Template talk:IPAc-cmn

Buggy
When I have to type b|ei|yi|j|i|NG (not ng, mind you) in order to get something that looks vaguely like the IPA for Beijing, you've got a pretty damned buggy script. Please remove this from the template:IPA page until you can use this appropriately: typing in pinyin syllables in their entirety (not buggy letter by buggy letter) and having the IPA show up. — LlywelynII  03:26, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Also, I know the IPA have officially started using /t/ for "j", but it still looks damned weird (read: wrong). It would be better if this script produced /tɕ/. — LlywelynII  03:27, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean. You can just enter  to get .  And IPA /t/ equates to pinyin ‹d›, while pinyin ‹j› is in fact /tɕ/.  — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 01:06, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

The script remains buggy. in the lede to Yangtze River currently renders "[tŋ tjŋ]" on my Chrome browser instead of [tɑŋ tjɑŋ]. The characters themselves display fine when I load the edit window or wrap them with IPA formatting, so something is getting broken in the scripting. The tone markings you're trying to use over the IPA vowels don't work at all and it may be necessary to switch to numbers or line markings.

Again, kindly fix it. Complaints about "oh, it's your browser" don't work, since we don't control our readers' browsers. If this script can't be compliant for all of them and render script that works, just scrap it and use something that does. If it can work, absolutely, let's do that. (Yes, of course typing pinyin is much easier than going character by character through the IPA... :) ) But we need to link very prominently to the necessary formatting / coding / font support from the top of the Help:IPA for Mandarin page.

(It also needs a Chinese pronunciation: functionality, for cases where dabbing's necessary.) — Llywelyn II   00:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

edit war
we have an edit war on transcribing bun as [pwən]. Is this s.t. we want to do? — kwami (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

"-ui" and "-iu" finals
can you (or any other more expert editors) take a look at the "-ui" and "-iu" finals? They're being rendered as /u̯i/ and /i̯u/ when they're paired with an initial, yet independent null-initial "wei" and "you" are rendered as /u̯ɛi̯/ and /i̯ou̯/, which seems to me to be the correct representation. Is this an error, or is this how phonologists actually analyze those finals? If so, I must confess that seems bizarre to me. Thanks for the help, my expertise lies more in philology than in phonology.  White Whirlwind  咨   01:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, to be honest I wanted to remove those differences also. I did that because User:Kwamikagami seems to insist in the history of the template for an [u̯n̩] analysis for pinyin un rather than [u̯ən] (see and  so that puts me and you as the third and fourth dissenting editors). So I added the two for consistency. I'm all for putting them as identical to the null initial counterparts actually, or somehow putting it in the code so that they appear that way only in tones 1 and 2 as the phonology article says. Those are not phonological but allophonic according to Duanmu.--Officer781 (talk) 03:54, 3 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The middle vowel of your transcription does not occur in pronunciation, AFAICT, which means that your transcription is incorrect. As for them being allophonic, sure (according to some analyses at least), but this is a phonetic transcription. — kwami (talk) 01:47, 4 April 2016 (UTC)


 * WP: No_original_research states that even if it is true, there must be a reliable source before we can change it ("If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it. If you discover something new, Wikipedia is not the place to announce such a discovery."). I.e., if we can't find a paper on it you need to publish it before we can change it and then cite your paper? Moreover, from my own hearing of pronunciations from the people from China who do come to my country, there is a small schwa offglide which is similar to the pronunciation in "ying". No matter how short, it is there which I believe is why we transcribe it?--Officer781 (talk) 03:34, 4 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The issue of the exact nature of "-un" can be debated later. I certainly hear some sort of schwa-like sound in it, but Kwami's explanation of it as a glide plus a syllabic "n" also sounds plausible, when I think about it.  As I said, phonology isn't my area of expertise.  Can we at least agree on "-ui" and "-iu" being kept consistent with "wei" and "you"?   White Whirlwind  咨   14:53, 4 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Already changed.--Officer781 (talk) 07:24, 5 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks.  White Whirlwind  咨   13:14, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

zi, ci, si
The “vowel” in Pīnyīn syllables zi, ci and si should be [z̩], not [ɨ].

What are the sources for this template? —78.104.174.9 (talk) 08:38, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Syllabic consonants or rhoticized vowels
Could you explain your reason for the transcriptions so that they are different from the ones at Help:IPA/Mandarin? — Eru·tuon 05:01, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Use tone letters instead of diacritics?
This template does not use the Pinyin diacritics, but the International Phonetic Alphabet diacritics instead (even though this templates documentation claims the opposite). Unfortunately, Pinyin and IPA diacritics are extremely hard to tell apart because they largely overlap.

In light of this confusion, wouldn’t it be best if we used the IPA tone letters instead of the IPA diacritics in this template? The chance of confusion would be reduced from very high to none at all, since there is zero overlap between the Pinyin tone diacritics and the IPA tone letters. --mach &#x1f648;&#x1f649;&#x1f64a; 23:40, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * That might be a good idea. I haven't heard anyone complain they couldn't understand the IPA diacritics, though. — kwami (talk) 00:43, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You just heard someone. Here's a second person. Fix it. — Llywelyn II   03:31, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

"Er" syllable
In Help:IPA/Mandarin, it's transcribed as ɚ. Here, it's rendered as aɚ (I guess ɐɻ was meant). 89.64.21.44 (talk) 09:24, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, dear, it actually occurs twice in the Help:IPA/Mandarin table. The second time nothing is marked in bold, though, so it's unclear what is meant. 89.64.21.44 (talk) 09:27, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Laozi
No idea why this is transcribing 子 as /tsɹ̩/ but that's not the actual pronunciation in standard Mandarin, as opposed to the local Beijing dialects. If it's really this hard to get this script to work properly after this many years, just junk this version entirely and copy over Wiktionary's, which already does. — Llywelyn II   03:33, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think /tsɹ̩/ is correct for 子 even in Beijing dialect. Maybe for 字儿... I noticed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siheyuan gives 四 as [sɹ̩̂], which is definitely wrong. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%9B%9B%E5%90%88%E9%99%A2 has it as /sz̩⁵¹/, which looks much better. Lionel.rowe (talk) 11:31, 11 December 2023 (UTC)