:14, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

I came here to ask why the dialects were sorted alphabetically. Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks we can do better.

The order I have used for a table I printed out was:

NZE.AuE.SAE.RP . IrE.WaE.ScE.SSE . GA.CaE.

An alternative I considered was:

NZE.AuE.SAE.RP . GA.CaE . SSE.ScE.WaE.IrE.

These orderings were only based on whether the vowels were the same or different though. Maybe it would have turned out different if I had come up with some kind of distance metric, but that's hard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 12:28, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Indian English

I have been somewhat concerned that Indian English has not been included in the chart, seeing as a significant amount of Anglophones are from India and of these, the majority speak the national dialect and have an accent that suits. Would it be necessary to include a separate chart for consonants, because I am aware letters like /d/ and /t/ are retroflexed if Indian English is to be included?

R. John Lloyd (talk) 21:21, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Is there a large enough (and sufficiently "connected") population of mother-tongue English speaking Indians for there to be a reasonably consistent "standard" phonology? Roger (talk) 21:31, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, surely Indian English is a well-established dialect, and I agree that we need to include it. Other important omissions are northern English, southern rural English and Estuary English/Cockney – all very distinct and spoken by large numbers of people. I think the dialect columns should cover both consonants and vowels in one chart, as consonants do vary too (for example, th/t/d in Irish English, f/v for th in Estuary/Cockney, the differences in use of dark l). Some earlier discussion on related points in Talk:IPA chart for English dialects/Archive 5#English regional English Richard New Forest (talk) 22:33, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

AFAIK, Indian English varies dramatically according to the native language of the area, so which would we choose as representative? kwami (talk) 08:24, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

There are three factors that may make it fairly simple to transcribe Indian English as a single entity

1. Although there are many languages, there are quite a few areal features that have to do with pronunciation (such as the presence of retroflexes).
2. British English has been taught in India for several hundred years.
3. There is probably a standard variety of English in India that, like GA or RP, is viewed at as most prestigious.

I don't know a whole lot about Indian English, but I'm sure there are resources out there that can help enlighten us. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 08:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

If there's a standard variety of English pronunciation in India that is viewed as most prestigious, it's RP. I've met Indians who have never stepped foot in Britain but whose pronunciation might have been cultivated at Eton and Oxford. +Angr 09:17, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

You could say the same thing about the United States. American English speakers tend to feel that British varieties English are "better" so that they even see Cockney as more correct. So I guess the question isn't what's most prestigious but what carries the most prestige in the context of Indian English. What's the variety featured on national media? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

AFAIK, IE varies from region to region according to the phonology of the local language, and this might hold for broadcast English as well. kwami (talk) 23:40, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Northern Irish

Seeing as England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland (judged by the flag) are all on here, shall we add Northern Ireland as well? There is a description of it in Wells, Accents of English.

By the way, what is the evidence that most people in the Republic of Ireland use /ɔɪ/ in the PRICE words? Wells gives /ai/ here (page 419), and I think that he's right. Epa101 (talk) 19:57, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the chart you're referring to (p. 419) is just there to show the phonemic oppositions. It's not meant to go into phonetic detail, if that's what you meant. If you look on p. 426, he mentions all sorts of realizations for /aɪ/. Among these are [ɑ̟ɪ] for middle of the road Dublin, [ɑɪ] for educated Dublin and [ɐɪ, ö̞ɪ] for working class Dublin. For "provincial Irish English", i.e., Irish English outside of Dublin, he says, "it seems to me that a rounded centralized back first element, [ɔ̈ɪ], is also common in provincial Irish English, and it is this variant which is responsible for the stereotype of 'noice toime'." All of these things are true in my experience.

But maybe you just meant that you think most Irish people have an opposition between PRICE and CHOICE, in which case I would agree. Accentman (talk) 17:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Accentman (talk • contribs)

There is an argument for including it, but aren't there are other, more distinct dialects to include first? Perhaps if there is room after some of those discussed above? Richard New Forest (talk) 20:29, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Indian English sounds more important, although I can't say that I know a thing about it. As for the "regional" dialects of England, I'd say that they are less important and are changing with age very rapidly. Northern Ireland is much more different from RP than any region of England: also, it is constitutionally distinct as well. Epa101 (talk) 22:37, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Note also that the dialect boundary between Northern Irish English and Southern Irish English does not correspond to the political boundary. People from Counties Donegal and Monaghan, and maybe Cavan as well, speak with a Northern accent although they're from the Republic. —Angr 22:46, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

That's interesting, although it's the same thing for the boundary between England and Scotland; people from Berwick-Upon-Tweed and the surrounding area sound Scottish (Wells, p.351). Does anyone know of any other comprehensive descriptions of Northern Irish English other than that in Wells? Epa101 (talk) 15:25, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree that Northern Irish is "much more different" from RP than English regional dialects – perhaps somewhat more than most. Anyway, surely it's quite a bit closer to standard Scots than, say, Liverpudlian or Cockney is to RP. There are those who'd say it is Scots not English, so would not belong on this page at all... Richard New Forest (talk) 19:59, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

As far as I am aware, there is no official marker between English and Scots as languages. English is an official language in Northern Ireland, and no linguist claims that RP is spoken in Northern Ireland by anyone, so it seems justified to include it as an English dialect. I agree with you that it is quite similar to most Scottish accents, but I don't think that's an argument against its inclusion. I can't see how it can be justified to give every nation in the British Isles a column except Northern Ireland.

As regards Scouse or Cockney, what are the sources for the modern accents? I am a bit worried with English regional dialects that the information will be descriptions of very old dialects, as most of the sources that I've read have been. For example, on Britannica's article for the English language, it claims that Northerners use /i/ in blind, find, mind and replace initial /tʃ/ with /k/, both of which died out forty years ago. Epa101 (talk) 13:07, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Personally I'd agree that English and Scots are dialects of the same language. However, many Scots speakers regard their vernacular as a true language, and object to calling it a dialect of English – their (quite logical) reasoning is that it developed continuously in parallel with English, but (unlike all other dialects of English) at no stage was it spoken in England itself. However you look at it, Scots proper is a lot more than a mere accent, being pretty much incomprehensible to many standard English speakers, having a considerable separate lexicon and an established orthography (not to mention its own Wiki: Scots Wikipædia). It's probably as different as many recognised languages are from each other, and I suspect that the reasons that it's not generally regarded as such are largely political. It reminds me of that well-known definition of a language as "a dialect with an army".

As to the age of sources, I think that's something we just have to work with, as with all other Wikipedia sources. If all we have is early 20th century sources, then that's what we'll have to give. In any case, though regional English accents have certainly changed over the last century or so, surely they remain at least as distinct as GA, New York, Australian, South African etc. Richard New Forest (talk) 19:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Whether Ulster Scots is a dialect of Scots or of English (or a separate language altogether) is sort of beside the point - both Ulster and Scotland have, in addition to Scots, local accents of Standard English (Northern Irish English and Scottish English respectively), which is presumably what this page would be reporting on anyway. —Angr 13:13, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Richard New Forest (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Leaving aside the dialects within England for a moment, does anyone object to the creation of a Northern Irish column based on Wells' description of it? I'll wait for at least a week before proceeding.

Another problem with having English regional dialects is whether there will be enough space. If we are to add Indian English and Northern Irish English, the table would be quite big already. Perhaps a separate table would be needed or perhaps even a separate page. Epa101 (talk) 19:48, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

If we had consonants and vowels in one table, there would be plenty of width available for half a dozen more accents at least. Richard New Forest (talk) 20:38, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Rather than put them in the same table, I think we should arrange the consonant table and vowel table vertically rather than horizontally. That way both of them have room for horizontal growth (though the consonant table presumably doesn't need much). —Angr 06:20, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I have made an effort to add NI English to the table, but the format has become very difficult now. When I pressed preview, I realised that it had all gone wrong as soon as merged cells came into it. I'll try again tomorrow. Epa101 (talk) 21:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Possible source for some references

I think that this book might be quite useful in providing citations. In addition, I think that the IPA table for the North of England in this book demonstrates why it would not be practical to include a Northern English column on this article's table.

At the time of writing, the phonetics for Indian English is not included in the book preview, which is unfortunate as that would have been a useful addition to the table. Epa101 (talk) 14:09, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

This is a nice page but is a bit out of date and is inaccurate for Scottish English, which I know about, and doesn't cite enough of the mountains of literature on this topic. I can't believe the page doesn't refer to Sharynne McLeod's comparative study, which will provide a lot of information relevant to what is wanted here. Perhaps the title is a bit off-putting: but each chapter has a section on the adult target system, and there are 12 English varieties presented. McLeod (2007), The International Guide to Speech Acquisition. There is also of course the Journal of the IPA, which has dialect descriptions. 194.83.92.1 (talk) 19:22, 3 December 2010 (UTC) Jim Scobbie

Links

One of the external links: http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/IPA_chart_(C)2005.pdf Has been moved or removed. 82.181.193.196 (talk) 08:33, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

Corrected link to [3], from the new IPA site. Drydic guy (talk) 10:29, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

What is a row?

I have what I think is a pretty basic question to which an answer is both necessary to interpret the table and not given in the article: what do the rows of this table represent? When I see different symbols within a row, does this mean the nationalities represented by the columns use different sounds, or different *symbols*? For instance, the symbol "eə(ɹ)" occurs only for English as spoken by the English themselves and by New Zealanders. Is this a sound unique to these nationalities? Or is it a symbol unique to these nationalities, representing the same sound as one or more of the other symbols in the same row?Paalexan (talk) 02:29, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Each row is a sound that is distinct in some dialect or other. That is, if you wanted to design a perfect English orthography, which would work equally well for any dialect, you'd need a letter (or digraph) for each row. The IPA symbols are supposed to represent the pronunciation of that sound in each of the dialects listed, so if the IPA is different between two dialects, say for the ee sound in feet, then it is pronounced differently in those two dialects. Or at least ideally: since our sources are different for different dialects, some of the differences may represent differences in transcription rather than actual pronunciation. kwami (talk) 02:45, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Yod vowels

I have moved the /juː/ row to be under /uː/ , just as /jʊər/ is under /ʊər/. I question whether these should be included at all. The strongest reason to have them is just to remind people to include in their transcriptions a sound that is somewhat opaquely represented in English writing. I am also going to label them as part of the GOOSE and CURE lexical sets respectively, which is how Wells classified them. CURE = /ʊər/ but not /jʊər/ is especially misleading. CURE is itself a rather unfortunate name, since that has the NURSE vowel for me. But it's standard and those pre-r vowels are so unstable, it would be hard to find a satisfactory substitute. Brock (talk) 19:01, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

/juː/ is different from /uː/ in that it's actually closer to /jʉː/, at least a distinction like that used to exist in AmE. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090 Temporal Fugitive (talk) 20:24, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Update: According to the Atlas of North American Dialects, most AmE dialects front /uː/. "...In all but a few areas,the first part of this vowel has shifted strongly towards the front of the mouth, like French u or even like English i in bit... Except in the South, this fronting does not occur before /l/, so there is a strong contrast in the vowels of too and tool."

It makes the most sense to list both /u/ and /ʉ/ for the /uː/ dia-phoneme in GA and CaE and just /jʉː/ for the /juː/ dia-phoneme. Seriously, the word "computer" pronounced with a /ju/ (as in /j/ + the /u/ in "tool", "pool") would sound really awkward to most AmE speakers. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 01:04, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

That's not how it's typically transcribed, though. Most dialects pronounce /ʌ/ as [ɐ] but because it's so rarely transcribed that way, we have gone with the more widely known transcription. It's the same way with the vowel of boot. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:59, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree, and more generally, this page is not the place for discussing details of English dialectology or phonology. These observations can be better made at American English or one of the articles on a specific dialect of American English. +Angr 06:01, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Why is /jɔɹ/ listed as an acceptable pronunciation for jʊər in General American? Definitely /ɔɹ/ is common for ʊər without the yod, but it would seem a very strange pronunciation with it. Peterwshor (talk) 19:14, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Deleted. It's used for your, but not AFAIK after a C. — kwami (talk) 20:12, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

I can vouch for pure being pronounced /pjɔɹ/, as well as (I think) /kjɔɹ/ for cure and /ʃɔɹ/ for sure. Though I personally pronounce these with the NURSE vowel (/pjɻ̩/ /kjɻ̩/ /ʃɻ̩/), many people in my area use the NORTH/FORCE vowel. _{(suoı̣ʇnqı̣ɹʇuoɔ · ʞlɐʇ)} nɯnuı̣ɥԀ 18:08, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

missing splits

apparently need kit-bit split for SAE and you-ewe for British Isles peripheral. kwami (talk) 20:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

too ambitious?

Is this page just promising too much? It's really an attractive idea, but when it comes down to it, phonetic variation in English is really just too complex to allow for such a comparative chart. Even limiting it to a few varieties isn't likely to work because people will just get pissed off that their variety is left out. One thing that might be done to simplify things is to cut out categories, such as marginal sounds. I'm not sure that glottal stops should be considered marginal anyway. They're sure common in many dialects as an allophone for /t/. mnewmanqc (talk) 15:59, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Unicode representation

This is a very useful chart. Another use for this would be to line this up to Unicode representations of the characters used and I for one can see applications for this in generating TTS applications etc. It probably would clutter up what is already an already over-encumbered page and I propose to create a separate page with the bare minimum of information against Unicode representations. Any thoughts? Sjc (talk) 19:21, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. What would be the point of this extra page? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:00, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

It would be a useful reference point for a subset of Text-to-Speech & Speech recognition programmers who use IPA as one of the base points for TTS construction. Expect a lot of future activity in this area. It may well be more appropriate to place this somewhere in Wikibooks with a linkie though. Sjc (talk) 08:42, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

But aren't the characters already in unicode? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 16:48, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I haven't articulated this clearly and you're quite right to question my objective. Having gone away and had a good think about what was needed, what this boiled down to was a one-page (or sub-optimally one section) per implementation mapping containing 3 basic columns: Pan-English, national, and examples. On reflection, as I said previously, while this more obviously belonged in Wiktionary or possibly Wikibooks, I probably will not do it as page but redo this as an XML schema, DTD & document since its primary intended consumer is more likely computer than human and make it available via Wikicommons. Sjc (talk) 06:27, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

BATH vowel

In Southern England the vowel of bath and most /æ/ before fricatives is the same vowel as father. What would the compromise IPA transcription be for this BATH vowel? I suspect and would favor /æ/ as it's more common and more conservative. This is relevant for English words which may need to be transcribed for clarification or demonstration and for foreign words with the Israeli city Jaffa being a possibly affected. I was prompted to ask this by the transciption of photograph as /ˈfoʊtəɡrɑːf/ in the English orthography article. Jackessler (talk) 00:11, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, we have a few choices. We can transcribe such words twice, once for each vowel sound; we can choose one over the other, as you suggest; or we can introduce a new letter—<a> has been suggested—to indicate a vowel that varies per register. This hasn't been discussed at any length. If the variation is largely predictable, the way that /j/ dropping is predictable in GA, then we should go with your suggestion; exceptions can be marked by double transcribing. If it is not all that predictable, then we can go one of the other two routes; objections might be raised about introducing a new distinction to remember, and <a> suffers the problem that it is often used to mean specifically /æ/ or specifically /ɑː/, though I think I've managed to eliminate most cases of that which transclude an IPA template. kwami (talk) 00:29, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

James Murray in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary used just such a symbol to represent the variable sound of the vowel in words such as 'pass' and 'chant'. Unfortunately the symbol he used was the script a (=ɑ) which, if you didn't read the notes would assume to be IPA /ɑ/. —dshep/2010.01.22 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.88.124.138 (talk) 03:14, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

(I'm copying this over to the WP:IPA for English key, where it is more relevant.)

I think it's rather strange to not have an entry for the BATH vowel, as we have all other vowels of the Wells lexical set present. Jalwikip (talk) 15:37, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Ordering

The general page about IPA directs people to this page for a guide to pronouncing IPA symbols. It might be more useful for that purpose if the symbols were in the same order as the Latin alphabet characters they resemble, or if the tables could be converted to one of those sortable tables where you can click on the column headers to sort them. With the symbols being in no predictable order, a person has to scan the entire table for each glyph they want to look up, instead of being able to hone in on the glyph they're looking for with a nice mental binary search. --208.79.47.40 (talk) 01:32, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, there are already a few other pages that have the symbols in the same order as the Latin alphabet characters they resemble, such as Help:IPA and Wikipedia:IPA_for_English. In fact, those are the two pages linked at the top of the IPA main article. The link to this page isn't until further down in the article under the "Description" section. --208.79.47.40 (talk) 01:44, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Other dialects

There could also be an attempt to add other versions of North American English, including Southern American, African-American, and Newfoundland English. These differ considerably from either American or Canadian English. I would argue against including Indian English, since as I understand it, its phonology differs upon the influence of the local languages, and for most speakers it is a second language. This site should limit itself, and I think demonstrating vowel realization on the basis of genetic descent alone is a good rule of thumb. Also, concerning the Englishes of the Caribbean, while being spoken natively by the population, it hasn't been demonstrated that they descend entirely from a parent version of English or through some "creolization" process, or through areal influences. If Caribbean phonology can be generally summarized, then it could be helpful to add a column, but otherwise, for the sake of clarity, I would leave it out. Also, we need to decide if we are describing spoken dialects or national "standards," which are really either just media standards or stereotypes. The choice would make a great deal of difference, as one is sociolinguistically viable, while the other may or may not be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.135.24.92 (talk • contribs) 05:14, 15 February 2010

In my opinion, we should include all countries that have a significant number of native English speakers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population#List_in_order_of_native_speakers

At least the ones where the majority of the population is composed of native English speakers (Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Singapore, Guyana). Temporal Fugitive (talk) 20:43, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

What about other accents from England itself? Currently we only have RP. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.151.144.210 (talk) 21:07, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

rhotic schwa in Scottish

Can Scottish English end words in /ər/, i.e. LETTER words? According to this chart it can, giving [əɾ]; but Scottish English#Phonology seems to imply that it has [ə] for this set. Lfh (talk) 10:15, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

At first, I was confused by that too. It just means that the sound before the R is a schwa. Scottish isn't supposed to drop Rs. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 01:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

The chart referred to in Scottish English#Phonology clearly gives this sound as [ər], not [ə]. The 'r' is definitely pronounced. Often the sound [ʌr] is heard. Ceartas 14:00, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Table layout

What do you guys think about something like this:

Dia-phoneme æ Lexical set TRAP Examples lad, bad, cat

Dia-phoneme ɑː Lexical set PALM Examples father

Dia-phoneme ɒ Lexical set LOT Examples not, wasp

RP ScE SAE WaE SCE æ a æ a ɛ AuE CaE GA IrE NZE æ æː æ æ ɛə eə ɪə ɑ/æ ɛ

RP ScE SAE WaE SCE ɑː a ɑː aː ɑ AuE CaE GA IrE NZE aː ɑ/ɒ ɑ ɑː ɐː

RP ScE SAE WaE SCE ɒ ɔ ɔ ɒ ɔ AuE CaE GA IrE NZE ɔ ɑ/ɒ ɑ ɑ ɒ

Doesn't have to be a replacement for the large table, but it could be a supplement. The large table is good at showing mergers, this isn't. Editing and adding things to these mini-tables is a lot easier. The big table can be a little confusing, too. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 00:40, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

So what would be the point of these additional tables? I don't see any new information.

Also, does GA really exhibit the bad-lad split? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:59, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not the bad-lad split. It's æ-tensing. Non-southern speakers tense æ in certain environments (pre-nasal, pre-g, and/or phonemically). Inland North tenses æ in all environments. Some accents (e.g. Western) use the whole spectrum. Tensed æ variants are quite widespread in Broadcast speech. As for the purpose of these tables, I personally think that it's actually easier to compare just one element. I often find myself scrolling up or down to check which English variant I'm looking at. The big table is in a standstill, too. It's impossible really hard to add additional columns without messing up the table. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 12:00, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think æ-tensing should be shown in this chart. The chart is supposed to be of phonemes, and æ-tensing in General American (as opposed to Philadelphia & New York accents) is not phonemic. +Angr 12:26, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

You're right. Likewise, Canadian raising isn't phonemic. Yet, these are very important aspects of US and Canadian English. I think we should keep them. At least the most common tensed æ variant (the one that is and has been in the main table for a long time). Otherwise it wouldn't be a very good representation of these English variants (isn't that what we want to do, create the most accurate comparison of English variants?) Temporal Fugitive (talk) 12:53, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't Canadian English have the father-bother merger? --Atemperman (talk) 18:45, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it does. My mistake, sorry! So, what do you think about these tables? Their content isn't really that important right now anyway. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 20:05, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Irish Rs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_English "With some local exceptions, /r/ occurs postvocally, making most Hiberno-English dialects rhotic.[4] The exceptions to this are most notable in Drogheda and some other eastern towns, whose accent is distinctly non-rhotic. In Dublin English, a retroflex [ɻ] is used (much as in American English). This has no precedent in varieties of southern Irish English and is a genuine innovation of the past two decades. Mainstream varieties still use a non-retroflex [ɹ] (as in word-initial position). A uvular [ʁ] is found in north-east Leinster.[5] /r/ is pronounced as a postalveolar tap [ɾ] in conservative accents. Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh and Jackie Healy-Rae are both good examples of this."

I think it's safe to change all Irish Rs to ɹ. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Temporal Fugitive (talk • contribs) 01:25, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

But we're using ‹r› broadly to stand for any r-like sound in English, not narrowly in the sense of an alveolar trill. See the consonants table, for example. +Angr 05:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Only in the diaphonemic column, in all the other columns we're being more phonetically accurate. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 06:06, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Phonemic or phonetic? Let's read the main article.

"This chart gives a partial system of diaphonemes for English. The symbols for the diaphonemes are given in bold, followed by their most common phonetic values."

It says the chart lists the PHONETIC VALUES of all of the diaphonemes. A purely (dia)phonemic chart would be useless as the symbols used for phonemes are uniform across the globe (when using the IPA), unless you you only want to show which dialect has what mergers and/or splits. By using an "unconventional" symbol, we would be giving the diaphoneme an actual phonetic value! IMO We should also list all of the common phonetic values of the diaphonemes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Temporal Fugitive (talk • contribs) 21:52, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Is there some disagreement about this? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:57, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

That's pretty much what we have. What are we missing? — kwami (talk) 22:27, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm not saying that we're missing anything. But, honestly, /ʌ/ is misrepresented, because that is not its phonetic value in most dialects. I know that's the way it's usually transcribed because that's what it used to sound like, but sound change doesn't change the phonetic value of the symbol itself, which still represents and will represent a different sound in non-English IPA usage because it is supposed to represent an absolute, very well defined sound (kind of spoils the I in "IPA" if we keep using this symbol, doesn't it?).

Anyway, people who treat this chart like it's phonemic are the reason why I started this discussion. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 23:02, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I see. You're talking about this edit summary. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:06, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes! That and a couple posts here on the talk page (e.g. read Angr's comment in the "Table Layout" section). Temporal Fugitive (talk) 23:14, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

This page was never supposed to be a phonetic chart. Back in the day, it used to feature the most common phonemic charts for RP, General American, and General Australian, according to several reliable sources. The page has since grown out of control and it's now mostly unsourced. We can't really turn this page into a phonetic chart--we would simply have no sources whatsoever. The charts found in the sources provided--such as Kenyon & Knott, Harrington, etc.--are phonemic and not phonetic.

Furthermore, exact phonetic values may vary widely, and vowel allophones are not shown *anywhere* in the table except for the GenAm TRAP vowel. By the way, the very phoneme /æ/ has a few more allophones besides [æ] and [eə]--not just in General American. I'm [dʒæˑkɫɜmbɚ] and I approve this message. 23:32, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Another example: at the top of this page, an Australian editor says that the vowels of no and cold are not the same in his/her own speech, but this is not indicated in the table. Why? Because that's a phonetic difference, and this is a phonemic table. The Australian editor was precisely making a comment about the phonetic quality of the GOAT vowel (or rather, its allophones) in his/her own speech.

Also, the opening line reads

This concise chart shows the most common applications of the International Phonetic

Alphabet (IPA) to represent English language pronunciations.

Which implies that the chart is actually phonemic, since the most common application of the International Phonetic Alphabet with respect to English language pronunciations is phonemic transcriptions--which is what you find in dictionaries.

The opening line is kind of ironic anyway. I'm [dʒæˑkɫɜmbɚ] and I approve this message. 23:41, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

Finally, Both Angr and I think that non-phonemic æ-tensing shouldn't be in the table. Since there is no consensus, please don't change the article until the dispute is resolved. I'm [dʒæˑkɫɜmbɚ] and I approve this message. 23:44, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

I think Temporal Fugitive's point about phonemic transcription having a degree of regularity between dialects despite phonetic differences is important here. Indeed, Australian English makes most of the same phonemic contrasts that RP does but is quite distinct phonetically. If we are to believe what's said at Australian English phonology, the fairly common Mitchell-Delbridge transcription system is "minimally distinct" from phonemic transcriptions of RP, making the phonetic differences opaque with such a phonemic system.

If part of the point of this article is to help readers compare the sounds of their own dialects with equivalent ones in others (or in the diaphonemic transcription) then we have two options:

1. Render the sounds with the symbols that are most commonly associated with the phonemes in that dialect, irrespective of phonetic accuracy
2. Transcribe the sounds with phonetic accuracy, but without listing all the allophones.

I'm of the opinion that we do the latter, since we're trying to show differences rather than similarities. This is why I've made edits based on phonetic accuracy here, here, and here.

Option 2 also doesn't exclude treatment of allophones if we feel that they're noteworthy. Thus Canadian Raising and æ-tensing can be indicated as they have been. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 00:57, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Our source for AusEng is Harrington et al.'s transcription, which is actually a phonemic transcription. The Australian English phonology article makes the point that There are two families of phonemic transcriptions of Australian English: revised ones, which attempt to more accurately represent the phonetic sounds of Australian English; and the Mitchell-Delbridge system, which is minimally distinct from Jones’ original transcription of RP.

One difference between Canadian raising and ash-tensing is that Canadian raising is usually indicated in phonemic transcriptions in Canadian dictionaries, while ash-tensing is never transcribed in American dictionaries. Furthermore, ash-tensing is also present, to some extent, in Canadian English; this raises the question, how do we "feel" that some allophones are indeed noteworthy? Without WP:RSs, whatever we feel is completely arbitrary. I'm [dʒæˑkɫɜmbɚ] and I approve this message. 01:15, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and then the article goes on to state that the other phonemic transcription system, the Mitchell-Delbridge one, is commonly used. We've chosen the revised transcription because of its phonetic accuracy, no?

There are a number of ways we can determine which allophones are noteworthy. You mentioned two: Reliable sources and dictionaries (which are separate IMHO). Since we can find reliable sources for a lot of phonetic nuances of dialects, I'd say that being encoded in dictionaries is a better criterion that would limit the amount of allophones listed. Another possibility is if the distinction is sometimes phonemic, though this may be difficult to determine. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:46, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

(<==) Yes, because of its phonetic accuracy; this doesn't mean that it's a phonetic transcription. However, if you want the table to be phonetically accurate, a lot of changes need to be made. I'll give you a few examples of what I mean.

1. The length mark is not used for GenAm and CanEng vowels. This is not because North American vowels are intrinsically shorter, but rather because vowel length is not phonemically distinctive in NAmEng (again, that's a phonemic, not phonetic, fact.) A casual reader might incorrectly think, for instance, that the FLEECE vowel is noticeably longer in EngEng, AusEng, and NZEng than in NAmEng. Further adding to the confusion, the half-length mark is also used in the table.
2. The GOAT vowel for GenAm is transcribed oʊ/o. The o option is not an accurate representation of the phonetic value of GenAm GOAT (unless you live in Minnesota), but it's just a notation that many American linguists use for the sake of simplicity.
3. If this is a phonetic table, then CanEng FACE may have the same phonetic value as AusEng DRESS. Again, this is misleading. No Canadian would mishear an Australian's utterance of bet as bait.
4. The STRUT vowel question has already been raised.
5. The table may suggest that the THOUGHT vowel has the same phonetic quality in RP and GenAm. If you have a tin ear, maybe. (Worse still, it may suggest that the only difference is in vowel length, as per 1).
6. ɑ for GenAm LOT is not phonetically accurate, since it suggests a back vowel quality when it's actually a central vowel (in CC-unmerged accents, which is what the table seems to represent.)
7. The æ / eə split for GenAm TRAP wouldn't really be accurate: It would only be accurate for those speakers who have a so-called "nasal system." A lot of speakers have a "continuous system" with a wide variety of allophones and no clear distinction between tense and lax ashes--at least not so clear as to justify the use of two separate symbols. (Based on what I hear, I think that younger, CC-merged speakers are more likely to have a nasal system, while speakers of a CC-unmerged dialect like the one in the table are more likely to have a continuous system; but I may be going out on a limb here.)

A possible trade-off: We may keep the phonemic symbols in the table cells and add footnotes whenever we need to provide phonetic details. I'm [dʒæˑkɫɜmbɚ] and I approve this message. 23:57, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Length is highly predictable in GenAm (based on syllable stress and whether or not the sound precedes a voiced/unvoiced consonant). One way of representing these sounds accurately is to use vowel plots and diagrams to get more accurate phonetic transcriptions (there's plenty out there for most dialects). So e.g. RP THOUGHT would be something like ɔː~oː, GenAm LOT is more like ɑ~a. I guess I would agree with the GOAT thing, but I do sometimes hear news anchors and reporters from all over the US monophthongize it at least to some degree (it's most obvious in states like Minnesota, but it has a sort of monophthongization continuum, just like /aɪ/ monophthongization in the South). Likewise, I'm pretty sure that CanEng has a FACE monophthongization continuum. As for GenAm TRAP, we could simply list all of the common phonetic values and leave it at that. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 14:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

If GenAm vowel length isn't phonetically different from that of RP and the difference is about perception, then length comparisons between phonemically short and long vowels is context dependent (that is, /iː/ is longer than /ɪ/ in the same context). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:39, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree with most of what you've said. Angr can probably clarify the point of goat (I was under the impression that this was actual phonetic variation, not a notational one).

If CanEng face is [eː] or [eɪ] and AusEng dress is [e], then the length/offglide must be enough to prevent confusion. Even if it weren't, people are pretty good at figuring out what pronunciations to expect from speakers of other accents (especially in context).

Is this the direction that other people think we should go? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:03, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. It would be nice if [e] in one column meant the same thing as [e] in another column, to the best we can manage.

I think we should include allophonic variation in the actual chart if it's borderline phonemic, as spied 'er vs spider or rider vs writer in much of GA. — kwami (talk) 01:47, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Your ideas make sense, but I don't know what I think about any of this just yet. We could also just create two separate tables. One for conventional phonemic transcriptions and one for actual phonetic values (which could even be based on vowel plots and/or diagrams). Temporal Fugitive (talk) 14:26, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

We may also decide to create one full-fledged phonetic table, based on reliable sources that actually use the International Phonetic Alphabet, such as the Handbook of Varieties of English. I'm [dʒæˑkɫɜmbɚ] and I approve this message. 00:12, 19 June 2010 (UTC)

Some sounds of the Table about General American Pronunciation Are Wrong

The correct pronunciation of the word "spotted" in General American is /spɑːɾəd/ according to J.C. Wells, and not /spɑːɾɨd/ as it appears in the chart. /ɨ/ is not standard in General American pronunciation, according to J.C. Wells , in the new edition of Longman Pronunciation Dictionary.

None of the words such as tow, soul, roll, cold, folk are pronounced with /o/ in the correct General American pronunciation, instead they are pronounced with the diphthong /oʊ/; for instance, /toʊ/, soʊl/, /ɹoʊl/, /koʊld/, /foʊk/ respectively. According to J.C. Wells.

Words such as tore, boar, port are pronounced /tɔːɹ/, /bɔːɹ/, /pɔːɹt/ respectively, in the correct General American Pronunciation, according to J.C. Wells. None of the cited words are pronounced with the close-mid back rounded vowel /o/.

"Correct General American"—is there such a thing? The examples above: tore, bore, port, all are pronounced with /o/ in the American South and much of the east coast in general. Why the speech habits of the midwest should be considered more important than that of the more populous and culturally older parts of the country is a mystery. I suppose it is because of the influence of California. —dshep/2011.05.09—

See General American. As a sort of prestige dialect, there are regional features of American English that would be considered poorly formed. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:32, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Neither "pure" nor "Europe" are pronounced with the semi vowel approximant and the r-colored vowel /jɝ/ in the correct standard General American pronunciation according to the new edition of the pronunciation dictionary by J.C. Wells. The correct pronunciation of the words cited is /pjʊ(ə)ɹ/ and /jʊɹəp/ respectively. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alejandromagno2010 (talk • contribs) 08:44, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree we shouldn't be using [ɨ] except as a diaphonemic representation, since that isn't anyone's actual phonetic realization. Whether we use [o] or [oʊ] for the GOAT vowel is simply a matter of convention; Wells (who incidentally is not the only authority for GenAm) uses [oʊ], while Kenyon & Knott, for example, use [o]. Wells also assumes that GenAm has the horse-hoarse merger, as indeed nowadays it usually does; but many other source still show them as distinct, which was probably the case for most Americans - at least on the East Coast - 75 years ago or so. Finally, pronunciations like [pjɜ˞] and [jɜ˞əp] are well established in American English, whether Wells cares to mention them or not. +Angr 14:13, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, for me, /pjʊɹ/ would seem like a spelling pronunciation.

Don't K&K say their [o] is a diphthong? It certainly seems to be for most Usonians I know of. Check Winston Marsalis singing "echo-echo-echoing" (almost [ˈɛkəˈwɛkəˈwɛkəwɪŋ]). — kwami (talk) 17:24, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, Kenyon in American Pronunciation (a different book) says, "In south England, and often in America, this vowel [i.e. o] is a diphthong". I think for most Americans it depends what kind of syllable it's in; it tends to be more diphthongal in open syllables and more monophthongal in closed syllables. I remember that in my first year of graduate school, after four years of undergraduate linguistics classes in which it was imprinted upon me that the GOAT vowel is a diphthong, it came as a great shock to me to see spectrograms of myself saying the words "hayed" and "hoed" and seeing no movement whatever in the formants. Up till that point, I had firmly believed I used diphthongs, because all relevant professors told me I did; but the spectrograms told me I used monophthongs. Personally, I wouldn't go so far as to call [pjʊr] a spelling pronunciation; for me, it's my careful pronunciation, and [pjɜ˞] is my casual pronunciation. The same goes for the two pronunciations of Europe, sure and cure. +Angr 18:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if I have diphthongs in hayed and hoed. It might be difficult to distinguish from the assimilation to the d. But I definitely do in hay and hoe. — kwami (talk) 23:02, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I agree that [ɨ] isn't the actual phonetic value, but I think virtually all US English speakers use a schwi at least in some contexts. Many dictionaries don't bother with weak vowels and just use the schwa (Longman apparently being one of them)! Try saying "exit" with a real schwa before the T. Talk about awkward (coming from someone who has a partial weak vowel merger)! Would [ɪ̈] be better? As for the /oʊ/ thing, the situation is pretty similar to that of the schwi. The reason that /o/ is in the chart is because almost nobody actually pronounces words that have this phoneme right before an L with a diphthong! Dictionaries don't bother with this and just transcribe it as /oʊ/ everywhere. Try pronouncing all of the following with as much a diphthong as you use in NO and GO: cold, fold, roll, poll, soul, mold, told, sold, bold, hold, toll, dole, gold. Does that sound normal to you? That's what the dictionary says it's supposed to sound like ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Temporal Fugitive (talk • contribs) 11:15, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't see any reason not to use [ɪ] for schwi. That's what most dictionaries do, and any difference between the first and second vowels of itches (among non-weak-vowel-merging speakers) can be chalked up to the influence of stress. Certainly the two don't contrast. I think even the most weak-vowel-merging speakers use [ɪ] before palatals and velars; I don't think anyone says English, attic, or running with a real schwa in the second syllable. +Angr 11:32, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think there's a difference between the two final vowels of chauvinism? Or is the middle vowel just a schwa? — kwami (talk) 12:27, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

What do you mean by the two final vowels? Like all words in -ism, chauvinism has a schwa between the /z/ and the /m/ that's not reflected in the orthography. So are you comparing the vowel in /v_n/ with the vowel in /n_z/, or the vowel in /n_z/ with the vowel in /z_m/? +Angr 12:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

For me, chauvinism has more of a schwa than a schwi for the first I (I'd say it's something in between) and more of a schwi for the second I. There's definitely a difference between the ROSES sound and the SIT sound for me. I pronounce the SIT sound with slightly retracted lips. The ROSES sound is more lax. The SIT sound is definitely more fronted and slightly closer (as in, I open my mouth more for the ROSES sound). They are close, which is why they sound similar, but they're definitely not the same sound. Near-close central unrounded vowel vs. Near-close near-front unrounded vowel. We should replace /ɨ/ with /ɪ̈/ for CaE and GA. I'm not so sure about other dialects. The /ɨ/ Close central unrounded vowel article says that some dialects DO use it for the schwi (which would make sense, I'm pretty sure I've heard people that speak other dialects use that kind of sound for the schwi). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Temporal Fugitive (talk • contribs) 09:30, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

L-vocalization and TH variation

L-vocalization is standard for two of the dialects in the table. It's regional for a lot more accents, but those aren't in the table.

/l/ >> /ɤ/ - SSE /l/ >> /w/ /o/ /ʊ/ - NZE

Th-stopping is standard for IrE, especially in word initial positions.

/θ/ >> /t̪/ /ð/ >> /d̪/

I've added these to the table and created notes for them. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Temporal Fugitive (talk • contribs) 12:00, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Why no 'ts' and 'dz'?

'ts', such as 'its'. 'dz', such as 'goods'.Rethliopuks (talk) 05:13, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

These are just /t/ followed by /s/ and /d/ followed by /z/ in English. +Angr 07:38, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

While that's what they're usually considered to be (a lot things are, for simplicity's sake, considered to be what they're not), is that really what they are? Compare "good" and "goods." I have a feeling that something happens, just don't know what and it's not just a cluster. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 08:36, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Certainly for the purposes of this article, whose emphasis is on phonemes, these are clusters. Whatever happens at the detail of articulatory phonetics is outside the scope of this article. +Angr 09:03, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Still, is it not just convention? Is there really a reason to consider /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ ligatures and not /ts/ and/dz/? These are frequently represented by just one letter (in other languages), like ‹c›, ‹ц› and ‹j›, which sends at least a signal they are considered one phoneme. But I agree it would not make a difference to this article. −Woodstone (talk) 04:28, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

No, it's not just convention. /tʃ dʒ/ have a different distribution from /ts dz/ in English. For example, /tʃ dʒ/ can stand at the beginning of a word, which /ts dz/ can't (apart from a few loan words like tsunami, and even there a lot of people pronounce it with initial /s/). There are definitely languages where /ts dz/ are single-phoneme affricates, but English isn't one of them. +Angr 05:59, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

aʊ/'ow' sound in Scottish English

The aʊ sound in words like 'now' and 'trout' is listed as being identical in RP and in Scottish, viz. aʊ for both. This is inaccurate: the Scottish sound is əʉ. Ceartas 22:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ceartas (talk • contribs)

[b̪] Voiced labiodental plosive

I'm pretty sure that I have [b̪] before f/v, just like [ɱ] instead of [m]. E.g. obvious, subversive, obviate, obverse, obfuscate, subfreezing. I can't find anything that would even mention this sound. Does anybody have any info on this and/or has anybody noticed the same in their speech?Temporal Fugitive (talk) 13:32, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I do this, but I wouldn't be surprised if you do. Actually, I might do it a little, but only when eliding the /b/: I probably have tokens when a labiodental plosive is just barely pronounced, as in [ɑviəs ~ ɑᵇviəs] for obvious. But pronouncing a full plosive that way sounds odd to me. — kwami (talk) 10:52, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

CN Tags

Don't get the Citation tags at the beginning of the article. If the article uses abbreviations it can surely use any it wants so long as they are explained ... no need for citations. What am I missing? Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 02:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The citations requests are in regards to the information given about those dialects in the article, not about the abbreviations (which don't need citations). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:30, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Should be in the relevant section then ... and of course only when you have some cause to doubt the truthfulness of a particular claim. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 19:07, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I suppose citations could be moved to the table (I believe I did that at some point in the past), though the article is structured currently with citations in the lede. The presence of fact tags is an implicit expression of doubt and removing them without providing citation can be construed as disruptive. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Well, cn tags should not be over the abbreviations unless you think the abbreviations need citation, but rather over the facts you're actually disputing. I'm incredulous that you reinstated them there. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 19:40, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I get your logic (like I said, that's where I would put them), but it seems that the layout of the article is to put citations there (or at least to allow the placement of them there, since Singapore English is an exception) for the information that's in the table. That's what the citations present in the lede are for. What, pray, did you think they were for? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

You put cn tags on the abbreviations if and only if you think the abbreviations need cited. Otherwise how will one know what needs cited? The only other possibility is that we should think some editor believed cn tags were needed for the concepts themselves. I don't see how anyone would realise that a cn tag on "CaE = Canadian English" would mean some editor doubted that Canadians use æ rather than a. You're not supposed to use the tag like that ... see the guidelines:

This template is intended for specific passages that need citation. For entire articles or sections that contain significant material lacking sources (rather than just specific short passages), there are other, more appropriate templates, such as {{Unreferenced}} or {{Refimprove}}.

Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 20:13, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Like I said, I understand your logic. Presumably you understand now that the citation requests are for the information given about the varieties and not the names, concepts, or abbreviations themselves. Knowing this, where do you think the citation requests (and the citations, which, as I've implied are for the information in the tables on those particular varieties) should go? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:55, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

You should tag the section in question rather than every query. If there's something specific you have problems with, tag that (unless there's some problem with stretching the display).

I'm old fashioned and believe Wiki is for readers rather than editors, so I don't think we should splatter tags everywhere. If each sounds lacks a citation then we can see it lacks a citation by the very fact it lacks one, without putting an ugly and confusing tag there. You can state the need in one place with tags like {{Unreferenced}} or {{Refimprove}}. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 21:21, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so you're saying we put citations in the table (as they're already done for Singapore English) and either put citation requests in the table (which IMHO might look kind of clunky) or tag the article/section with the understanding of what needs referencing. That seems like a reasonable approach. What do other people think? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:43, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

I still don't get what the tags are actually asking for. Do we need to find Cites for the fact that these varieties of English exist? If that is the point then I would suggest that such tags belong in the individual articles about each of these varieties of English. Roger (talk) 07:33, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

No, we need sources that these are actually the sound values in those dialects, rather than an impressionistic edit by a user who may have got s.t. wrong. — kwami (talk) 09:39, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I've edited the article to have one tag that explains the situation. Someone should move the existing citations to the table, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 13:53, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

[ɱ]

If [ɱ] is a too specific sound, why can you include it?

"[ɱ], nasal positional variant that might occur in any language with /n/ or /m/ followed by /f/ or /v/."

• Catalan: inferior usually transcribed with [m] (specifically [ɱ]).
• Spanish: inferior usually transcribed with [m] (specifically [ɱ]).
• Italian: inferiore usually transcribed with [m] (specifically [ɱ]).
• I don't know about French, because of its prosody. But it could occur in bonnes vacances and bonnes fêtes (/n/ or /m/ followed by /f/ or /v/ when there is no nasalization), however if these words are pronounced separated by a break [.] it is more likely that doesn't occur such assimilation.

I don't see any incovenient to add this allophone to the notes section on WP:IPA for Catalan and WP:IPA for Spanish as WP:IPA for Italian and IPA chart for English dialects.

Have a look at what it is said on WP:IPA for Italian:

"The nasals always assimilate their place of articulation to that of the following consonant. Thus, the n in /ng/ is a velar [ŋ], the realization before /v/ or /f/ is a labiodental [ɱ] (though this is transcribed here as [m]), and only [m] is found before /p/ and /b/"

It is not perfect what it is said ([ŋ] can also occur before /k/), but includes positional variant [ɱ], as on this article; IPA chart for English dialects. Why Spanish and Catalan cannot include a similar sentence on the notes?! Many manuals about Spanish and Catalan explain this allophone/positional variant, being also mentioned on the Spanish and Catalan phonologies.Jaume87 (talk) 16:51, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

This is an article, those are pronunciation keys. Do you really think including that in the transcription of those languages in Wikipedia articles will

1. Be less confusing
2. Be less complicated
3. Be perceived by most readers as a meaningful transcription choice

At the IPA for X pages, we're trying to help nonspecialist readers understand how to pronounce words they come across in Wikipedia articles. Using [ɱ] does not accomplish this. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Um, yes, it does. Many non-native English speakers get confused by /m/ before /f/ and /v/ and try to actually pronounce it as a real /m/ (because that's what transcriptions usually say it is, after all), needless to say, it sounds bizarre, because you simply can't go from a real [m] to an [f] smoothly. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 12:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that actually happens. Even in the rare instance when it does, it's not likely to be very noticeable to native speakers. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 13:21, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm an ESL teacher and believe me, it happens A LOT and it's pretty noticeable. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 21:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you're not describing it right. It sounds like you're saying they pronounce [mf], which really is not going to be noticed as different from [ɱf] except maybe by trained phoneticians. If you mean to say that they attempt to pronounce [mf] but insert e.g. an epenthetic [p] ([mpf], then I can see that happen more often, especially as it happens even with English speakers (as I mention below). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 03:01, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

That's exactly what I'm saying. Many people try to pronounce it [mf], but instead of inserting an epenthetic [p] English learners often end up pronouncing it [mɸ] (regardless of whether their L1s have /ɸ/). It's really noticeable and it's jarring.Temporal Fugitive (talk) 01:55, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I never said I want this sound to be included in the transcription of these languages, just to mention it on the notes as in WP:IPA for Italian.

Why this sound cannot be mentioned on the notes as a specific assimilation, and keep transcribing it with [m] in Spanish, Catalan and Italian :)

Catalan-Spanish-Italian nasal consonants always assimilate their place of articulation to that of the following consonant. Furthermore in Spanish, word final n and m are neutralised to [n], differring from Catalan and Italian, where n and m never merge into [n] in such context. Portuguese and French don't have these sorts of assimilations, vowels are more likely to assimilate the nasalisation of the nasal consonants :D. However French contrasts nasal vs. non-nasal minimal pairs, which could lead to [ŋ] and [ɱ] assimilations in the sentence, but i don't know because of French stress and prosody. How would be transcribed des bonnes caisses, [n.k] or [ŋ k]?

By the way, how do you transcribe inferior in standard English? Perhaps you use /n/? Jaume87 (talk) 20:03, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I see, my mistake. I suppose that's all right, though I don't see it as helpful. But this isn't really a good place to discuss that.

Dictionaries using IPA that I've seen have words like inferior and invisible with /n/ and symphony with /m/. To be honest, the note on this page is somewhat inaccurate. Not only is symphony just as likely to be pronounced [ˈsɪmpfəni], but even /n/ is subject to the same sort of articulatory overlap that causes the [ɱ] pronunciation in the first place. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:38, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Notes on [ɱ] are worse than useless. It's almost imperceptible to a native English speaker. Dark el is far more salient, and even that is difficult to notice at first. I see no reason to mention [ɱ] in any of the IPA keys; for that level of detail, readers should refer to the language/phonology articles. — kwami (talk) 21:09, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, English phonology doesn't specify that much about this sound, it exists in words as triomph, symphony, but also in words with /n/; inferior, invisible, although transcriptions use /m/ for m and /n/ for n in English. However in Spanish, Catalan and Italian, nasal consonants (/n/ and /m/) tend to assimilate more than other languages their place of articulation to that of the following consonant. English doesn't explain that much such assimilation with nasal consonants, however English speakers clearly distinguish /n/ and /ŋ/.

How would you transcribe seven brothers (/n/ or /m/?, I think it'd be proper to pronounce it with /n/ although next word starts with a /b/, how about the borrowed name Istanbul?)

In Spanish, Italian and Catalan; un pollo and un poll/pollastre, the /n/ is turned into [m].

In Spanish Istanbul is hispanicised to Estambul, in Catalan though it is spelled as in English Istanbul, however the combination /n/ + /b/ is assimilated to [mb] in Catalan pronunciation.Jaume87 (talk) 21:59, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Istanbul, inferior, invisible all have /n/ in citation form, though I presume they assimilate when spoken quickly. A velar example is Vancouver, where /n/ is the norm and /ŋ/ would only occur in rapid speech--in slow enough speech for the difference to be noticeable, it would be considered an error. Seven brothers would be more like Romance: /n/ is retained as [n] in careful speech, though I think [m] would be the typical realization is normal running speech. — kwami (talk) 22:21, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't just for native English speakers. It really makes a difference for non-native speakers. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 12:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Non-native speakers do it automatically too. It would be hard to find a language which doesn't do this. — kwami (talk) 10:47, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

ɔː in RP

To my mind in RP -and in South England in general- ɔː sounds more like oː --93.193.21.25 (talk) 11:50, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, it basically is, according to the vowel chart at Received Pronunciation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Wells & Scottish

Wells[4] reprints a vowel chart from one Scottish speaker that has a rather interesting distribution. Given that /ɪ/ is ~[æ] and /u/ is ~[œ], the system is quite asymmetrical: back vowels [o ɑ ɒ] (or perhaps [o ɔ ʌ], but they've got quite a height difference), central [a], and front [i e ɛ œ æ]. Or am I misreading something? — kwami (talk) 08:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

That's how he seems to read it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 11:46, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Beer/Bear Merger in New Zealand English

The vowel table doesn't show the merger of /ɪə/ and /eə/ in New Zealand English. Some older speakers maintain the distinction, but younger speakers don't. See New Zealand English#Conditioned mergers. If this was to be corrected, perhaps [iə(ɹ)] and [ɪə(ɹ)] would be listed as possible realisations of /ɪəɹ/, and [iə(ɹ)] and [eə(ɹ)] as possible realisations of /eəɹ/. Markdarb (talk) 02:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

SQUARE, CHOICE, and NORTH/FORCE in GA

In my opinion it should say

SQUARE: ɛɹ ~ eɹ CHOICE: ɔɪ ~ oɪ NORTH/FORCE: ɔɹ ~ oɹ

These sets are transcribed both ways for American English, and this also better reflects the way people actually speak. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 22:23, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Notation query

What is the significance of the tilde (~) in some of the vowel notations, e.g. "ɒ~ɔ~ɑ" or "ɔɹ~oɹ"? P M C 16:57, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

"ɔɹ~oɹ" means that the sound can actually be [ɔɹ], [oɹ], or something in between. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 21:59, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

About the diaphonemes and lexsets

What are the diaphonemes based on?

I'm asking this because æ and some others are apparently judged the American way (for no apparent reason) and similarly vice versa for some other sounds. Also the diaphonemes ɜr, ɛər, ɔər aren't realised like that in any of the dialects listed. Who thought up these, and why do we need to list them?

As for the lexsets, why are cute &c. in the GOOSE set, why are spotted and sit both KIT even though they're different in most dialects? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.139.87.39 (talk) 12:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

It's not the American way. TRAP and BATH are separate sets in some dialects as a result of a SPLIT. The TRAP-BATH split happened after American English split off, so, the "American way" is technically the "original" way in this case. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 18:17, 2 October 2011 (UTC)```

In the chart with the diaphonemes, I believe "truck" should be an example for t͡ʃ. When I saw words with a Tr, like truck or train, I always pronounce it "Chruck" or "Chrain." Any thoughts? 50.48.76.80 (talk) 22:52, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

"Tr" is usually [t̻ʂ] and "dr" is usually [d̻ʐ]. They're very close to the Polish /ʈʂ/ and /ɖʐ/, respectively. I've never met anyone who pronounces "tr" with a [t͡ʃ] :) If you say "Chuck" and then try to use the exact same "ch" sound in "trick", it should sound really off. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 19:15, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

There's too much speaker variation to make a sweeping claim about how an affricated /t/ in truck is pronounced. I don't think we need to change the table to reflect this since it's a contextual allophone. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:26, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

/ɑ̃/

A few words in Wiktionary - e.g. contretemps, melange, have /ɑ̃/ in their English pronunciation. Is this something that should be added to this table? (I mention it because Wiktionary points to here for IPA advice.) 81.142.107.230 (talk) 13:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

Hiberno "ö"

Several local Irish pronunciations have the vowel "ö" for ⟨u⟩, as at Drumcrow. Is this really IPA (a centralized [o]), or is it a respelling for [ø]? If the latter, we need to review transclusions of {{IPA-endia}}. — kwami (talk) 23:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

It might just be the local value for the "o" sound you'd expect many Irish English speakers to have for /ʌ/ (like [ɔ] in e.g. "up" and "run"). Temporal Fugitive (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I think Temporal is correct, in case you wanted another reply. The English phonetician John Wells discusses this in volume 2 of his Accents of English. The relevant quote from that text is (p. 422): "The quality of Irish English /ʌ/ is strikingly different from what is heard in most other accents. It is typically a mid centralized back somewhat rounded vowel which might best be symbolized [ɵ-] or [ɔ̈]." (emboldening mine) He also says (442) that there are realizations similar to that (specifically [ɔ̝̈]) in the Anglo-Irish (as opposed to Scotch-Irish) area of Ulster (Change of the raising diacritic from older "." to modern "˔" mine).

In another book, Language in the British Isles by Peter Trudgill (also English), the southern Hiberno-English vowel in putt (and also nurse) is transcribed /ɔ/, which it says is "to a greater or lesser extent centralized, [ɔ̈]." The South Ulster English /ʌ/ is transcribed as /ö/ with the realizations [ɔ̈] or [ö] depending upon the area and the "Belfast Vernacular" /ʌ/ is given as /ɔ̈/ which surfaces as [ɔ̈] (what a shocker). Although both of these books are quite old now (1982 and 1984, respectively), what they have to say about this particular vowel of Irish English is still largely true to my ear. Hope that helps :) Accentman (talk) 00:34, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. That settles it! — kwami (talk) 10:45, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Suggested change regarding CaE pronunciation of run/won/flood.

(second half of chart, first line, under CaE; regarding /ʌ/) I'm Canadian (west coast) and here, 'won' is pronounced /wɑn/ not /wʌn/, so I'm suggesting 'won' be taken out of the examples on the far right, and replaced with another word, such as 'stomach' would work.

Voiceless palatal fricative (ç)

Shouldn't the ç be included in the chart? According to its own page, it occurs in English, and the page on English also lists it. Considering that it's clearly phonetically present, shouldn't it be listed, along with its phoneme, /hj/, and its other pronunciations? Callid13 (talk) 16:03, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

This is just English phonemes. [ç] is how /hj/ is realized in words like hue and human. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:35, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

If that were true, we wouldn't have things like aspirated stops and the alveolar flap in the table. I say we put [ç] in there as well. Temporal Fugitive (talk) 09:06, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Ahh, I see what you mean. It does include allophones. Yeah, we could add [ç] with a note about its context. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 13:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

If there are no further issues or counterarguments, shouldn't we add it? Callid13 (talk) 01:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

You≠Yew≠Ewe not just Welsh?

I'm American and I think I differentiate all these in about the same way as the Welsh do, yet it says only the Welsh do it. It might just be my idiolect, but are there any other Americans like me? 96.4.9.71 (talk) 16:10, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

It is not just your idiolect. There are some Americans differentiating it, but it's non-standard. That's why we don't include it. --Fncd (talk) 08:07, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

/θ,ð/ as [t̪, d̪]

I live in west ohio, and every person that I know in my home town does this at the begining of an utterance (nowhere else though) and I hear it all over ohio, has anyone else noticed this? it seems like it's more than just a small isolated area. I was just surprised to see that it wasn't listed as something that happens. Hallaman3 (talk) 20:36, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

A couple of days ago I added two notes about it (that [t̪] and [d̪] are used as allophones in other dialects). It's not just Ohio. Common words that start with /ð/ (this, that, the, they, etc.) are pronounced with a [d̪] at the beginning of an utterance in most American English dialects. /θ/ is pronounced [t̪] at the beginning of an utterance a lot less often. It's like it's almost restricted to "Thank(s)" and "Thursday" :) But you'll hear tons of [t̪]'s and [d̪]'s as assimilatory allophones (e.g. /θ,ð/ after /t,d/ - "He shot the sheriff!" - and when stressed after /n/, as in, "I haven't done THAT one over there yet.") Temporal Fugitive (talk) 20:54, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Okay, I personally use both at the begining of all utterances, including the [t̪] and I don't use the unvoiced due to assimilation since I almost always use the glottal stop in syllable coda. Hallaman3 (talk) 01:53, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Indian

It should probably say that Indian English is almost entirely a non-native form of English, as very few Indians speak English as their native language. Also, they should add Northern Ireland English.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 08:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

General American

The other day, I went to look at this chart for help with adding a pronunciation on Wiktionary, however I saw that almost all of the General American phonemes were changed and incorrect, many of them representing different dialects throughout the United States. The first thing I noticed that was wrong was the GA phoneme for the multi-phoneme /ʌ/ was /ɛ/, meaning best and bust are homophones in General American, however this only occurs in California English. The chart also states /i/ in GA is /ɪ/~/i/, but happy-tensing is not a characteristic of General American. I’m also unsure about /ɪər/ being /iɹ/~/iə̯ɹ/ and not /ɪɹ/. I went to the history to see if I could roll this back, so many edits had been made to the chart, including thirty-two done by Ahls23. I would’ve undone the edits to the GA column myself, but I didn’t want to blocked or reported for “vandalism”. So, instead, I am bringing this to attention of the community and waiting for feedback before any action is done about this. Thanks. 〜Britannic124 (talk) 00:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)