Template talk:IPA affricates

Adding an option for place of articulation column headings

Unlike International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart, International_Phonetic_Alphabet#Affricates doesn't provide column headings, because this template doesn't provide the option. I couldn't find an explicit reason why this is so or discussion of whether it should be, so I'm considering adding that (first in the sandbox, then here after some testing), probably as an option defaulting not to include that for backward compatibility. Besides reading Help:Template#Creating_and_editing_templates, is there anything I should do before? The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 22:19, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Yeah there is no reason other than inertia. Your suggestion made sense to me so I just went ahead and added them. Nardog (talk) 23:04, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

Reversion of the addition of t̪θ' to the table

cc. Nardog

I understand the reversion of pf' (it doesn't have a page and only seems to crop up in a single language), but why remove t̪θ'? It has an article (Dental ejective affricate), plus is documented in at least two languages - when Voiceless glottal affricate is on the table, despite only having phonemic status in a single dialect, and taking up an entire extra column to boot! Surely if the table doesn't need to be exhaustive then the Voiced epiglottal affricate and Voiceless glottal affricate can also be removed from it. Not to mention the other few ones on that table which are only reported alophonically or in a single language. Plus, t̪θ' doesn't take up any extra space or make the table any bigger - all it does is take away some space from ts' which currently seems to also occupy the dental column - potentially misleading. Stan traynor (talk) 12:55, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Fair, restored [t̪θʼ]. It looks like it was overlooked because the article is relatively new. Nardog (talk) 13:05, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

This template doesn't contain any affricates.

E.g., [ts] is not a voiceless alveolar affricate, but rather a Voiceless dental/alveolar plosive followed by a voiceless alveolar fricative. [t͡s] is a voiceless alveolar affricate. Also, [dʒ] is not a Voiced postalveolar affricate (which would be [d͡ʒ]), but rather a Voiced dental/alveolar/postalveolar plosive followed by a Voiced postalveolar fricative. (which is how you pronounce the Central Kurdish word دج, meaning against/anti).--155.4.221.27 (talk) 08:34, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Have you looked at the IPA chart? It says, Affricates and double articulations can be represented by two symbols joined by a tie bar if necessary (emphasis added). Affricates are transcribed without tie bars more often than not. Prominent dictionaries like English Pronouncing Dictionary, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, Duden Das Aussprachewörterbuch, and Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch all do without tie bars. Your claim is inaccurate and ahistorical. Nardog (talk) 17:31, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Nothing, in all of that, addresses any of what I pointed out, in any way, nor is it at all relevant. A Voiced dental/alveolar/postalveolar plosive followed by a voiced postalveolar fricative, is not pronounced anything like a voiced postalveolar affricate …so why would you write both as [dʒ]? "if necessary"? It's always necessary, as they would otherwise be confused as two separate phones, rather than an affricate. Can you find any sources that forbid using a joining symbol? You say that many sources don't use any symbol that joins the two letters, but how is that relevant? That countless sources do something idiotic/confusing/irrational/misleading, doesn't mean that you should. ج=[d͡ʒ], دج=[dʒ] …and they sound nothing like each other.--155.4.221.27 (talk) 07:31, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

I have news for you: A plosive followed by a fricative is exactly what an affricate is. (That's why they're transcribed like that in the first place!) There is nothing in terms of articulation or acoustics that separates [ts] in English cats etc. from [ts] in Japanese tsunami or German Zeitgeist. Only the latter are usually considered affricates simply because they are contrastive—they act as if single units rather than sequences when you look at their distribution (see also English phonology#Obstruents for more on why not all affricate-like sounds are considered affricates).

The English Pronouncing Dictionary was compiled by Daniel Jones, who led the International Phonetic Association for much of the 20th century, and its recent editions have been edited by Peter Roach, former IPA Secretary. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary was compiled by John C. Wells, former IPA President, who wrote:

[M]y correspondent also assumed that the correct way to write them is with a tie bar: [t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ]. Personally I normally omit the tie bar, and write just [tʃ, dʒ]. That is what you find in most pronunciation dictionaries and textbooks, too. It does involve the convention that a sequence of plosive plus fricative that does NOT form an affricate must be written some other way. Daniel Jones does this with a hyphen (see his article ‘The hyphen as a phonetic sign’, 1955, Zeitschrift für Phonetik 9), thus [t-ʃ, d-ʒ]. This enables us to show the difference in the Polish minimal pair trzy [t-ʃɨ] vs. czy [tʃɨ]. In English any such sequence must straddle a syllable boundary, so you can show it using a full stop, as in Wiltshire /ˈwɪlt.ʃə/ vs. vulture /ˈvʌltʃ.ə/ (if you think I am right about English syllabification) or /ˈvʌl.tʃə/ (if you don’t).

If an affricate and a stop–fricative sequence at the same place of articulation are pronounced differently in a language, that's because the language in question does something specific to realize that differentiation. There is no cross-linguistic, universal way of doing this: Polish does it by making the fricative component longer (see Polish phonology#Consonants); white shoes and why choose in English differ in the timing of articulation and in the duration (and possibly also the quality) of the vowels. This means that there is no intrinsic, cross-linguistic difference between ⟨ts⟩ and ⟨t͡s⟩ etc. One can use them to mean different things only when talking about a specific language. This obliterates the need for the tie bar in contexts of general, cross-linguistic phonetics like our tables and infoboxes because ⟨t͡s⟩ couldn't mean anything more than ⟨ts⟩ already does. Nardog (talk) 11:01, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Difference from Template:IPA chart affricate consonants with audio?

Is it intentional that there are two templates that appear to cover the same topic, this one and {{IPA chart affricate consonants with audio}}? Would it make sense to merge them? In particular, the latter seems to be part of a set of templates with documentation and an overview table, which I find useful. Waldyrious (talk) 18:34, 31 January 2023 (UTC)