Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 January 6

= January 6 =

Seeking Pronunciation Respelling Converter
Dear Wikipedia,

I am seeking an online Pronunciation Respelling Converter for (American) English and (Mexican) Spanish terms. For example, Wikipedia respells the name of the actor Jake Gyllenhaal as "Jill-in-hall" in a non-phonemic system. I am seeking a site that will produce such a conversion for me. Or, alternatively, Wikipedia respells it as "jil-ən-hawl" in a phonemic system. That would be acceptable as well. The important thing is to avoid diacritical marks or any special symbols, except perhaps the schwa (ə) which is used (for example) for the a in about.

The interface might look something like Google's "Translate" app with input and output text boxes.

I have spent hours searching for such a conversion website, without success.

Thank you. Cumberbunce (talk) 23:17, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Cumberbunce (talk • contribs)


 * Three bits of advice. First, please type ~ at the end of talk or other non-article edits, so we know whom to address.  Adding the tildes will automatically produce your name and time you posted.


 * Second, consider learning the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is a universal standard, rather than relying on re-spellings, which are myriad, and unique to each publisher/work/website. This is not as daunting as it sounds, since most IPA symbols are familiar p,t,f,k,m,n,s or not too hard to get.  E.g., "with" = /wɪθ/ and "jueves" = /'xweβes/.


 * Third, the Harper Collins English/Spanish dictionary is the best in my opinion, and they have a website here that gives recordings of words pronounced in the Latin American standard (z, c before i/e = s; ll = y) but you won't hear distinctive Mexican phenomena like the aspiration of final -s or the typical hablar jalado with a drawn out lilting rhythm. The dictionary itself is very up-to-date, and includes slang and vulgarities.  My edition has a three-star system, one star indicating "informal" (i.e, not for formal speech or writing). two stars for vulgar, such as crap or tits that should be used with caution, and three stars meaning outright obscene.  Read the review by Doug Rice at Amazon to get an idea of why the book is superior. μηδείς (talk) 19:59, 5 January 2017 (UTC)


 * English Wiktionary uses templates for some languages, such as Russian and Greek, to generate IPA pronunciations automatically. For example, wikt:Template:ru-IPA and wikt:Template:grc-IPA. There is also one for Spanish, named wikt:Template:es-IPA (see dueño to see how it works). The Spanish IPA template uses wikt:Module:es-pronunc as its guide. —Stephen (talk) 02:57, 6 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I should also have mentioned that Spanish spelling is almost perfectly phonemic. Hence, there are no "irregular" spellings to speak of, as abound in English.  So the spelling itself really doesn't need a respelling, as long as you are familiar with the local conventions. μηδείς (talk) 04:15, 6 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I've often been amazed at how many highly literate & curious people, living in California their whole lives, avoid learning how to pronounce Spanish words. —Tamfang (talk) 08:50, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

May I ask you do you need this for yourself or for somebody else? If the former I rather suggest you to learn the standard IPA for English used in dictionaries, it is not in any way difficult, at least it is not a bit more difficult than, say, to learn the standard mathematical/physical notation where you often have not only to learn particular signs, but an entirely new alphabet, that is the Greek alphabet. If it is the latter then I suggest you to use any site which would convert a text to the IPA transcription, then use your own convertor of a text in the IPA into the respelling of your choice (note that unlike the more or less uniform IPA, there are a lot of, often contradicting themselves, respelling systems). This is very easy to write either with programming languages like Python or scripting languages JavaScript or even with Linux bash. As for proper names, even if the pronunciation of the most common ones are shown in dictionaries, do not expect you'll find a dictionary or a site which automagically transcribes the rare ones.--Lüboslóv Yęzýkin (talk) 17:17, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

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I'm not sure if I'm using the correct Wikipedia structure for responding, but I'm new at this.

First, Stephen and Luboslov, thank you very much for your responses. Unfortunately, I am seeking a Pronunciation Respelling Converter for a children's book, ages 7-10. I have "field tested" IPA pronunciation with them, and it's just too sophisticated for them without adult coaching -- and even then it's just too advanced. It's simply not viable. Hence, please let me know if you know of a pronunciation respelling resource for me. As I state above, the solution might have an interface like Google's "Translate" app with input and output text boxes.

I'm curious how Wikipedia and Dictionary.com produce their pronunciation respellings. Does anyone know?

Thank you. Cumberbunce (talk) 23:53, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I believe editors on Wikipedia produce their IPA pronunciations manually. That's also how we did our IPA on Wiktionary until LUA programming language was made available. Using LUA, we wrote wikt:Module:es-pronunc and wikt:Template:es-IPA, which convert Spanish words to IPA automatically. Using this method, we also convert Arabic, Thai, Khmer, Lao, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Georgian, Armenian, Amharic, Sanskrit, Hindi, Bengali, Sinhala, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Nepali, Punjabi, Tibetan, Marathi, Gujarati, Dhivehi, Malayalam, Kannada, Korean, Cree, Cherokee, Inuktitut, and a number of other languages automatically. You could change the output from IPA to whatever you prefer, but I don't know how you would be able to use it in a children's book. —Stephen (talk) 00:37, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

"To prevail sth"?
In this NYT article, we find the statement But when the vote was called, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader who was initially reluctant to force the issue, prevailed 52 to 48. Yet, I always thought, "prevail" cannot be used transitively. Can someone explain this issue to a non-native speaker? Best regards--Hubon (talk) 03:19, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This isn't a transitive use. "52 to 48" is not the object of the verb "prevailed" here.  It is a clarifying clause; formally this means "he prevailed (by a vote of) 52 to 48".  That's a fine use, the "by a vote of" phrase is understood and unspoken, but perfectly natural English uses here.  Just as one can say "The team won by a score of 5 to 4" or just "The team won 5 to 4" this is the same thing here.  -- Jayron 32 03:30, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Now I see – thanks a lot for explaining! (JFTR: I'm not a native speaker...) Best--Hubon (talk) 02:27, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Please make a transcript of the video for 2017 Chicago torture incident
I saw the raw video of this incident at static.encyclopediadramatica.se/mirrors/BLMKidnapping/BLMKidnapping1.webm (yes, that site is a parody/troll site, and on Wikipedia's blacklist, but the video itself is what it is, look at it). It seems packed with potentially useful data, but I find the accent and jargon daunting. For example (I do not know any of this is true as I can scarcely understand), I think there is a mention of the Black P. Stone gang, a request for 'more weed', comments about "Blood watching" the livestream (which might refer to Bloods?), there's a mention of Gang Shit Only but I think that's the album maybe? (Chevy Woods comes up in a search), and most intriguingly, there was a comment about having to keep this up for half an hour (the length of the video). Given the "bored party mode" of the later 2/3 of the video I am thinking the event might have been a gang initiation, in other words. There is of course no trace of any of this in the news - I wonder if a single journalist in the world actually watched the video, as doing so would compromise their objectivity. I am hoping somebody here is familiar with African American Vernacular English, or even the argot of this particular subculture, and can make a quality transcript to post either to Wikisource or somewhere else appropriate on the web in a referenceable way? Or at least, can we get some comments by someone who can hear four words in a row and not be unsure about half of them? Wnt (talk) 18:33, 6 January 2017 (UTC)