Help talk:IPA/English/Archive 21

RfC: Proposed deprecation of /ᵻ, ᵿ/
Currently our IPA transcription system for English acknowledges the diaphonemes and, which denote free variation of "either /ɪ/ or /ə/" and "either /ʊ/ or /ə/", respectively. Should we keep these as accepted symbols for transcription of English pronunciation? Nardog (talk) 13:24, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Survey

 * Deprecate /ᵻ, ᵿ/. The current usage of the symbols has several problems. The symbols $\langle\rangle$ have traditionally been used by some authors as unofficial extensions to the IPA to represent the near-close central vowels, for which the IPA does not provide dedicated symbols. But in our system, the symbols do not even refer to those vowels, but to free variation between different phonemes. So we're using unofficial symbols in a nonstandard way. The symbols are rarely encountered outside of Wikipedia. While the way they're currently used on Wikipedia is from the OED and the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation for Current English, few if not none of other publications employ this notation, not even OxfordDictionaries.com, which is naturally more accessible to (and I suspect more accessed by) WP readers and editors than the other dictionaries by the same publisher. So while the few already familiar with the symbols as used for the central vowels are likely going to have the wrong impression that they represent those specific sounds instead of the free variation, the majority of readers will simply be confused by the idiosyncratic symbols, which is not desirable from the perspective of WP:LEAST, WP:UNDUE, etc. They're also superfluous and counterproductive. Since our transcription is meant to cover a spectrum of major varieties of English, a lot of the symbols used can mean different sounds in different dialects. But we don't concoct a dedicated symbol for such an occasion, we just pick one representative notation in one accent to account for all the equivalent sounds in different accents, e.g. our /eɪ/ means /æɪ/ in AuE. And unstressed /ɪ, ʊ/ are realized as /ə/ in many accents anyway, so /ɪ, ʊ/ without stress mark do automatically mean "either /ɪ, ʊ/ or /ə/", and, conversely, any instance of unstressed /ɪ, ʊ/ can be notated with either /ɪ, ʊ/ or /ᵻ, ᵿ/, which renders /ᵻ, ᵿ/ redundant while giving room for inconsistency between articles. Nardog (talk) 13:24, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Deprecate . In addition to what Nardog said, I'd like to add that we're already using $\langle\rangle$ in an inconsistent way (not sure about $\langle\rangle$, but it's quite obviously more useless than $\langle\rangle$). In some articles, we use it to denote a free variation between and  in both RP and GA. In some others, we use it to denote   in RP and  in GA. If we used $\langle\rangle$ only for the unstressed  in RP that can be central while still contrasting with  (and apparently not all instances of the unstressed  are like that, some are always  phonetically), that would be of great help to ESL students who want to speak RP. But that would require an OR judgement of audio clips. Not worth it. Let's make $\langle\rangle$ display $\langle\rangle$ and correct GA pronunciations manually. Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:04, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Support the proposal per given arguments. &minus;Woodstone (talk) 17:01, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Deprecate. These two symbols don't show correctly in some browsers (such as Opera 36, where they show as plain rectangles). By contrast the symbols /ɪ, ə, ʊ/ do show correctly. -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 20:48, 4 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Deprecate per the above. We shouldn't be making up our own "pseudo-IPA", especially if it conflicts with prior use of the same symbols and doesn't even show up properly for some readers. It is better to use a symbol that is not perfectly precise than to use one that breaks or which confuses people into thinking of a radically different sound than what we're talking about.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:16, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Deprecate per the above, particularly the point that we aren't attempting a precise transcription of one particular way of pronouncing a word, but providing broadly interpretable guidance to readers. Peter coxhead (talk) 07:14, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Deprecate /ᵻ, ᵿ/. They are not IPA and they are little used. --mach &#x1f648;&#x1f649;&#x1f64a; 16:31, 8 July 2017 (UTC)

Note on implementation
I have reinstated ᵻ and ᵿ in this article. There are thousands of articles that use them in IPAc-en. When readers want to know what these strange and unusual non-IPA signs really are, the link leads to this help page. As long as they are being used, this help page needs to explain them. Discontue them on IPAc-en first, and only then on this help page.

BTW, a good way for finding them is with the following search:


 * {{Search link|hastemplate:"IPAc-en" insource:/\{\{IPAc-en[^\}]*[ᵻᵿ]/}}

At the moment, the search finds 3239 articles, starting with no other than the Wikipedia. --mach &#x1f648;&#x1f649;&#x1f64a; 22:18, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
 * You're right, the reason I didn't immediately merge them with /ɪ, ʊ/ at IPAc-en is because I had the question that I asked below. But what are you suggesting exactly? If we edited all instances of, e.g., /ʃᵻˈkɑːɡoʊ/ into /ʃɪˈkɑːɡoʊ, ʃə-/, that defeats the whole point of the deprecation (I'll expound on this in the section below later). I suggest we let /ᵻ, ᵿ/ display /ɪ, ʊ/ and edit them manually where /ə/ (or in some cases both /ɪ/ʊ, ə/ if that's what we end up agreeing upon) is more appropriate (but not necessarily in this order), as has Mr KEBAB above. Nardog (talk) 22:38, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Also, these phonology articles (and possibly some others) use /ᵻ/ specifically as a WP diaphoneme (some of them still use $\langleɨ\rangle$, sadly): Since /ᵻ/ isn't a diaphoneme anymore, they should be removed or merged with either /ɪ/ or /ə/, but that must be done in accordance with which phoneme the vowel of roses belongs to in the respective dialect, I suppose. Nardog (talk) 01:15, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * African American Vernacular English
 * Australian English phonology
 * Australian English
 * English language in Northern England
 * English phonology
 * Geordie
 * Inland Northern American English
 * Mid-Atlantic American English
 * New York accent
 * Scottish English
 * Ulster English
 * I assume striking through articles that have been dealt with is OK? Australian English is a false positive by the way. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:22, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, go ahead. As for Australian English, the symbol was in the prose in an off-handed manner but not in a table. Removed. Nardog (talk) 01:33, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh, that's what you mean. I thought Firefox was acting stupid again. I left that out because those symbols are sometimes used in the literature, but very rarely if at all in the case of Australian English.
 * All but Geordie and Scottish English have been dealt with. I'm not sure whether Geordie truly has a weak-vowel merger (there's so much variation in that accent) and the article on Scottish English doesn't state the phonetic realization.
 * In the case of some other articles we may need to separate strong and weak vowels in the tables, because we now have two instances of . Understandably, many people won't realize that there are strong and weak 's and will at some point remove one or the other. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:38, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * So we can remove that from Scottish English, then. Some of these articles also don't reflect the recent addition of the length mark to rhotics at this key page. In order to avoid this kind of thing from happening, maybe those notations should be replaced with IPAc-en instead of IPA, IPA-en, etc. Nardog (talk) 01:48, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * I've removed the table on Geordie. It was unsourced and looked fishy, particularly where it distinguished between and . There's no such distinction in Geordie, it's not German.
 * I agree on your last point. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:02, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

So, may I at least make,   appear as /ɪ, ʊ/? Nardog (talk) 16:42, 10 August 2017 (UTC)

I have merged /ᵻ, ᵿ/ with /ɪ, ʊ/. So any instance of /ᵻ, ᵿ/ that ascribes better to /ə/ must be corrected accordingly. Nardog (talk) 12:21, 16 August 2017 (UTC)


 * they should be merged with /ə/. That at least is factually correct for some dialects, such as Australian, and while the transcription now excludes GA and RP, people speaking those varieties can understand the correct pronunciation from the spelling. Merging with /ɪ, ʊ/ has produced thousands of incorrect transcriptions. — kwami (talk) 23:32, 1 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I disagree with this. Our IPA transcriptions aren't only for native speakers. What about ESL speakers and native speakers that want to learn to speak RP? Plus, the vast majority of speakers from England and Wales preserve the distinction. That's millions of people. If anything, we should provide separate transcriptions with and  and clearly label them. Maybe it's time to just provide separate RP/GA transcriptions, period? I don't know. I'd support that idea, but at this point it's not a very big deal for me. I've seen too many mistakes in our transcriptions to ever trust them again without checking reputable sources first. Mr KEBAB (talk) 02:33, 2 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Confounding full and reduced vowels is a more serious problem than mixing up the various reduced vowels. It's nearly as grave as getting the stress wrong, which is how many people will interpret it. (Are we now going to have to resurrect spurious secondary "stress" to distinguish full from reduced ?)  As for splitting RP and GA, we've been down that road - it's an endless headache with people rightfully objecting that WP isn't just for England and the US. — kwami (talk) 04:37, 11 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Are you talking about the reduced vs. full ? There's not a single dictionary that distinguishes them. What OED does is different. If we were to introduce that distinction, I'd say probably 95% of editors would get it wrong (including me), and that's being optimistic.


 * I don't think that we should resurrect secondary stress for the full, if anything, could be in favor of that (or maybe not, I don't know).


 * True, but it's also true that if we were to ever decide that our transcriptions must be sourced, we would pretty much have to restrict them to RP and GA (OK, there are dictionaries of Canadian or Australian English that use the IPA, and there are lists of words that have distinct pronunciations in local varieties such as NZE, so maybe it wouldn't be that bad). Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:22, 16 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Nearly all dictionaries distinguish them. That's what "secondary stress" after primary stress is: a full vowel. (We should not, of course, transcribe it as stress, since it isn't.) There are four reduced vowels in English. By conflating full and reduced vowels, we're obliterating a phonemic distinction. That's like transcribing /θ/ and /ð/ the same because they're both written "th".
 * Dictionaries don't need to be in IPA for us to ref them. They only need to support the pronunciation they're used for, whichever transcription system they use. — kwami (talk) 19:51, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Proposed deprecation of /ɔər/

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Currently our IPA transcription system for English acknowledges the phoneme/diaphoneme, which is used only by a minority of General American speakers and no Received Pronunciation speakers (which are the only accents that are encoded by major dictionaries). Furthermore, it is transcribed in only some dictionaries and so transcribing it puts an unnecessary burden on editors who'd like to use e.g. Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary to source their IPA. For details, see this discussion. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:45, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Pinging editors from previous discussions:. Mr KEBAB (talk) 08:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Survey

 * Support. Just because few speakers maintain the distinction any longer in and of itself doesn't immediately mean we should drop it, but it does make it harder for us to find a reliable source that confirms whether a particular word has /ɔər/ or /ɔːr/ for those speakers each time, which in turn creates a problem. The fact that the two major dictionaries of American English have stopped including the variants with (what we transcribe as) /ɔər/ sometime around the turn of the century (see above) is telling. Especially with new words spelled with $\langleor\rangle$, it's almost impossible to determine it's one or the other. Even if this proposal fails to gain consensus, we should at least make it explicit that the diaphoneme must be used only when a reliable written source (Cambridge's online dictionary, Dictionary.com, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, etc.) is available. Nardog (talk) 10:12, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I am fairly certain that this will gain consensus, but that doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do. Just because something has fallen out of fashion doesn't mean that it ought to be ignored. In the future, this logic will end up being applied to the Mary-marry-merry merger, the cot-caught merger and the hurry-furry merger (presuming that said mergers spread beyond their current boundaries). Again, do we really want to abandon something just because it is no longer popular? If so, then I question why I bother contributing to linguistic articles here on Wikipedia in the first place; as someone who speaks a fairly traditional dialect in a country where people are increasingly speaking extremely simplified forms of English which I loathe. Tharthan (talk) 14:41, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. It is indeed very difficult to find reliable historical linguistics information about the Old English state of horse versus hoarse, and, certainly by the Early Modern period, the two vowels seemed to be in a state of sometimes overlapping (and perhaps even swapping or swapping-and-then-reverting!). There is plenty of evidence in Early Modern English (even Shakespeare, for example) that horse and hoarse may have been already merged or merging even at that time! I'm mostly, though, concerned that a distinction between /ɔər/ and /ɔr/ will confuse more than clarify for non-linguist readers who are already grappling with an IPA template that is quite alien to them. Simplifying within reason seems like a good idea, covering both "typical" American and British English features. (Incidentally, even the traditional horse≠hoarse stronghold of Ireland appears to be rapidly weakening in this feature.) The detail that a historical distinction once existed in English (and, in some accents, not even for the last several hundreds years) seems to have little importance to a present-day template of English particularly crafted for newcomers and non-experts who are merely seeking a basic pronunciation key. Wolfdog (talk) 21:44, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. As per above supporting arguments. Even if there are still many speakers making distinctions, I think the most important are the standard accents (RP, GenAm, AusE). Furthermore, language keys should describe the current situation which is indeed for merger (for example, we don't distinguish the Nurse mergers despite some dialects still using it). I'm not very familiar with the literature for this one so I apologize for this, but I've never seen any dictionary that distinguishes horse from hoarse.--Officer781 (talk) 08:36, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, if most standard varieties of English don't make the distinction, then maybe at least we shouldn't insist on representing it in the standard transcriptions found in the first sentences of articles. Although adding brief explanatory footnotes in the cases where such a distinction exists probably wouldn't hurt? And it probably goes without saying, but this distinction should ideally be represented in the pronunciations given for localities whose local speakers maintain that distinction. – Uanfala 11:52, 27 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't think this distinction is relevant to a general pronunciation guide. And yes, I agree with that if caught-cot and other mergers become much more widespread, then those distinctions will also disappear from our standard pronunciation guides. Wikipedia—and linguistics in general—describes things the way they are, not the way we want them to be.  agt x  16:04, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. Yeah, if it's just a minor sound, just delete it and merge it with a more generic sound. I suspect replacing with something like, however I'm not a specialist with English phonology. I would suggest, however, that other dictionaries show this special sound tho. It may be useful for my research. — AWESOME meeos ！ *  ([ˈjæb.ə ət məɪ])) 14:12, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Discussion
The fact that it's unpopular is just one of reasons. It's quite clearly not the only reason. See above.

In the future, this logic will end up being applied to the Mary-marry-merry merger, the cot-caught merger and the hurry-furry merger (presuming that said mergers spread beyond their current boundaries). No, it won't. You're ignoring the fact that our system is diaphonemic, which means that it must also account for Received Pronunciation. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:56, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I said "(presuming that said mergers spread beyond their current boundaries)". I know of at least one person who speaks a British dialect who pronounces worry as /ˈwɝɹi/, and whilst that is nonstandard and almost non-existent there (thankfully), so was th-fronting in 1787, when it was first noted as appearing in London. By 1850, it was considered a standard feature of working class speech in London, and by 1880 it had spread to Bristol to the point of being a standard feature of working class speech and by 1876, it was found in Yorkshire. By 1988, it was spreading all throughout nonstandard dialects in England, and nowadays it is spreading into Estuary English, and has even touched down in parts of Scotland!
 * My point is that it is not so far-fetched to suppose that some if not all of those mergers that I mentioned may well become, in time, widespread enough to warrant a discussion similar to this one regarding them. It may well even happen in a fairly shorter period of time than it took th-fronting thanks to the current über-interconnected nature of the modern world.Tharthan (talk) 17:36, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You need to be more specific when you say 'a British dialect'. There are about 60 accents in the UK alone, maybe even more. There are millions of non-RP-speaking Brits that merge with, so that it's entirely possible that you can hear  instead of . Hell, that's even the most common pronunciation in Wales and among middle-class speakers from Northern England (and by this I mean accents as far south as Birmingham). But then, I think, the majority of them would still distinguish  from  (I wrote it  on purpose to show that there's phonemic vowel length at play). Phonetically, the latter would be , so that frontness, roundedness or even height could also be an additional cue for distinguishing the stressed  from . I've never heard of the STRUT-NURSE merger in the UK. What you're hearing is most likely what I've described.
 * What you're writing about th-fronting is true, but the phonemes are still and speakers are aware of this.  are just phonetic variants that occur with variable frequency (and yes, also outside of the UK, that is in Broad South African English (or the non-native Afrikaans English), New Zealand English, African American Vernacular English, etc.) It's only the broadest speech (e.g. Cockney) that uses  with any consistency. (And I'm aware that  for  is technically th-stopping, but nobody says  for there, the initial voiced th is either a stop, an approximant or it's dropped altogether). Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:51, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Here's a gentleman with an extremely Broad SAE/Afrikaans accent: . He says for South Africa and seems to consistently front all of the remaining th's (but I could be wrong, listen for yourself). Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:02, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * But at that point, isn't it only natural to assume English will have developed splits too? By your logic one might as well propose undoing the FOOT–STRUT split. It is inevitable any spoken language goes through a cycle of simplifications and complications over time, and anybody may appreciate it or despise it all they like, but as editors of an encyclopedia we must give due weight to what reliable sources deal with.
 * (I don't think the idea that language changes more rapidly in a more connected society, by the way, generally holds true. More speakers means demand for larger mutual intelligibility, thereby more resistance to changes. They will of course develop their own dialects with relatively minor differences, though.) Nardog (talk) 18:33, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Just to expand upon the / issue: even in AmE, the fact that a given speaker realizes the vowel as mid central  doesn't necessarily mean that he also has the hurry-furry merger. Even in that case, hurry can have a shorter, not rhotacized vowel (so ), whereas furry can have a longer, mandatorily rhotacized vowel (so ). But such a contrast wouldn't be very stable, and I'm not aware of any sources that discuss this. On the other hand, BrE  is never rhotacized in non-rhotic varieties. They always say  (with possible fronting, rounding or raising, depending on speaker), with a pure vowel. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:43, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I had heard something about a merger of and  in some dialects of English in the United Kingdom, but I never really looked into it much. Thanks for the information.
 * Still, my point stands: the current, über-interconnected modern world is a hotbed for mergers, and it wouldn't be so far-fetched to see those mergers get to the point where the horse-hoarse merger is right now.
 * Actually, to me, it seems that the demand for more mutual intelligibility (at least in the United States) only reinforces some spreading mergers (but not the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, thankfully). Mergers like the hurry-furry merger and the Mary-marry-merry merger seem to be becoming more increasingly prevalent nowadays, and I think that the increased interconnectivity is at least partially to blame for that. Tharthan (talk) 19:01, 26 September 2017 (UTC)
 * We'll see, but seeing how strongly these pairs are differentiated in RP/Estuary, there's little chance for that. There's also Multicultural London English (which is different than Estuary) which is slowly introducing different innovations to more formal speech (e.g. -backing and -fronting). If anything, expect variable and  mergers (to  and, respectively) in the near future. Unless I'm underestimating how widespread they are right now. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:16, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@: In my opinion, there ought to be no question that, even if Wikipedia deprecates it, there ought to be what Uanfala calls "brief explanatory footnotes" in the cases where the distinction exists. We ought not to pretend that the distinction doesn't exist for anyone when it in fact does. Tharthan (talk) 02:44, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Except that's what we do with all the other contrasts we don't encode for — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:24, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I think what they mean is that we should provide regional pronunciations in articles, and I'm not so sure whether that's a good idea. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:06, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't we sometimes do that already? If it's a place name it makes sense. I don't think we should have a "regional" pronunciation just to show that people who make this distinction pronounce it one way or another. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 19:11, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess if the editor knows what he's doing then there's no problem. And it's not like the presence of the FORCE vowel is completely unverifiable, as we already know. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:17, 28 September 2017 (UTC)
 * That's the same garbage excuse that people unrelated to the situation give for the (now seeming beginning of the) recession of (certain features of) the New York City dialect (if not a slow move away from the dialect altogether). "Oh, it's just language change. No big deal! It doesn't impact me so I don't care!", even though some other linguists (ones related to the situation) lament the loss of those features/the shift away from the dialect because it seems to relate to a push towards a more "unified" (not necessarily a good thing) dialect in the United States, rather than having different dialects for different areas of the country. I suppose that if we all started sounding like baboons and made grunting noises and high pitched squeals or whatnot for our language that that would also "just be language change; just deal with it" too, hmm? (By the way, I don't speak the New York City dialect. I speak with a New England English dialect. I'm just using the issue with the New York City dialect as an example because different linguists seem to feel quite differently about the currently in progress shift away from the dialect.) Tharthan (talk) 16:30, 24 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I understand that you're taking a prescriptivist view of this, and I understand that dialects are important to you. But at this point, you're getting into WP:FRINGE territory. All serious academic linguists describe language as it is. We should do the same. agt x  17:19, 24 October 2017 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Foot" as a dubious mouse hover example for the symbol "ʊ"
At the risk of trying to start a bikeshed problem discussion, I wanted to briefly suggest that we use a word other than "foot" as the mouse hover vowel example for the sound of the English IPA symbol "ʊ". My problem with "foot" is that non-English speakers looking at the example word and trying to determine an English sound for it may mix up "foot" with other very common words with two Os in them that are pronounced differently (hoot, boot, scoot, toot, food, noodle, shoot, etc. etc.). "Foot" is not a visually unambiguous example of the sound "ʊ", so while it may work fine for most native English speakers, wouldn't it be better if we used a word that was not visually ambiguous for the mouse hover example? Perhaps the word "push", "pull", or "full" (none of which have phonetic/ visual ambiguity and all of which are very popular words that non-English speakers are very likely to recognize, plus they all have that "u" in the middle, which seems a better choice than any words with "oo" or "ou" in them). KDS4444 (talk) 10:04, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm ambivalent to the change. If you can read IPA and you're reading the English version of WP, we can safely assume that you can also correctly pronounce most common English words. Foot is one of them. Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:08, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * But at the same time, why the hell not? A word spelled with 'u' is more easily recognizable in one glance as having /ʊ/ than one with 'oo'. I know, I know, it would then fuse this time with /ʌ/, but even then we can use a word visually dissimilar to cut, e.g. push rather than put. (Pull, full, etc. are better avoided because vowels are unstable before /l/.) Nardog (talk) 15:35, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * This is a poorly motivated change. Is there a better reason to change it than that there might be some non-native readers with such a poor grasp of English that they don't know how to pronounce foot? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 15:55, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't understand how oo in foot is ambiguous but u in put isn't, when there are other words in which u spells (for instance in the tooltip for that diaphoneme, cut!). There's ambiguity no matter which grapheme one chooses for the spelling of this diaphoneme. — Eru·tuon 19:24, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I just realized the same user had proposed the exact same thing two years ago only to garner no support. That's WP:FORUMSHOPPING and this conversation should now be over. Nardog (talk) 08:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I forgot that I had even done that, and am now sorry I mentioned it. Yes, conversation over, absolutely.  Intentions be damned.  Two years is certainly not long enough to see if consensus has changed anyway.  KDS4444 (talk) 01:02, 12 October 2017 (UTC


 * Strong support. I'm getting the strong impression that no-one who's commented here or in the previous discussion has ever been a student of English as a foreign language. Of course the "u" in words like "push" isn't completely predictable (that's English spelling after all!), but at least that has a very different sound from the "u" of "cut", and if you're a foreign learner this is a contrast you pick up fairly early on. Besides, "push" isn't alone, there are plenty of common words that have the same pronunciation and spelling, so you learn pretty fast that "u" in a closed syllable is often pronounced as ʊ. "Foot" on the other hand is pretty much on its own and what's worse, the distinction between the ʊ of "foot" and uː of "food" is a subtle one, it's not found in many languages and it's not a particularly easy one to learn either, once you've finally learned you're past the point where you pay attention to the pronunciation of common words as "foot", so it's likely you'll be mispronouncing it for quite a while. So if there's a way to choose a word that will be a bit less unintuitive for foreign language learners, then there's no reason not to. – Uanfala 00:29, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * If you can distinguish from, you can do it in all words. If you haven't mastered pre-fortis clipping, that means that you cannot properly pronounce English words (I'm assuming that RP/GA/General Australian are the only models we're talking about here). The distinction between foot and food is not subtle. The first word has a shortened (clipped), lax vowel with possible (pre-)glottalization of the final sound, whereas the second one has a long, unshortened (not clipped), tense, possibly diphthongized vowel and a plain devoiced alveolar stop. If someone can't hear or produce this distinction, it's too bad.


 * Being newbie-friendly - yes, but only towards those who make an effort to sound native. This is not a course in English pronunciation. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:21, 5 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Support, I agree with Uanfala above, and would also point out that there are dialects of English spoken in the north of England and Scotland where "foot" can rhyme with "boot" rather than with "put". See Foot–goose merger. "Push" is, IMO (but please correct me if I'm wrong) fairly uncontroversial, except in areas where the phoneme /ʊ/ barely exists at all. – filelakeshoe (t / c) &#xF0F6; 13:58, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The lack of the - split (that's the name for it) is a strongly non-standard feature that is not covered in this guide. The - merger is also not covered here. Mr KEBAB (talk)
 * The lack of the foot–strut split is /ʌ/ not existing as a phoneme, not /ʊ/. The foot–goose merger becomes a bit more selective in some areas such as Lancashire dialect where foot and book can be /fuːt/ and /buːk/ but push is always /pʊʃ/. I know it's a regional feature and that trying to account for all regional variants of English is hard but still, we can do our best. – filelakeshoe (t / c) &#xF0F6; 14:08, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Ok, I misread your post. Using in words such as book is not the - merger but a preservation of an older pronunciation (cf. German ). With that being said, I'm ambivalent to the change. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:13, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Actually yeah, it even says that in the Lancs dialect article. OK, well, I stand by my support per Uanfala above, I think it would do no harm and a minute bit of good. – filelakeshoe (t / c) &#xF0F6; 14:14, 5 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Support: I've been persuaded by Uanfala's reasoning above that it would be more helpful to English newbies to use the u spelling of . — Eru·tuon 21:51, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

IPA links so readers can hear the phonemes
"(rv - we haven't agreed on changing r to ɹ yet; linking /t/ is inappropriate because it has a wider range of allophones than [t]; links to vowels are inappropriate because the realizations vary too much)" @Mr KEBAB The problem is that pages regarding the various accents of English tend to link their vowels to glosses in this page to indicate which vowels the shifts originate from. People who want to read about how various dialects realize those vowels can do so in their own time, but a lot of people are using this page as merely a pronunciation reference, a starting point. Without links to the IPA articles, the average person, and even someone like me who is relatively well-versed in IPA consonants, doesn't know what these symbols stand for especially regarding the vowels. There should be a level of accessibility here. If links to vowels are inappropriate because the realizations vary too much, who's not to say that simply listing vowels as concrete constants in the first place isn't appropriate either? You can leave a note saying that vowels vary greatly from dialect to dialect, but omitting links altogether doesn't make sense. Also, if you want to go for perfect accuracy there's no reason to list /ɹ/ as a trill either. This is a help article. If people want to read all they can about English phonology, they can go to the encyclopedic article for it, not a quick reference. Xerces1492 (talk) 12:51, 20 November 2017 (UTC)


 * If links to vowels are inappropriate because the realizations vary too much, who's not to say that simply listing vowels as concrete constants in the first place isn't appropriate either? You're mistaking allophones for phonemes (or the other way around). They're completely different things. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:00, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

The return of /ɹ/
At the risk of groans (or worse) from other editors, I'm interested in bringing up, once more, the replacement of /r/ with /ɹ/. Actually, in the most recent discussion on this topic (I believe it's this one), five or six editors basically favored replacement, three or four basically opposed replacement, and one simply asked for evidence that the replacement was more reader-friendly (without seeming to take any particular side). I'm simply outlining this to show that, as far as the Wikipedia community is concerned, the issue is still reasonably up for debate. I personally am in favor of the replacement idea. I think it's better because: At the same time, I realize that nearly all dictionaries and most phoneticians use the symbol /r/. I probably will not figure too centrally in this discussion, as I don't have a lot of time to research, and I'm not even sure that a debate can happen yet. So, really, here's the point of me bringing this all up: Are there any strong SOURCES we can find that actually merit the change to /ɹ/? These of course -- SOURCES -- are what has been lacking enough to prevent any changes to our IPA situation. So: Thoughts? Wolfdog (talk) 21:42, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Better to use a symbol representing or approximating a majority of English dialects rather than a symbol that represents perhaps not even a single native dialect
 * Foreign readers (and editors, it seems) can be easily confused by this sound and symbol which can vary wildly depending upon one's own background cultural/linguistic POV (obviously, the phone [r] is actually accurate when used in Italian, Russian, or Spanish [the latter in which it is even contrastive with another type of "r" sound])
 * The best-sourced argument for retaining /r/ is based firmly in habit or tradition, rather than convenience or accuracy, though really convenience and accuracy are what are more in line with Wikipedia's entire purpose
 * There's the "berry/Betty" type argument... in which /r/ can be misconstrued based on dialects as some other phoneme, whereas I can think of no English dialect in which /ɹ/ could be possibly misconstrued as anything else.
 * Thanks for creating the thread. I'll try to look for sources, but I can't promise anything spectacular. I'm obviously for changing to, but I'd rather list my reasons after finding sources to back up what I'm saying.


 * At the same time, I realize that nearly all dictionaries and most phoneticians use the symbol /r/. I think every single dictionary out there uses, not just most of them. It's a firmly established transcription.


 * There's the "berry/Betty" type argument... in which /r/ can be misconstrued based on dialects as some other phoneme, whereas I can think of no English dialect in which /ɹ/ could be possibly misconstrued as anything else. I don't understand this argument. The alveolar stop in Betty can never be trilled, only flapped. The correct IPA representation of the alveolar flap is $\langle\rangle$, not $\langle\rangle$. Mr KEBAB (talk) 05:42, 13 November 2017 (UTC)


 * At first, I think I connected this berry/Betty claim with somewhere I'd read a while ago relating to Lancashire or Yorkshire dialect producing [r] for the /t/ in a dialect term like geroff, though in a quick search online I don't find that substantiated anywhere. Sorry. We can strike that. Wolfdog (talk) 02:45, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
 * This is an approximant  and it is identical to the main allophone of . It's quite common in Northern England, and it's an effect of re-analyzing a prevocalic word-final tap  as  and then changing  to  because of the tap -> approximant evolution (as in most other accents of England) of the main allophone of . So  -> . Mr KEBAB (talk) 06:35, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think this is what I was half-remembering. Wait, so do you mean the phonetic transcription would be ? You said an approximant, correct? And does that then justify my original comment? Wolfdog (talk) 21:44, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Phonetic or phonemic? Your transcription is enclosed within slashes. Yes, that is, an approximant. You have the Handbook of Varieties of English, right? There's a whole chapter on Northern English there.


 * No, because it's more stigmatized in betty than in get off and there's less justification for analyzing the in betty as  than it is the case in get off. At least as far as I know. But Wells seems to agree with me. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:28, 14 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Whoops. Yes. I meant the brackets, sorry. Wolfdog (talk) 00:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Anyway, I could've called it the "geroff argument" then. I used the term "berry/Betty argument" as this is what it was called by an editor in the previous discussion I linked. I assumed it was a similar situation as "geroff/get off". Wolfdog (talk) 00:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I mean that there's some justification in transcribing get off as (or ) in phonemic transcription. At least, it's more justified than transcribing betty as  or, which is something no scholar would do. (BTW, see also Phonological_history_of_English_consonants - apparently, this t-r merger can also happen in Cardiff, but the source is 27 years old. Maybe it's dying out.)


 * Hmm, maybe I misunderstood your original argument. Can you rephrase it? Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:21, 16 November 2017 (UTC)


 * No, we can just drop it. I'm not feeling like I'm on any firm ground here. It was just based on what another user had said mixed with my own tenuous memories about these British dialects. Wolfdog (talk) 23:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)


 * Fair enough, I was just curious what you meant. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:27, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

/ɹ/ in scholarly works
Here's a quick finding of some scholarly works that use /ɹ/ as the English "r" phoneme (listed by the author's last name; if anyone knows anything about these scholars, please contribute to the discussion): In addition, here are some scholarly works that use /ɹ/ as the English "r" phoneme specifically in relation to bilinguals or foreign-language speakers interacting with English. This bolsters my previous comment above that "Foreign readers (and editors, it seems) can be easily confused by this sound and symbol [i.e. using the symbol /r/ as the English "r" phoneme] which can vary wildly depending upon one's own background cultural/linguistic POV". My point in listing these few works is that the phoneme symbol /ɹ/ certainly has some currency in the academic scholarship, despite not being the mainstream symbol, and is evidently used in particular to clarify in cases where the symbol /r/ would be confusing. Wolfdog (talk) 03:02, 26 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Aiello
 * Bellavance
 * Boyce
 * Hamilton
 * Magloughlin
 * Mielke
 * Roeder
 * Twist
 * Walker
 * Drozdova
 * O'Neal
 * Osborne
 * Saito AND here too, for example (This author uses the phoneme in a number of works, which I won't all list here.)
 * Yaure

Maybe we should just deprecate /ɔər/?
(Moved from the discussion above this one. I didn't mean to hijack it - Mr KEBAB)

I think that to transcribe it puts an unnecessary burden on editors who use e.g. the CEPD (which otherwise is an excellent source) to source their IPA. I've learned this since last year. Normally, I use the LPD or both the LPD and the CEPD, but I'm sure I've never written, just , and have thus contributed to the inconsistent use of on Wikipedia, at least in several entries. My question is: who's going to moderate the relevant entries? Isn't that also a burden in and of itself? We have enough problems with keeping, and  apart, I've also seen at least 5-10 examples of the unstressed  being mistranscribed as * (see Berlin, Pittsburgh, etc.) Let's keep it simple.

I'm sorry Tharthan and other editors, but the fact that your local dialect distinguishes from  is, in my opinion, not good enough of a reason to keep transcribing it. Scottish and Irish English distinguish three variants of the NURSE vowel, but we don't transcribe that either. Can anyone prove that (however it's transcribed) is still used in General American by at least half of its speakers? Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:01, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, let us try and make Wikipedia follow the ALMIGHTY MIDWESTERN AND WESTERN DIALECTS as closely as possible, and let us ignore other dialects as much as possible (even when we don't have to pay attention to other dialects, because the distinction in question is an optional element of General American). You know what, Mr KEBAB, I also suggest that we deprecate /ɔ/ altogether and instead just use /ɑ/, because it is likely that more (or soon to be more) people in the United States have the cot-caught merger than not. Furthermore, let us not distinguish between merry, Mary and marry either in any of our transcriptions because that distinction is (or has) rapidly been overtaken in most areas of the United States by the Mary-marry-merry merger. And let us not distinguish between /ʌr/ and /ɝ/, because (again) more speakers do not distinguish between those.
 * (Moved above.) Tharthan (talk) 16:54, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * You're completely ignoring the fact that our system is pandialectal and diaphonemic, so I'm afraid your proposal (I know, it's not serious) doesn't make much sense. However, there's no major standard dialect of English (one that is transcribed in the IPA by reputable dictionaries, so not Irish, Scottish, broad New England, etc.) that has the HOARSE vowel, unless this distinction is maintained in General American more often than I thought. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:25, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, I don't deny that the HOARSE vowel is optional in General American. My question is: how many speakers use it? Is it at least a half of them? That's what you didn't answer. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:32, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I like this proposal, but I might be biased because I don't speak a dialect that maintains the distinction and don't have information on how common it is. The impression that I get is that it's much less than half (though I wouldn't want half to be the cutoff for determining this), but I could be wrong. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  19:14, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I should've said a third or a quarter. Half is a lot of speakers. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:34, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * This reminds me of in RP. Hardly anyone uses it, but it's not something many (or at least some) teachers would correct. The HOARSE (or FORCE) vowel in GA may be basically the same. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Is it or  in traditional Received Pronunciation? Tharthan (talk) 20:20, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Same thing, different transcription. Mr KEBAB (talk) 20:31, 19 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Wow, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. It wasn't a proposal, I was merely testing the water. As far as whether or not we should keep a distinct diaphoneme for FORCE at all, I'm ambivalent. But the more I think about it the more I'm disposed to the idea of abandoning the distinction, not because few speakers have it but because of how difficult it is for us to verify and maintain each notation. We could discourage it instead of completely abandoning it, but I'm sure that would reinforce the inconsistency that we already have. Further complicating the matter is that spelling isn't much of help unlike /hw/ (which is still somewhat common in the US South according to ANAE). So when it comes to words recently coined or borrowed, the choice is completely arbitrary. If you believe we should drop it so firmly, would you be willing to open an RfC? Nardog (talk) 14:28, 21 September 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I may have hijacked your discussion without really meaning to do so. I should've at least replied to your post. (Moved above.)
 * Sorry, I may have hijacked your discussion without really meaning to do so. I should've at least replied to your post. (Moved above.)


 * We could discourage it instead of completely abandoning it, but I'm sure that would reinforce the inconsistency that we already have. Yeah, it's better to just deprecate it. I'm sure that no serious dictionary would transcribe in only some of its entries, they have an all-or-nothing approach just as we should.


 * Further complicating the matter is that spelling isn't much of help unlike /hw/ (which is still somewhat common in the US South according to ANAE). Yes, that's very true. We could also deprecate but, as you say, it's easily distinguishable from  on the basis of spelling alone. I wouldn't press the issue with, but if someone wants to open an RfC - go ahead, I'll vote yes. Again, unless  is more common in General American than I thought.


 * So when it comes to words recently coined or borrowed, the choice is completely arbitrary. I thought about that as well. There may be a huge variation (or even free variation) that sometimes (or most of the time?!) couldn't be verified.


 * If you believe we should drop it so firmly, would you be willing to open an RfC? Not without sources, and I'm open to be proven wrong by the way. I'll check what I can, you can do the same if you want. We'll have more support if we back our words up with sources. You can check the first volume of Accents of English or the first edition of LPD, both of which are sources I don't have access to at the moment. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:59, 21 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Here is what the third volume of AoE says (page 483):


 * The words have in nearly all kinds of GenAm speech (...). For those speakers who have preserved the  vs.  contrast, this is clearly the  of  plus . (...) In  words, there is a reasonably clear geographical variation in the Atlantic states:  is merged with  in the north midland area (Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey; also New York City), but the distinction is maintained, though sometimes variably, in the Atlantic states to the north and south. In the mid west and far west, survey fieldworkers almost everywhere report that some speakers do merge pairs such as hoarse and horse, mourning and morning, while others keep them distinct. It seems that it is not unusual for speakers to be able to perceive the distinction, and know which words belong in which lexical set, while not actually producing it themselves, or producing it only in case of threatening ambiguity. The quality of the merged vowel is typically slightly closer than the  of traditional GenAm . Some speakers distinguish − pairs not by vowel quality but by duration (...).


 * Doesn't this sound a bit outdated to you? Mr KEBAB (talk) 15:11, 21 September 2017 (UTC)


 * Another (a bit weak, but still) argument for deprecating is that Cockney and (at least some speakers of) Estuary English have basically the same contrast, it's just that it manifests in a different manner (only morpheme-finally, but also word-finally if we treat the word-final  as being phonemically, which makes a lot of sense) and originally it was allophonic. Because they use an intrusive  in all but the most formal registers, the difference between this contrast and what we can find in Scottish English and the most conservative variants of RP is purely etymological (apart from also being distributional, of course). Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:29, 23 September 2017 (UTC)


 * A map in the Atlas of North American English (p. 52) shows that the vast majority (AFAICS at least 80-85% if I'm interpreting the map correctly) of speakers have the merger. This applies to both the General American area and the US as a whole. I think this is enough of a proof to open the RfC and that's what I'll do. Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:40, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Per the recent vote, I request that be removed from this guide and the IPAc-en template. Mr KEBAB (talk) 23:19, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * ✅ for now, though I wish I could find a neater way to list /ɔːr/ in the table (I wanted to use  but /oʊ.ər/ or /ɔː.ər/ would get in the way). Also, I wonder if we should keep war in the IPAc-en tooltip, or replace it or add another word to illustrate that now it covers both NORTH and FORCE. Nardog (talk) 17:05, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks. We can reverse the order of vs.  etc. by listing the disyllabic version first and then we can list the mid back vowels + r as,  (with rowspan = 2) and . I'd also remove force from the list, or at least wouldn't use the sc template for it. Mr KEBAB (talk) 17:12, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * We can reverse the order, but then we would have to reverse the order once again internally around /ɔːr/, which I don't think is quite sleek.
 * We should definitely keep force etc. in the list to indicate that /ɔːr/ now covers both NORTH and FORCE. Nardog (talk) 00:15, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
 * So let's not reverse the order and simply list only next to . Analyzing  as  when an accent has a contrastive  vowel but no contrastive  vowel (which is essentially what we're presenting) is plain wrong in RP. It may be defensible in General American, but not in RP (when speakers of RP attempt to imitate GA, they sometimes say  etc. which proves that there's a full - merger in that accent and they need to remind themselves of the correct spelling to pronounce  in the right places. Of course, I'm talking only about preconsonantal and word-final . This means that pre-consonantal  in RP unambiguously belongs to the  class, and there surely are dozens if not hundreds minimal pairs with .) Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:30, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
 * That's true, and even prevocalically, the analysis of /ɔːr/ in forum, oral, etc. in RP as underlyingly having the GOAT vowel would probably be valid only morphophonemically, not phonemically. Nardog (talk) 02:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Please restore the NORTH-FORCE vowel distinction. It isn't finished merging yet, and some of us still say the sounds differently. (I'm only 37, an X-ennial, and I still speak it.) It seems very uncouth to not indicate any kind of distinction existing as long as there are still significant numbers of speakers distinguishing it, especially if such pronunciations can still be referenced with reliable sources. - Gilgamesh (talk) 14:08, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I for one don't think it's unreasonable to permit the use of  (or revive the option as a marginal sound) to represent an instance of unmerged FORCE, provided that the article has a strong tie to a variety of English that maintains the distinction, e.g. an Irish place name (so Borneo is not such a case). There are many things some varieties of English distinguish that we don't record after all, as laid out in § Dialect variation. Nardog (talk) 16:19, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
 * But we don't have a separate tooltip for as we do for  etc. I think it's better to just use the plain IPA template for local pronunciations, so that if Borneo were e.g. a Scottish place we'd transcribe it, local  or something like that. Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:23, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I never really thought of my own accent as regional, and I've never lived in Scotland or Ireland. I've lived in both North America and in Oceania.  I've come to realize that my speech isn't exactly straightforward "General North American" (I have some quirky phonological mergers that are difficult to avoid unless I enunciate slowly), but I never really thought of my speech as particularly "accented."  I know a lot of people don't distinguish the NORTH and FORCE vowels, but I really generally do, mainly as something like  vs. .  I know this isn't exactly the best argument to make in a consensus-building process since it's so anecdotal, and it would be entirely reasonable for any other editor to point that out.  But it does help inform my instincts as an editor both on Wikipedia and at Wiktionary concerning the English language.  Merging NORTH and FORCE vowels even in international pronunciation guides feels...weird and very counterintuitive, you know?  If I'm actually aware of the distinction, it doesn't seem like it does any harm to reflect it in a pronunciation guide (where reliable third-party references can be provided to back it up), at least as an alternate pronunciation. - Gilgamesh (talk) 17:57, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
 * You're a little late, unfortunately. It has already been deprecated. For the record, though, I agree with you. I think that the decision was farcical and will probably be repeated in the future with other distinctions, sadly. This is one of the reasons why Wikipedia is going down the gutter (that, and the fact that one cannot read articles on controversies [even noticeably old ones] without the articles reeking of bias.) For one thing, there is a noticeable Midwestern/Western (that includes Southern Midwest as well) bias on Wikimedia projects regarding North American linguistics, something which I and others have been trying to help remedy (to some extent).
 * Also, everyone's speech is "accented" to some extent. Everybody speaks a dialect and everybody speaks with some sort of accent. The question in today's world is of which dialect one speaks. Does one speak with one of the plain, dull and uninteresting General American dialect and accent continuum's accents which are more or less a slightly more traditional form of the generic Midwestern dialect and accent, or does one speak one of the many more interesting dialects that exist in the English speaking world? Tharthan (talk) 00:35, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
 * For the record, I am more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist. I am perfectly fine with designating a merged NORTH and FORCE vowel as a primary articulation if it's the majority one.  However, as a descriptivist, I can also describe what still exists, and that's especially true if my own speech reflects it to some degree.  I still believe in reflecting a distinct FORCE vowel as a secondary pronunciation in pronunciation guides, including for terms outside Ireland, Scotland, New England, etc.
 * (The funny thing is, I can't really completely trace where my accent quirks come from. I was born in Hawai'i, raised in the Marshall Islands, and moved to North America when I was a teenager.  I could never identify that either of my own parents actually had the horse-hoarse distinction, and I grew up partially unaware of its existence, though it can be said that uneducated people aren't necessarily actively aware of their own language's phonology or grammar&mdash;they just speak it.  When I did become aware I was making the distinction, I started hearing it more in others who made it too.  Mainly instance words at first, like Ford.  Now I'm aware that my NORTH vowels are slightly higher and shorter, while my FORCE vowels are slightly lower and longer but with more pronounced rounding and protrusion of the lips.  And I'm still not sure where I got it from.  Strangely, some non-canonically- FORCE words also carry the vowel as a quirk of my own accent, where I tend to merge  with, and it has the effect of  becoming , thus .  I wasn't even aware that orange (oarnge), horror (hoar) or mirror (mere) were two-syllable words until my teen years when I first heard people enunciate them polysyllabically.  But in high school, my film literature teacher did caution everyone to say Little Shop of Horrors as Little Shop of Hahrers, to prevent people from thinking we're saying Little Shop of Whores, leading me to think I was far from the only one with this phonological quirk.  But now I'm getting increasingly off-topic, so I digress.)
 * If the distinction was deprecated with the consensus of a few, can it become undeprecated with further discussion and consensus of more? I can understand the TERM, BIRD and NURSE vowels being distinct only in limited areas like Scotland and Ireland, which is why virtually no influential non-regional dictionary has distinguished them in a very long time.  But the distinction between HORSE amd FORCE vowels is still genuinely real on multiple continents and is hardly dead, and even dictionary.com shows the difference.  It at least deserves note as a secondary pronunciation, like with dictionary.com. - Gilgamesh (talk) 05:05, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

stress marks
can someone explain why sometimes there is a stress mark (') in one-syllable words and sometimes there isn't

for example Leeds, Poole (no stress), York, Bath (stress) LICA98 (talk) 21:04, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Editors' preference. Remove the stress marks if you want, both variants are correct. Mr KEBAB (talk) 21:09, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to say they are redundant and should be removed though, except for the notation of a part of a specific, longer articulation, e.g. a sentence (which are unlikely to be provided in IPAc-en anyway). Stress is always a matter of degree and therefore, at least on a lexical level, a monosyllabic word cannot be said to be stressed or unstressed. The only dictionary that puts the stress mark in monosyllables AFAIK is Merriam-Webster, which requires the stress mark to distinguish the STRUT/NURSE vowels from commA/lettER. Nardog (talk) 17:27, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, it seems very odd to put stress marks on a word with only one syllable. Does anyone have any objection to removal?   D b f i r s  18:38, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that the stressed-unstressed dichotomy doesn't apply to monosyllables said in isolation, but that's true only as far as phonology is concerned. When you compare how you say Leeds in isolation and in the sentence I'm going to LEEDS, not Manchester, you'll see that they pretty much have the same degree of stress. So you can say that phonetically, monosyllables said in isolation can only be stressed. Mr KEBAB (talk) 19:03, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I would disagree that stress is only a matter of degree: lexical stress conditions consonant allophones consistently, so we can see that the monosyllable in two is lexically stressed because its initial consonant is and not  (in flapping dialects) no matter what the sentence context is; while to in those dialects can variously have, even though it is  if in isolation.  Isolated words always bear phrasal stress, but we're not marking that: we're marking lexical stress.  After all, this is very much a (dia)phonemic transcription and not a phonetic one.  Not that I think this is an important matter (after all, the monosyllabic words that don't bear lexical stress are precisely the words we would never bother transcribing), but I very much oppose going around editing all the transcriptions to remove all the monosyllabic stresses. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 21:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Should we pair /ɛər, ɪər, ʊər/ with /ɛ, ɪ, ʊ/ instead of /eɪ, iː, uː/?
As per the title. This is to facilitate understanding for merging accents such as GA like how /ɜːr/ is paired with /ʌ/. That way the merry-mary and mirror-nearer mergers can be more easily read.--Officer781 (talk) 11:06, 22 December 2017 (UTC)
 * My instant reaction is no, since obviously /ɛər, ɪər, ʊər/ are phonologically /eɪ, iː, uː/ + /r/. But I'm interested in hearing what others think too. Nardog (talk) 14:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Seconded. It's not a big deal, but it'd introduce a small discrepancy between the treatment of and other rhotic vowels. Mr KEBAB (talk) 12:41, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Syllabification of /Vər/
Is it necessary to mark syllable breaks in /eɪ.ər/, /iː.ər/, /oʊ.ər/, /ɔː.ər/ and /uː.ər/? It is definitely necessary for /aɪ.ər/, /aʊ.ər/ and /ɔɪ.ər/, but I don't see how f.e. /eɪ.ər/ could be mistaken for /ɛər/.

--maczkopeti (talk) 00:48, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Non-rhotic /ɜː/
There exist loanwords such as föhn, Möbius, Peugeot, and pho, in which a vowel (usually a front rounded one in the native language) is pronounced as the NURSE vowel in non-rhotic accents, even though it is not followed by $\langler\rangle$. In rhotic accents, such a vowel is pronounced as either: And so long as what /ɜːr/ as a diaphoneme tells readers is "Pronounce this /ɜː/ if you're non-rhotic, /ɜ(ː)r/ if you're rhotic", it wouldn't be accurate to use /ɜːr/ in cases #1–3. One might say we can still write e.g. ", ", but that doesn't really solve the problem because it is highly unlikely that e.g. a rhotic UK speaker would pronounce the word with a coda /r/ instead of improvising a non-rhotic /ɜː/ or opting for the US variant. It should be able to write ", ".
 * 1) another vowel such as /uː/ (Betelgeuse) or /ʌ/ (pho), sometimes even violating the phonotactics;
 * 2) the marginal vowel /œ/ (found in American dictionaries, though I'm not sure how much this is meant to be descriptive of English speakers' actual production as opposed to the pronunciation in the original language );
 * 3) a lengthened schwa-like vowel, just like the non-rhotic NURSE; or
 * 4) the usual rhotic NURSE vowel, as in many speakers' pronunciation of Goethe and hors d'oeuvre.

CEPD18 includes at least 42 instances of case #3 and 17 of case #1, and LPD3 includes at least 52 instances of #1, counting only the first variants in each accent. In fact, there are already at least a dozen articles which could use /ɜː/, a bigger number than that of the articles currently using /ɔɪər/ or /æ̃/. So why don't we add /ɜː/ as a marginal segment? Nardog (talk) 14:37, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't know if we should add it, but what I'm curious about are US-specific pronunciations with which doesn't exist as a separate phoneme in General American and in the vast majority of regional accents of the North America. See American and British English pronunciation differences, for example. Pronunciations such as  are listed as American and they're not.  is American.
 * The same applies to UK-specific (more like Anglo-Welsh-specific) pronunciations with coda, which for the majority of speakers isn't there even phonemically and mantaining it in speech is non-standard. After all, here UK usually stands for RP/Estuary, no? Northerners wouldn't even think of saying etc. and that's what dictionaries prescribe.
 * Perhaps it's about time we split the pronunciations into GA and RP? If we do that, transcribing words in both accents should be mandatory in all articles as long as they're sourced. We can think about other accents if there are dictionaries/wordlists to back up the IPA.
 * I'm also curious about how many people actually use the mousehover feature. If we dropped it and just used IPA-en as we do for other languages, would that make a negative difference? I think it wouldn't. Many readers have admitted to me that they either don't use the mousehover feature, they don't understand our diaphonemic system or even both. Mr KEBAB (talk) 14:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Please stay on topic. ;) Abandoning the diaphonemic principle is such a big change with so many ramifications throughout Wikipedia that we cannot possibly hope to discuss it here.
 * Nonetheless, you raise a good point: One thing WP:RHOTIC (or WP:PRON as a whole) or this guide don't specify is what to do when IPA(c)-en is used explicitly for a pronunciation in a specific dialect. Should it be e.g. "" or ""? I agree it should be the latter. Shouldn't it be "", you ask? I'd say no. I know length isn't phonemic in GA, but it'd be way too much to ask average readers (and editors) to remember /ɑː/ and /ɑ/ are equivalent but should be differentiated based on dialectal difference. In fact LPD and CEPD do use /ɑː/, /iː/, etc. even for GA, instead of supplying a distinct set of symbols for each accent (RDPCE's approach). And we could prescribe essentially what LPD/CEPD do when IPA(c)-en is used to describe a pronunciation in a specific accent, so readers and editors wouldn't have to be bewildered by so many symbols. That would be another rationale for adding /ɜː/. Nardog (talk) 16:03, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Not to throw a wrench in here, but I've only ever heard fellow North Americans use the pronunciation (or, for most U.S. citizens, yes, ). Just listen to just the first minute of this interview to hear two Americans' pronunciations of the word, one being the lifelong scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Two Americans (of three) on Forvo also use this pronunciation. Although it's just my impression, I'd wager that the schwa pronunciation is an older one that is receding. Wolfdog (talk) 16:22, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The example is from American and British English pronunciation differences, which covers that variant too. Nardog (talk) 16:37, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm having trouble understanding the problem with, . What do we want this hypothetical rhotic UK speaker to do that this wouldn't accomplish? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 19:56, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * To not pronounce the /r/. And don't forget there's also case #3. CEPD has a bunch, so we are currently unable to cite it accurately with IPAc-en. Merriam-Webster also includes variants with \ə̄\, i.e. [ɜː]. Nardog (talk) 20:30, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think I see what you're saying. Because we're using "UK" to mean "non-rhotic" it might confuse rhotic UK speakers into producing the wrong pronunciation. The easiest solution might be explanatory footnotes. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 23:55, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Not just that. There are also words that reliable sources say are pronounced with /ɜː/, not /ɜr/, in GA. In addition, Mr KEBAB has suggested that when IPA(c)-en is used to illustrate a pronunciation explicitly in one dialect or the other, we not follow the diaphonemic principle and use e.g. /ɑː/ in place of /ɒ/ for US pronunciation. I echo his suggestion, and should it be accepted and incorporated into MOS:PRON, we would not be able to notate the UK pronunciation of words with the NURSE vowel with IPAc-en without adding /ɜː/ as another diaphoneme. Nardog (talk) 02:58, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I feel like we might need some investigating on the presence of as a non-native phoneme in rhotic dialects of English (akin to use of front rounded vowels or uvular rhotics in English) that goes beyond just the transcriptions found in some dictionaries. Also, is it even a good idea to use IPc-en if it's not a diaphonemic transcription? — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  15:29, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Well, that's difficult when it comes to marginal segments isn't it. But listen, for example, to people pronouncing Goebbels. Some rhotic speakers do indeed pronounce it with non-rhotic /ɜː/ or some equivalent of it, but it eventually comes down to how much one is acquainted with the donor language and how much one is willing to approximate the pronunciation to it, as with any other marginal segment. The fact many people simply have a syllabic R in Goethe and hors d'oeuvre and other vowels in Betelgeuse, pho, etc. suggests non-rhotic /ɜː/ in rhotic speech may perhaps only be present during a transitional period in which the word has not yet completely assimilated into English (which makes it a marginal segment). Nevertheless, isn't making it possible to write e.g. "" enough of a reason to add /ɜː/ for you? I don't quite see how a footnote can be an easier solution.
 * Describing a pronunciation in a specific variety using IPAc-en doesn't automatically make it not diaphonemic. Rather, e.g. "" is a transcription of a pronunciation in one variety using our diaphonemes, within the confines of what the diaphonemes allows us to do. wouldn't be accurate because GenAm doesn't have /ɒ/.  using IPAc-en helps readers identify what phoneme each symbol corresponds to more easily than e.g., which requires them to learn a whole separate set of symbols for that specific dialect. Nardog (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but it seems like you don't understand how this works. Describing a pronunciation for a specific variety that way does, indeed, make it not diaphonemic (KEBAB's suggestion was to do away with the diaphonemic system). Under the logic of our diaphonemic system, if we transcribe cosmos as, we're saying it's pronounced with the PALM vowel, when it should be the LOT vowel. For General American, these have merged, but the point of the diaphonemic system is that we mark contrasts don't appear in all varieties. That's why the phrase "a transcription of a pronunciation in one variety using our diaphonemes" doesn't really make any sense. — Æµ§œš¹  [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:15, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I see what you're saying, but IPAc-en does already have the built-in prescripts "UK" and "US" and is used for pronunciations in one dialect or another in many articles. And who/what says one can't use the diaphonemic system, the point of which, yes, is to mark contrasts that don't appear in all varieties, to describe a pronunciation in a specific variety, and not mark contrasts that don't appear in that variety―especially when the pronunciation of the word(s) in another variety is also provided?
 * (Mr KEBAB said " is American", with $\langleɑː\rangle$ not $\langleɑ\rangle$, so I'm not sure if I agree with your assessment of his statement. His ultimate suggestion was indeed to do away with the diaphonemic system, but the insinuation I got there (in his first paragraph) is that we should use /ɑː/ in place of /ɒ/ as far as GA goes should we use the diaphonemic system to notate it. This he can clarify.)
 * Consider, for instance, what to do when describing the General American pronunciation of lieutenant. Should it be because those who pronounce lieu  might pronounce the /j/? But such people would most likely pronounce it ., which describes a pronunciation in one variety using the diaphonemes, signals the pronunciation better than the awkward, theoretically diaphonemic  without making the readers having to learn an additional set of symbol/phoneme combinations. Nardog (talk) 18:10, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * The built-in prescripts are for cases when UK and US pronunciations are the result using different diaphonemes, such as your lieutenant example, not for cases like cosmos where it's just a case of differing vowel inventories or phonetic nuances. So the accurate use of the diaphonemic system with your example would be something along the lines of:
 * Lieutenant (US:, UK ) ...
 * The problem with using IPAc-en, which is for diaphonemic transcriptions, for transcriptions that aren't diaphonemic, is that it then undermines the work done to get readers to understand the transcriptions. We should be consistent and using dialect-specific pronunciations like is being inconsistent. — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]  21:19, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I disagree. When a source says is the modern General American pronunciation of lieutenant, there is nothing that indicates the first syllable is underlyingly . Historically, yes, it may have been the source of the current realization, but unless some source says it's still pronounced with /j/ in some variety in the US, "" wouldn't be an accurate diaphonemic transcription. (I don't understand why cosmos is not a case where "UK and US pronunciations are the result using different diaphonemes". In your suggestion it would be something like ", ".)
 * Anyway, we've gone off on quite a tangent. What do you think of /ɜː/ as an additional marginal diaphoneme? I don't see why "the easiest solution might be explanatory footnotes". Nardog (talk) 16:06, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the lj in lieutenant is a bit more debatable, but you're right that this is a minor point. I think you get my point regarding why there are built-in US and UK prescripts. The way you've indicated the variant US/UK pronunciations is, I think, just right (my comment about cosmos was more with the vowel of the first syllable).
 * In answer to your question, I still don't like it. For one, no one has put forth academic research on this, so that doesn't help us on understanding who does this, why, and why dictionaries have been putting this in their pronunciations. Is it a botched attempt at pronouncing a front rounded vowel in borrowed words? In addition, the symbol $⟨ɜː⟩$ would be about as confusing as using $⟨a⟩$, since that's a common symbol used for pronunciations to mean something slightly different. An explanatory footnote is the ideal choice with these words because there is too much variation within and between the words. Goebbels might sometimes be pronounced with this sound, but at other times with the vowel of nurse. Pho will possibly have this sound, but may also be pronounced with the vowel of goat. — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 17:54, 18 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I was led here because, as as speaker of northern English (though well south of the Scottish border), I was confused by Wikipedia's insistence on /ɜː/ appearing as /ɜːr/ when I would never think of pronouncing the r. My pronunciation is largely non-rhotic (close to RP), but with just the occasional slight rhotic hints, so I would appreciate the addition of /ɜː/ in IPc-en to avoid confusion for those of us who have even a slight British rhoticism.  I'm not an expert on IPA, so I will leave it to you experts to make a decision.   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  08:19, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * There are a number of problems with your proposal. Without getting too technical, putting as separate from  would mean that they were two distinct vowels. Even if there were dialects that made a contrast between the two, if the contrast is not encoded in dictionaries, we wouldn't have a way of verifying transcriptions. Even if we could verify this contrast in transcriptions, it would not be a good idea to represent one of those vowels as $⟨ɜː⟩$ because that symbol is commonly used for the vowel of words like nurse for non-rhotic pronunciations and would likely confuse readers.
 * I'm not sure what you mean by "a slight British rhoticism" though. Do you contrast two vowels like this or do you switch back and forth between rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciations so that the same word can be pronounced in two different ways? — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 14:56, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * No, I don't contrast the two vowels. I usually pronounce them both as əː (long schwa, slightly less open than ɜː), and in words such as nurse, I might, sometimes, for emphasis, sound the r either partially or fully.    For words such as milieu, adieu, cordon bleu etc I would never use a linking R when followed by a vowel, as I would if the pronunciation were .   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  18:45, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That's interesting. So you have linking R for a word like miller but not for milieu? Or are you saying that there are words that you vary in your pronunciation but that there are other words that you still pronounce non-rhotically even when you are speaking in this emphatic fashion? — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 19:04, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, the pub The Miller of Mansfield would have a linking R in nearly all British accents, but in the milieu of the battle would have a slight hiatus, avoiding a linking R except by those (too many in the UK) who introduce an intrusive R where none should exist (e.g."Victoria-r-and Albert Museum"). My mention of partial rhoticism is probably a red herring -- I'm not too far from the border with Scotland where speakers are fully rhotic and where readers would be very confused by .   <i style="color: blue;">D</i><i style="color: #0cf;">b</i><i style="color: #4fc;">f</i><i style="color: #6f6;">i</i><i style="color: #4e4;">r</i><i style="color: #4a4">s</i>  19:37, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * In what way would such speakers be confused? — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt] 01:51, 7 February 2018 (UTC)