Help talk:IPA/Colognian

Untitled
Could this cover Luxembourgish as well? AFAIK there are no articles that transcribe Colognian pronunciations. — kwami (talk) 20:52, 19 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The coverage here is more thorough than that of Kölsch dialect! These are supposed to be brief keys to help readers understand IPA transcriptions that are more accessible than the main language article. This info really belongs there, and if the article is not expanded, I will suggest a merger. — kwami (talk) 23:21, 22 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Luxembourgish being a Moselle Franconian variety with some french influence is quite different. It borders to south Eifel Moselle Franconian, which border to west Ripuarian, which is followed by central Ripuarian. Colognian is a central Ripuarian language, but its transcriptions most often do not even match other central Ripuarian ones, leave alone the others mentioned, including Luxembourgish. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 01:26, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Remarks on transcriptions
All Colognian transcriptions were taken from the quoted dictionary of the Akademie för uns kölsche Sproch. It is the most recent and largest collection of Colognian IPA transcriptions published and should be seen as authoritative. I suggest to discuss all issues regarding those with the authors. You can write them at  or through their web form.

I have undone some putative "corrections" to their transcriptions in the subject page. Reasons in addition to the one given above are: --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 01:26, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Length attributes in diphthongs must go to the parts having them. Colognian diphthongs usually lengthen the 2nd vowel, not the 1st.
 * Length attributes on consonants cannot usually be moved to a preceeding vowel, that would be outright wrong. They are noted anyways only when necessary.
 * The choice of (which implies stress and ‹˧˦˧› as well), which has to be used both segmental and suprasegmental, may be unusual, but has been made, and we cannot deviate unless we find a better source, or convince the researchers who made it to revise it. See remarks on Schleifton on IPA for Colognian, and Colognian phonology (currently being written), for further details.
 * "The joining arc below" "not liking" some consonants is a font problem that must be solved on the font level. Quoting the source as it is cannot be made dependant on rendering problems in some fonts or browsers. Display will be correct, once they are fixed.


 * "Cannot" is nonsense. The ref shows either little understanding of the IPA, or they are modifying the IPA in such as way that it can no longer be understood as IPA. They confuse short vowels and diphthongs, for example, and redundantly transcribe diphthongs with both a non-syllabicity mark and a tie bar. If the 'half-long' mark ‹ˑ› does not mean half long, but rather stress and tone, then we really need to mark stress and tone explicitly. The point of these keys is to explicate the IPA to those readers unfamiliar with it; bizarre modifications of the IPA should therefore be avoided. As long as the ref explains what these idiosyncratic symbols mean, then we can transliterate them into IPA, just as we would sources in UPA or Americanist notation.
 * I suppose this would be fine as an article on Colognian phonology, as long as we explained that it isn't really in IPA. But it's not appropriate for an IPA key. — kwami (talk) 01:07, 29 December 2010 (UTC)


 * Please do not try to discuss the source with me. I am not an expert on IPA, though I'm learning ;-) nor am I willing or capable to defend or explain the choices they have made. Btw., they have their 3rd extended edition out, which I have not got yet, but I sure shall update this page if there is something new in it.
 * I, too, do have criticisms. But this is not the point. If you want to make modifications, please find a reliable source and quote it.
 * Another thing I can do is to carefully rewiew each word for compliance with the source. Do you have the book? Could you help? I know that making mistakes is easy with unusual symbols. Maybe, one or another of the things you have called "gibberish", are just typing mistakes.
 * For now, I must revert you changes, sorry, since there is no source for the modified transcriptions, and there is a source for the ones you deleted.
 * Greetings --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 10:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
 * It doesn't matter if there is no source. This isn't an article: It's a key for IPA transcriptions, and as such it should use the IPA. If your source doesn't use the normal IPA, then it needs to be modified. Either that or move this into article space as part of Colognian phonology, which IMO would be a better use of your efforts. After all, how many Colognian words, apart from the Colognian articles, do you expect will need transcription here on Wikipedia? — kwami (talk) 11:41, 31 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The person having (mainly) done the IPA stuff in the book, according to the credits in the preface, is a German university teacher and scholar, Dr. Karl Heinz Ramers, author of several books and articles on phonological subject matters including an introductory book for learners. I have a hard time to believe him to have made fundamental errors. Rather I first try to find and eliminate ones I made :-) At least I've spotted one, an omission, which I shall fix the next days, when I've time.
 * Sure, this is not an article, but transcriptions in articles need sources, and here we go, the quoted book with 18.000 words and some estimated 22.000 transcriptions is the most complete contemporary source.
 * I basically wrote this page in preparation for Colognian phonology (begun but incomplete) and Colognian spelling. Maybe, there is too much stuff here which could be better covered elsewhere. When the phonology article is nearing completion, I promise to critically come back here and reduce duplication in favour of linking. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 11:55, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Journal
It says that there is no real equivalent of /ʒ/ in English and it gives ”journal” as an example which is /dʒ/, what about the sound in pleasure or vision? Those are example words for /ʒ/ on the English IPA page. --Lundgren8 (t · c) 22:10, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
 * You're right. I've fixed it.  The thing is a bit of a mess.  — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  19:46, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary notes
I am taking attention to reducing the number of footnotes in some of these IPA for X pages. These pronunciation keys are designed primarily for readers wanting to understand the language-specific IPA transcriptions they encounter in Wikipedia articles. We shouldn't swamp them with irrelevant details. Because this information may still be pertinent to the project, I have duplicated the notes below rather than try to find a place for them. This is irrespective of whether I think these claims are true or whether they are sourced. I will leave it to other editors to move the information to the appropriate article space or check that it already is. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 23:51, 28 December 2011 (UTC) Also, when or  become voiced due to coarticulations or liaisons, they join the class of R-allophones. An example is "" (yet; still; else; any more) → "" → "" (another one, one more) Though and  are articulated differently, acoustic discrimination is sometimes hard. They form minimal pairs, for example: (spray of waves at seashores) and  (gout) or  (mix!) and  (me) There are three types of circumstances for Schleifton accents to occur:
 * The phone has a variety of allophonic versions. Coarticulation leads to the so called "clear" L occasionally, but the "dark", palatized or velarized, L variants are preferred in Colognian pronunciation. Arguably, the most often heared variant is . When position within a syllable, and its position in a word or sentence warrants, even "darker" variants are used by many speakers, such as the retroflex  up to an excessively pharyngealized ; the use of the "darker" L varieties inversely correlates somewhat with social positions of speakers. Common IPA transcriptions almost always write the comparatively seldom heard allohpone.
 * Some Landkölsch varieties have, or  instead of , throughout or in certain positions. Although many phonemic transcriptions use , likely so as to create a better resemblance of the Latin script, this is phonetically incorrect. The city dialect, which accounts for the vast majority of speakers, uses only , or something between  and , and its speakers consider  a foreign sound that they associate with specific Ripuarian dialects spoken outside the city, which they consider not Colognian.
 * The phoneme has allophonic variations. Positional ones include, , . Coarticulative variations cover a range from the standard English 'light'  to very velarized and/or pharyngealized versions. The average Colognian  is 'darker' and often spoken with the lips more protruded than English versions. Since the audible difference may be small despite different articulations, foreigners often confuse it with the phone , see there.
 * Whether the IPA symbol is the correct notation for this phone, is disputable, see voiceless palatal-velar fricative.
 * The phone is a positional allophone of  that is used most often by quite many, but not all, speakers of Colognian as the initial sound of a word before a vowel.
 * This is the glottal stop. Glottal stops appear in many composite words between their constituent words, between almost all prefixes and the word stems, inside hiatus', and they preceede most words beginning with initial vowels. Glottal stops inhibit much of coarticulation and liaisons and contractions. Glottal stops are inserted between specially stressed words inside sentences. Normally, glottal stops being the first or last phoneme of a word are not noted in IPA transcriptions, which is somewhat lenient but not exactly acurate for Colognian, since there are not necessarily any glottal stops or pauses between words in normal speech.
 * The symbol "" marks the preceding vowel as a very long, or overlong vowel. It is rarely used outside narrow transcriptions, since the three Ripuarian chronemes, though existing in Colognian proper, do practically not appear as minimal triplets in Colognian. See Colognian phonology for a broader discussion and caveats.
 * The symbol "" marks the preceding IPA symbol as a long vowel, or a as geminated consonant. Since consonant gemination is pretty systematic in Colognian and not distinguishing different words, it is usually not noted in IPA transcriptions.
 * The symbol "" marks the segment preceeding it, beginning with the last preceeding vowel, as bearing Schleifton. Schleifton is a tonal accent, unknown to English, having various properties:
 * Stress. Unless its syllable has a primary or secondary stress mark, Schleifton always carries a 3rd level stress.
 * Length. Usually, the length of a single vowel with Schleifton is between 'long' and 'short'. An English example would be between "" and "" in length.
 * Suprasegmetality. Although basically put on vowels and diphthongs, Schleifton may extend into, or occasionally move onto sonorants following them.
 * Tonal shape or contour. There are broad variations, following a somewhat complicated scheme of positional, segmental, suprasemental, stress, and syntactic dependencies. As a rule of thumb the contour always ends at a different pitch than it begins with, it always has at least a rise+fall or fall+rise pattern, sometimes both, and it always incorporates changes of volume with a quick attack at the beginning, followed by a release which may go to a 100% mute, i.e. a little phase of silence, and and returns to normal volume at the end.
 * 1) Syntax. In rare occasions, a Schleifton may appear in a sentence or phrase as a result of the rules governing stress patterns or melodies of speech.
 * 2) Grammar. Some Schleiftones are grammatical. Their presence or absence within some words distinguishes Plurals from Singulars, or comparisons in the same way, Umlauts or endings may do with other words.
 * 3) Lexeme. Other Schleiton occurrences distinguish otherwise unrelated words from each other.


 * There is no true or exact equivalent for this sound in English.
 * The normal length of a vowel or consonant remains unmarked. It is conventionally named 'short', though this is not the shortest length of Colognian phones.
 * The symbol "" marks marks a vowel as very short. The mark is placed underneath the symbol it refers to.
 * Primary stress or main stress in a word, or the only stress in a word, or the highest stress level, if there are multiple stressed syllables.
 * Unstressed syllables are unmarked.
 * There is no English equivalent of Schleifton. As a gross approximation, one can start with pitch, volume and stress quickly rising over the first third of the vowel, diphthong or syllable, similar to a plosive, followed by a release somewhat below normal over the second third, and a return to normal in the last third. This will only approximate some occurrence types of Schleifton, however.
 * Second highest stress in a word.
 * These English sounds are slightly too dull. The first half of the i in "" is a better approximation of the sound, but not of its duration.
 * Take the length of the vowel in "" and a sound slightly more open than the vowel in "".
 * Take the length of the vowel in "" and the sound of the first vowel in "".
 * The phone is generally always unstressed. Stressed ones only appear within words containing consonants and 's only, which are exceptionally stressed being focussed within a sentence.
 * Take a vowel length obove the one in "" and the sound of the vowels in "" or "".
 * Take the sound of the vowel in "" and the length of the vowel in "".
 * Take the length of the vowel in "" and the sound of the vowel in "".
 * Speak somewhat longer and slower than the English examples were usually spoken, like a very laid-back Californian slang speaker.
 * The second vowel is more rounded and articulated more to the front, or lip tips, than in the English examples. Also, it is less clear than in these English words.

Colognian separatism
I don't see why this should get an IPA page. IPA pages are guides linked to IPA transcriptions given in articles which have foreign names. If you look for a French actor, the IPA is given in the article's introduction and linked to the IPA for French page. How many articles with "Colognian" names are there? Those articles would mostly have standard German names. You would never link a word to this page. There is no official written form for this dialect. The main articles Colognian language and Colognian phonology are enough. If every German dialect got an IPA page, it would be a mess, not counting dialects from other languages. I'm sure the dialects themselves are covered in respective articles, but they don't need an IPA pages, which have a different function as mentioned above.--2.245.215.41 (talk) 16:59, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't know too much about Colognian or Kölsch, but go to the What links here page, linked on the left sidebar. There are a fair number of pages with Kölsch pronunciations, so it seems this page is being used. It would be perfectly legitimate to have IPA help pages on more German dialects, such as Bavarian and Swiss German, but as of yet we don't have any, and there isn't any danger of Wikipedia being overrun with them. — Eru·tuon 22:22, 15 March 2015 (UTC)
 * We can eventually turn this page into Help:IPA for (Limburgish and) Ripuarian and list all the necessary symbols. It's perfectly doable as long as you have sources to do so. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:17, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:16, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

⟨²⟩
I noticed several transcriptions pointing here use a ⟨²⟩ tone mark that is absent from this help. Can someone clean this up? Thanks. 〜 イヴァンスクルージ九十八 ［IvanScrooge98］ （ 会話 ） 20:16, 3 October 2019 (UTC)