Talk:English phonology/Archive 1

I have deleted the following passages, because they were confusing, irrelevant or inaccurate. If anyone would like to restore any of them, let's talk about it here first.


 * None of the twenty-six letters of the Roman alphabet used in the English-speaking world can be relied upon for consistency. The letters, as mentioned above, can have either hard or soft sounds.  They can also be used in combinations that either make multiple pronunciations possible (like the English words hegemony and phthisis, with nine possible pronunciations each) or exceptional (like the bird known as a chough, which is pronounced chuff).  The most common vowel sound in English, in fact, isn't even a standard vowel sound; the schwa, printed as an upside down and backwards e, is more of a murmur.  But the schwa appears as at least one vowel sound in almost every multisyllabic word of English.


 * Most linguistic authorities agree that English possesses more sounds than any other language; [...] By contrast, Italian has just twenty-seven sounds and Hawaiian only thirteen.


 * Part of the complexities of speaking English "correctly" comes from the tendency of English-speakers to slur words and expressions together that they are familiar with. Often this manifests itself in the spellings (for example, glimpse was originally glimsen, messenger used to be messeger, and pageant was pagean) due to subconscious inclusion of a sound; over time, the listeners to these spoken words became aware of something missing -- a letter or letter combination to "complete" the word.


 * Perhaps the most pronounced change in English pronunciation came in an almost imperceptible way to those who lived through it.

--Angr 19:03, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I came to this page through a redirect from "English Pronunciation". Although the article, as it stands now, does a good job (how good I don't know, I really don't know much about phonology) for its title, what I was looking for when I got here was the kind of thing that's touched upon on that first paragraph you deleted; I wanted to see some comentary on all the irregularities or discrepancies between writing and pronunciation. If this is not the correct article to discuss this, can someone please create the proper article? -- tmegapscm, 2005-08-25


 * Try English orthography.
 * Peter Isotalo 22:52, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Frequency
Vowel Frequency I found this table at page 239 - "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language" by David Crystal, published by Cambridge University Press 1995. Would it be a copyright infringement if it were used? There is a similar table for consonants on page 242. Izehar 15:11, 26 November 2005 (UTC)


 * According to Verifiability, only what can be found in reliable sources can be used - does that mean that we are violating someone's copyright every time we cite a source? Izehar 15:13, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's a problem with using the table as long as it's properly cited. If it's included it should be made clear that it applies to Received Pronunciation (I assume)... Quite a large number of English speakers don't have a number of those vowels and diphthongs at all (I, for instance, have a 0.00% frequency for, but I do have a number of vowel phonemes not listed here at all (see here for my manifesto on that, if you're really interested))...  Cheers, Tom e rtalk  02:32, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Factual Accuracy
From the article: "The following short vowel sounds cannot occur without a coda in a single syllable word: /e/, /æ/, /ɒ/ and /ʌ/". What about the word "yeah". That ends in æ. ColinKennedy 17:35, 11 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It may be a little too strong, but it's not that far off. (Yeah is also an exception for me, but it has, so it's like yet without the /t/.) See checked and free vowels, which does give a caveat.--JHJ 18:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
 * "yeah" [jæ:] is definitely an exception in Wisconsin, and, in fact, the only exception (based on my personal original research :-p). I've never heard anyone pronounce it [jɛ], and I'm pretty sure that if I did hear it, that I'd assume "you" was meant, not "yeah".   Tom e rtalk  22:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Also what about "paw," "saw," etc? They end in /Q/.
 * The above words can be thouɡht of as ending in /ɔ/ as opposed to /ɒ/. Also, as I pronounce it, ˈyeahˈ sounds like [jæə].ChillinChaz 00:19, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I've amended the wording to re-assert that it refers to RP. All of the vowels you're referring to are long in RP. Gailtb 08:36, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
 * A year after the fact, I'm pretty sure /ɒ/ doesn't generally exist in Wisconsin English. "Paw" and "saw" definitely end in /ɔ/.  That said, a number of words in Wisconsin English do end in /e/, although they're not the same words that end in Australian English with /e/.  (E.g., in WiscE, [ðe] is "they", in AuE, it's "there" and "their" (although I think in AuE they're [ðe:] rather than just [ðe]...)...afaik, AuE has [ðeə] for "they're".)  Basically, the /e/ in WiscE (actually, most of upper midwestern AmE) doesn't have the [ɪ] offglide found in most varieties of English, and where it is present, it's much less pronounced.  This reduction holds true to a certain extent for the [ʊ] offglide on [o], although the [ʊ] actually becomes much more pronounced than in most Englishes the closer you get to Minnesoʊta. ;-)  An [un?]interesting sidenote about /ʌ/, is that while it is certainly not found as the final vowel in any monosyllables, that's because, at least in the case of WiscE, because it is instead replaced by [ə:], which isn't found elsewhere in WiscE, in monosyllables, open or closed, nor elsewhere.  (I'm operating completely on the pronunciation of "duh!" here...)  Anyhoo.  That's enough OR for one night.  Tom e rtalk  06:59, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Another interesting sidenote on Upper Midwestern regards the pronunciation of [a] in final positions...the pronunciation of such vowels is almost completely arbitrary depending on ideolect, realized as either [a] or [ɔ], and, as far as I'm aware, there's no stigma associated with either pronunciation, unlike variant pronunciations of the same pair within words. By means of an example, "Omaha" is pronounced ['o·mɨ·ˌha] and ['oʊ·mʊ·ˌhɔ] without stigma, but "Chicago" pronounced [ʃɪ·'kɔ·goʊ] or [ʃɪ·'kɔ·gɛʊ] is, in Wisconsin, highly stigmatized as an Illinois (or further afield) "accent", while [ʃɪ·'ka·go] is regarded as the "normal" pronunciation.  Note that ɐ and ɑ are not used.  I think this is what leads to people hyperpronouncing "Chicago accents" with "æ", since [a] is more palatal than they're accustomed to hearing.  For us in the upper midwest, however, ɐ and ɑ sound far more like ɔ than they do like a.  I think this has led to some confusion for upper-Midwestern writers when discussing the caught/cot merger, which, by and large, actually has not happened here nearly to the extent that the literature suggests to the contrary.  OK.  Enough for another night of pontification.  :-)  Cheers, Tom e rtalk  06:40, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I just made a correction to my above post that makes me realize, with some surprise, that, at least in upper midwestern AmE, there seem to be some aspects of vowel harmony taking hold. Interesting indeed... oops... Tom e rtalk  06:44, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

non-onset /r/
Are the following sentences in the current version correct?

In the Nucleus section:
 * The following can occur as the nucleus:
 *  in rhotic varieties of English (eg General American) in certain situations

and in the Coda section:
 * The following can occur as the coda:
 * The single consonant phonemes except, , and, in non-rhotic varieties, 

If the nucleic means  or, then I think it is not a consonant but a vowel. Likewise, the coda is not a consonant but a part of a diphthong such as. - TAKASUGI Shinji 08:11, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I think most people agree that the nucleus of rhotic bird is and the coda simply [d], but whether the rhotic portion of beard is in the nucleus or the coda is still unclear, with evidence from different phenomena pointing in different directions. I wrote a paper once arguing that after a high vowel, r is in the coda, but after a non-high vowel it's in the nucleus (evidence was from language games in American English), so that the r of beard is in the coda but the r of board and bard is in the nucleus. Similar results are found in Abigail C. Cohn's dissertation, where she measures how quickly nasalization stops after a nasal consonant: the  portion of the diphthong in noise still has slight nasalization, while the [o] of disyllabic neo has none; similarly, the [r] portion of north still has slight nasalization, while the [r] portion of near has none. On the other hand, fluent backward talkers treat diphthongs and affricates as units (backward-talk of join is ) but treat r-colored vowels as two segments (backward-talk of turn is . So it's still clear, and for this article, it's probably safest to say [r] appears in both the nucleus (e.g. bird) and the coda (e.g. near) in rhotic accents. Angr (talk • contribs) 08:34, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for your explanation. Isn't it because of the spelling that turn becomes nrut in backward-talk?  Bird becomes drib, perhaps?  The reason why I asked the question is that I'd like to import a vowel chart in International Phonetic Alphabet for English to the Japanese version of Wikipedia.  I'll add a note on the ambiguity of [ɹ]. - TAKASUGI Shinji 15:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't know what backward-talk for bird is, and I'm willing to believe is at least partially influenced by the spelling, but the speakers in the article I read (I don't have the ref to hand I'm afraid) were otherwise reversing phonemes without regard to spelling (mice ->, not to anything that could be rendered ecim). Angr (talk • contribs) 16:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)


 * It's interesting both Shavian and Deseret alphabets treat as a sequence of a vowel and /r/.  This suggests some native English speakers think  is not a single phoneme. - TAKASUGI Shinji 16:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

add audio files ?
It may be useful, especially for non-native english speakers, to add some ogg audio files. 86.204.29.12 11:27, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

What about 4 consonant codas?
For example "glimpsed".
 * What about them? Sixths is another one. Angr (talk • contribs) 07:47, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

4-consonant codas which are formed with the -s/-z or -t/-d morphemes as the fourth consonant are explained in the introduction to the section on codas. Gailtb 08:24, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Oops, missed that... Linguofreak 15:49, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Non-Assimilated Onsets?

 * Note: A few onsets occur infrequently making it uncertain whether they are native pronunciations or merely non-assimilated borrowings, e.g. /sv/ (svelt), /sr/ (Sri Lanka), /vr/ (oeuvre), /ʃw/ (schwa), /smj/ (smew), and /sfr/ (sphragistics).

For /shri lanka/, there is also shrink, shroud, etc. For (sphragistics), what happens to sphinx and sphere? They don't seem to be in the table, but they are definitely assimilated. user:Phillipmackin 30/05/06
 * I think Sri Lanka is being assumed to have /sr/ rather than like shrink, shroud, etc. I've heard both, and  is actually closer to the Sanskrit pronunciation. As for sphragistics, the point is that it has /sfr/; sphere and sphinx have only /sf/. Angr (talk) 19:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Couldn't /vl/ as in Vladimir also go into this list? It is, as far as I know, pronounced /vl/ by most English speakers, but does not otherwise occur in English. Xyzzyva 15:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

æ-Tensing in RP
I have removed the following addition pending verification:
 * Old recording of British RP speakers (for instance, mid-century recordings of Queen Elizabeth) display evidence that a similar system existed in earlier versions of RP. However, such pronunciations died out after World War II.

In the absence of the citation of reliable sources, this sounds to me like original research. User:Angr 19:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Minimal sets for onset contrasts?
I was wondering whether it might be helpful when giving example words for the various onsets to keep the codas and nuclei consistent (whenever possible). For instance, for "Voiceless fricative plus approximant other than /j/", the article could give "flee, sleep, free, three, shriek, sweep, thwack (for lack of a better word) and wheat" instead of the current examples. Then, for "/s/ plus voiceless plosive", it could give "speak, steed, ski", and so on. We could also do something similar with the coda lists. I think this would better highlight the contrasting sounds, but my concern is that it might make the section as a whole look too singsongy or hard to read. Does anyone else have an opinion? -- Calcwatch 04:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Length and strengths
Is it correct to say that these words can have /ŋkθ/ or /ŋθ/ depending on the dialect? My own reasoning would say it is /ŋθ/ (ie the adjective with ablaut plus the nominal suffix /θ/) with an epenthetic [k]. Cf /wɔːmθ/ [wɔːmpθ]. What does the literature say? And if this is so, is there a principled reason for saying that words like prompt and glimpse have 3 consonants rather than 2 in their phonemic representation or do we just work on the basis of spelling? Gailtb 06:42, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * And if the [k] is epenthetic? It's still pronounced.  OED has both pronunciations.  Possibly it's justified by the 'g'; I pronounce the [k] in 'length' but not the [p] in 'warmth'.  As for prompt, glimpse, everything I've looked at transcribes them with 3 consonants. –EdC 12:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Possible justifications for the current vs.  (etc.) transcription:
 * coda do not (AFAIK) become
 * the rare cluster [mt] in dreamt (I don't think that's included in the list yet, BTW, but it's arguably just an allomorph of -ed and doesn't thus need an explicit mention)
 * OTOH some dialects have (again, AFAIK) vel. sim. even for intermorphemic instances such as gangster or even going somewhere, which illustrates that the epenthesis in question can be synchronical and not just a fossilized sound change result.
 * I think I'm bordering on OR here however. I agree that a literature quote would be good.
 * --Tropylium 23:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think we need to worry too much; it's a lot simpler to just report what (reputable, mainstream) dictionaries write as their transcriptions. (Though that does mean that [ŋks] is in: .)  That sort of criterion is a lot easier to apply than trying to decide which transcriptions are epentheses; OR, as you say. –EdC 01:56, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I was focusing on the difference between a phonemic transcription (which is what we're using) and a phonetic transcription. [ŋkθ] and [ŋθ] are definitely both used but that's not the same as saying that /ŋkθ/ and /ŋθ/ both exist. In the kind of Southern British dialects that I'm familiar with, when we move from a nasal (voiced) to a voiceless stop or fricative at a different place of articulation, we tend to insert a voiceless stop which is homorganic with the nasal. That's a phonological rule. (The examples don't fit this rule.) So I think the correct analysis for my speech is that /ŋθ/ is usually realised as [ŋkθ], though sometimes as [ŋθ]. But I don't know whether the literature agrees with my thinking, and I don't know if other dialects need a different analysis. Definitely not out for a major debate and happy to leave it as it is for the time being - I mostly wanted to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity. Gailtb 23:08, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Syllable structure organization
What would you think of more schematic onset/coda tables? Here's a quick example for the former:

The empty columns represent missing lab+w and alv+l series. I could have done three such ones for the palatals, too, but as they don't cluster to start with, it doesn't seem as informativ. Also, I'm not sure where to stick /z/, /j/, /sf/, and clusters with /j/ in there, but that's just a 5-minute sketch obviously. --Tropylium 23:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, that could definitely work better than the current mess. We should still include examples, though – perhaps using Template:Explain? –EdC 02:08, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The general idea of a table which will show the parallels and with examples sounds good. Gailtb 23:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I thought up a solution for onset /z/, which required a slight rearrangement. Also: a sketch for codas. This time there're more hard-to-place ones: /rl/, /ft sp st sk/, /dz/, /rst lst/, and /kst/. (Might be the beginnings of an /st/ series in there...) Missing /T/-final clusters would probably be better listed separately, since they're more of extrasyllabic than phonotactic nature. --Tropylium 22:29, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
 * {| class="wikitable"


 * colspan="2" align="center"| m
 * lm
 * rm
 * colspan="2" align="center"| n
 * ln
 * rn
 * colspan="2" align="center" | N
 * rowspan="4" valign="center"| 0
 * rowspan="4" valign="center"|
 * rowspan="4" valign="center"| l
 * rowspan="4" valign="center"| r
 * b
 * lb
 * rb
 * d
 * nd
 * ld
 * rd
 * dZ
 * ndZ
 * ldZ
 * rdZ
 * g
 * rg
 * p
 * mp
 * lp
 * rp
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| t
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| nt
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| lt
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| rt
 * rowspan="3" valign="center"| tS
 * rowspan="3" valign="center"| ntS
 * rowspan="3" valign="center"| ltS
 * rowspan="3" valign="center"| rtS
 * k
 * Nk
 * lk
 * rk
 * pt
 * mpt
 * lpt
 * rpt
 * kt
 * Nkt
 * lkt
 * rkt
 * ps
 * mps
 * rps
 * ts
 * lts
 * rts
 * ks
 * Nks
 * lks
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| s
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| ns
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| ls
 * rowspan="2" valign="center"| rs
 * f
 * mf
 * lf
 * rf
 * T
 * nT
 * lT
 * rT
 * S
 * lS
 * rS
 * v
 * lv
 * rv
 * D
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * f
 * mf
 * lf
 * rf
 * T
 * nT
 * lT
 * rT
 * S
 * lS
 * rS
 * v
 * lv
 * rv
 * D
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * lv
 * rv
 * D
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * z
 * nz
 * }
 * }
 * }

Caught in the cot-caught merger
I was born in Hollywood, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, and I have spent over 80% of my life in California. In other words, I speak Californian like a native. While I agree that "father" and "bother" have the same vowel, and "cot" has the same vowel as those, "caught" is different, a lower sound than the other three. The sounds are close, perhaps so close that the distinction can not be reliably heard, but I wouldn't call them the same. — Randall Bart 01:50, 13 February 2007 (UTC)


 * While it's not impossible that you are in fact pronouncing them in two distinct ways (you would presumably be part of a very small minority in your area), it's impossible to determine in what way they are different with a description like "lower sound", which implies a difference in stress or tone. Perhaps you could learn how to describe your accent in IPA. 61.25.248.86 06:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I interpreted "a lower sound" in the above comment to mean "a lower vowel" i.e. a more open vowel. While phoneticians speak of vowels as "close" or "open", phonologists (at least in the U.S.) usually say "high" or "low". —Angr 06:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * It's harder to get more open than [a]... Tom e rtalk  06:21, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The difference between cot and caught should be mostly to do with rounding. There is a height difference as well (the Eastern variant of caught, with the more rounded 'o' /ɔ/ is a bit higher) but it's hard for me to imagine that you can actually perceive in speech this very slim height difference. The thing you'll notice is the rounding. I'm an Easterner, so I have a very clear distinction between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. I'd like to validate what Randall Bart said - even in regions where the merger is advanced, I believe most speakers still make some difference between these two. Caught has a very mild but slightly perceptible rounding to it. I think there are fairly few people who actually pronounce cot and caught exactly the same. Djiann 16:47, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, since you make the distinction it's not surprising that you feel that way, but in fact that's not what the evidence shows. Various studies have shown that for some 40% of American English speakers, the words are complete homophones: speakers report themselves as pronouncing the two the same, phonetic analysis of their speech shows no significant difference between the two, and when the people in question are played back their own utterances in randomized order, they can't tell which is which. Cot and caught are just as homophonous for these people as sent, cent, and scent are. Evidence also suggests that the merger is spreading; I wouldn't be at all surprised if in 100 years there are only a few pockets of American English left where the contrast is still made, or if in 200 years the contrast had completely died out in North America. —Angr 17:04, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

/tθ/
Is /tθ/, as in eighth, an affricative? Thanks. Kylmcd 14:54, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * You mean, is it an affricative or a stop-fricative sequence? Phonetically, it's an affricative because the stop [t] doesn't have a release before the [θ] starts, but phonemically it could be regarded as a stop-fricative because it's constructed from the morphemes /eɪt/ + /θ/ (ordinal marker). –EdC 15:14, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not to be pedantic, but what it is phonetically is an affricate, not an "affricative". —Angr 18:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you guys serious? "Eighth" isn't pronounced [eɪtθ] at all!  As everyone knows, it's pronounced only with a pure fricative, [eθ]! :-)  Tom e rtalk  22:41, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
 * By you, maybe. I pronounce it . —Angr 08:25, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Interesting. That would make "eighth" the one place in the English language where "th" is pronounce with a leading stop.  Is it possible this is an example of hypercorrection?  I see in the first dictionary I grab here, that the "tth" pronunciation is given first, but I, in my life, don't recall ever having heard it pronounced that way...and, I think it's so bizarre, that if I had, I'd have noticed it...  Tom e rtalk  04:51, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * As an addendum...I'd be curious to hear how you pronounce "height". I've heard both "heighth" [hʌɪθ] and "heightth" [hʌɪʔθ] before (which really have thrown me for a loop...)
 * As I'm sure you can prolly guess, I pronounce it simply [hʌɪʔ]. Tom e rtalk  04:57, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I pronounce it, but I've also heard . I assume that pronunciation is vaguely analogical to width . —Angr 05:45, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I've never heard anyone pronounce width as [wɪtθ], only as [wɪdθ]...the "d" always being definitely voiced, even if there's a definitive hiatus between the [d] and the [θ].
 * Significantly, or maybe not so much, I have heard the pronunciation [widt̪ʰ], but the voiced [d] is always definitely there.
 * If I were ever to make a recording of it and analyze it in greater depth, I'd probably find that it's actually [wid̪t̪ʰ]...but the voiced plosive is still undeniably there. Tom e rtalk  06:33, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

ambiguous examples
"For example, in his play The Taming of the Shrew, shrew rhymed with row."

The preceding is an example of several ambiguities to be found in the examples given throughout the article. This one is particularly vague because "row" could refer to the English noun which means "an arrangement of objects or people side by side in a line" which I pronounce [ɹəʊ] or the noun meaning "quarrel, angry dispute" which I pronounce [ɹaʊ]. Which one rhymed with "shrew" for Shakespeare, I still don't know.
 * It would be "row", a line. Shrewsbury, a town in the English Midlands like Stratford-upon-Avon where Shakespeare lived, has a historic pronunciation whose first syllable contains "oh" (that should be unambiguous enough, I can't be bothered to write any more IPA today).  I highly doubt the person who originally posted "rhymed with row" meant that this was an existing rhyme in the play - rather, that that was the first "-oh" word they could think of.  Of course, without a cite all of this is worthless, but it may at least interest the reader of this talk page to know the above. 87.114.0.115 17:58, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If possible, IPA transcriptions should accompany all examples, or at least a citation of the referent dialect. Joshua Crowgey 06:46, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I just looked through the play to see the offending rhyme, but the word "row" doesn't appear even once, though this line looked suspicious:
 * Your husband, being troubled with a shrew,
 * Measures my husband's sorrow by his woe:
 * Perhaps it was actually "woe" that rhymed? Though though that doesn't give any hints as to the pronunciation of "-row". Either way, this has to be backed up with a reliable source. 61.25.248.86 06:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it was actually "woe" that rhymed? Though though that doesn't give any hints as to the pronunciation of "-row". Either way, this has to be backed up with a reliable source. 61.25.248.86 06:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

θj at the beginning of a word
I (and probably most other RP-like speakers) would use [θj] at the beginning of the name of the Greek author Thucydides. Worth mentioning? Grover cleveland 01:46, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably in the old-fashioned word "thews", too. —Angr 08:42, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * My dictionary also has Thule, thurible, and thurifer with this sequence. Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  12:06, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I've updated the relevant sections. I think GenAm speakers would use [θu] in all these examples, but that's mentioned above. EdC 14:44, 21 October 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought of another one: the surname of David Thewlis. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 14:39, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Additional information and possible merger needed ?
This phonology article is very different from others in a confusing way. While most other articles about phonology of various languages have explanations on how each phoneme is articulated and the possible allophones, this one does not.

Instead, those informations are listed in the International Phonetic Alphabet for English article, and even that one isn't complete enough. I can't, for example, find out if the /r/ is slightly labialized, or if the /ʃ/ and the /ʒ/ are slightly palatalized after certain vowels (beside being labialized, which again, is mentioned in other articles but not in this one). Those are the way I perceive it as a foreigner, but in the present article I have no way to confirm nor disprove this observation. It'd be nice if some of these information are included. Better yet, is it possible to merge this two articles into one?

Moreover, some of the information contained in this article is redundant, namely the mentioning of several "merger"s and "split"s. It's already described with much more details in other articles such as Phonological history of English short A, Phonological history of English low back vowels, etc, so I don't see the point of including them in this article, not least including only a small portion of them. 石川 (talk) 14:33, 1 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I was going to say that International Phonetic Alphabet for English has a different purpose than this article but then I noticed that there's also IPA chart for English. It seems like you're right that information in International Phonetic Alphabet for English should be combined here;  I think, though, that the actual article should become a redirect to IPA chart for English.  You're also right that this doesn't provide the same layout as other pages.  There's no consonant table and major allophones aren't described.  The main problem is that there are many dialects of English.  Perhaps we should split this into American and British phonologies.  The American one would be General American and British be Received Pronunciation.  In fact, I could even start the latter one today or tomorrow using a Peter Roach article from Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet. This would actually be more of a split of Received Pronunciation with Received Pronunciation phonology since the former already has phonetic information.
 * So if we have General American phonology and Received Pronunciation phonology then English phonology could either be a redirect page or be a much lighter page going over certain phonological information that applies to all or most English dialects. Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 20:31, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a plan. I think the consonants could be still kept at this page? as their realization doesn't really vary all that much, /T D/ aside. --Tropylium (talk) 23:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Since both General American and Received Pronunciation are only accents, not dialects (by which I mean they are defined solely by their phonetics/phonology, not by morphology, syntax, or lexicon), it would be redundant to have separate articles on "General American phonology" and "Received Pronunciation phonology". I think this article has a lot of room for improvement, but it should focus on aspects that are common to most major accents, and summarize the information better handled in more specific articles. —Angr If you've written a quality article... 07:44, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, in my view the article International Phonetic Alphabet for English contains most of the information that is needed on this article. Maybe the accent difference could be included in the "difference between GA and RP". Of course we still need some more detailed descriptions, for instance, the above mentioned labialization of r and palatalization of sh, any many others. Although the consonants of English doesn't vary that much, they still might have subtle differences compared to other languages that would be useful to know.石川 (talk) 10:59, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I was thinking similarly along Angr's thinking. I mean, Received Pronunciation phonology is sort of a redundant title.  I've expanded phonetic information on the RP article and merged most of the content from International Phonetic Alphabet for English]] into this article  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aeusoes1 (talk • contribs) 20:14, 3 January 2008 (UTC)