Help talk:IPA/Marshallese

Request for IPA transcriptions
Hello. Could anyone please provide the broad and narrow IPA transcriptions of the following words? They are on the list of tropical storm names and I want to transcribe them into Thai language, but I don't know how to convert the symbols used in MED into IPA. --Potapt (talk) 20:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
 * aere {hayẹrẹy}
 * kōdọ {kedaw}
 * ḷañ {ḷag}
 * utọr {witarʷ}
 * barijat

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Inappropriate English approximations
The initial consonants in "beach", "meat", "near" and "peace" are not palatalized in English. Similarly, the consonants in "subway", "dust", "gym wear", "numb", "sleepwear" and "tough" aren't velarized either! Furthermore, it's pretty much impossible for a native speaker of English to differentiate between the initial 's in "rat" and "roof". Why would we want to list "differences" between consonants that are never made in English? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 07:52, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

This needs to be totally reworked
This creates grossly inaccurate transcriptions that sound like a foreigner who just stepped off the airplane in Mājro. For example, the word-medial allophone of the palatalized coronal stop is not [z]. It is an affricate, [d͡ʒ] or [d͡ʑ]. Epenthetic vowels are never so high and front as [i], which is the transcription presented in the Marshallese Language page: [kɑzʲinʲ(i)mˠɑːzʲɛlˠ]. Nor can I ever remember hearing epenthesis in that phrase. Finally, as a narrow transcription, this over-uses the palatalization and velarization superscripts [ʲ] and [ˠ]. This, if I read it out loud, might sound like a foreigner with a mouthful of bwiro  ... but not a native Marshallese speaker saying [kad͡ʑɪn maad͡zelˠ]. This is the narrow transcription, so we should only be showing the velarization and palatalization symbols if they are actually there to be heard. I could go on, but basically, this needs to be totally reworked for phonetic accuracy and a delineation of narrow vs broad transcription, with citations to Marshallese Reference Grammar (Bender et al., 2016), or scholarly journal articles. Not even close to being worthy of Wikipedia right now, and will certainly mislead anyone trying to learn (about) this wonderful language. Seraphimek (talk) 01:44, 1 March 2023 (UTC)


 * It also abuses the tie bar for diphthongs, which is non-IPA usage. Nardog (talk) 08:48, 4 March 2023 (UTC)