Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2020 February 21

= February 21 =

IPA thoughts wanted at Melbourne
Non-Australians, especially Americans, tend to pronounce the name of the place I live very differently from the way we locals do. There is a sound file right at the beginning of the article which demonstrates the local pronunciation quite well. Around a week ago User:Chriswaterguy edited the IPA pronunciation to what it is now with the Edit summary "remove r from standard pronunciation (see discussion of non-rhotic variant on talk page)". I suspect this was a step in the right direction, but still seems to leave a second vowel sound there. As my own comment on the Talk page said immediately after that edit, "There simply is no second vowel sound in the local pronunciation of Melbourne. Locals pronounce it exactly as if the "our" bit wasn't there at all." These comments are all at Talk:Melbourne. I have tried to get User:Chriswaterguy's attention to my thoughts, to no avail, so I am trying here.

Now, I've tried, but I cannot properly get my head around IPA, so I can't be sure, but I have a feeling the IPA code is still wrong. So here I am seeking expert advice. Anyone? (If you're not Australian, and not familiar with our ways, please listen to the sound file in the article to see what I'm on about.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:31, 21 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Sorry if I make this yet more complex, but what's between slashes / / doesn't purport to show the actual pronunciation (by locals, by other Australians, by Americans, by anyone). Instead, it's a sort of template, whose realization in Melbourne English, Scots English, etc etc is predictable when you know how each of those lects works. Therefore /ˈmɛlbərn/ (yes, with the "r") would probably be correct: it indicates that speakers of a rhotic lect have an "r" sound there (I'm simplifying a lot) whereas we all know that speakers of non-rhotic lects don't have an "r" sound in "torn", "barn", "fern", etc, and therefore won't have one in "Melbourne" either. Now, if you want to indicate the actual pronunciation among the Melbourne population (or anyway those who don't have "foreign" accents, speech defects, etc), you're free to do so and should put it between brackets [ ]. I don't claim to know what it is (and am no expert in the intricacies of IPA), but it might be [ˈmɛlbn̩] ... uh, but I don't know (for example) which variety of /l/ it should be.... -- Hoary (talk) 00:18, 22 February 2020 (UTC) &para; PS Try International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects (a page that's incomplete and inadequately referenced, but nevertheless pretty good). What you put between / / should normally be what that page calls diaphonemes. A chart there shows that /ər/ is realized in Australian English as [ə(ɹ)], meaning that the [ɹ] is there for some speakers, not for others. (Incidentally, [r] isn't native to Australian or most other dialects of English; [ɹ] is far more widespread.) But unfortunately, International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects doesn't deal with syllabic consonants. &para; And now, I hope that somebody who actually knows their phonological stuff will chime in. -- Hoary (talk) 01:13, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I could suggest . (The template is forcing the inverted r to a normal one.) Jmar67 (talk) 02:20, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Niggle: ɹ is rotated rather than inverted. (I don't think that IPA uses an inverted r, though I wouldn't be surprised to be proven wrong.) -- Hoary (talk) 02:34, 22 February 2020 (UTC)


 * I think I'm bumping into a common Wikipedia issue here. Should the pronunciation we show be the local one, or one that others use? I ask because those previous couple of posts seem to still include an "r" of some sort (my lack of IPA skills doesn't tell me what sort), and there is no "r" of any sort in the Australian pronunciation. The word could be spelt "Melbn", and the pronunciation by most English speakers would be exactly what Australians say. HiLo48 (talk) 02:40, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Trying to capture exactly how locals pronounce a certain word is slippery. "Good day" would be "g'die", "knife" would be "noif", etc. And if Aussies don't pronounce the "r" in "Melbourne", then it would be "melbu'n" or "melb'n". But I don't know offhand if y'all are rhotic or not. I think of it as being similar to the city of "Paris". Locals say what sounds like "pah-WEE". Spaniards say "pah-REES". They're really saying the same thing. Americans in Paris say "PARE-iss", which is well off the mark. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:59, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's valid to introduce pronunciations by non-English speakers into this discussion. Despite the surprising beliefs some Australians encounter when they travel, we speak English here. HiLo48 (talk) 03:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Aussie English, to be specific. Hence the variety. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 10:35, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, Aussie English, obviously, but Wikipedia never makes a fuss about how Americans pronounce things, even when it's quite different from the rest of the English speaking world. Then of course there are the many different varieties of US English, and UK English, and..... HiLo48 (talk) 21:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * HiLo48, when you write something like that, I'm not sure that you want to understand what the issues are. Rather, you've got confused ideas (some of them on the ball) on pronunciation, and you want people to say that you're right, and to provide you with IPA for your purpose. I'll give up my attempts to explain. ( wasted their time too.) Just one thing, though: Nobody here has questioned the status of Australian English, either seriously or as a joke. -- Hoary (talk) 23:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Strewth, sensitive much. What was wrong with what I wrote? I am not insisting on being right about anything, except how people in Australia pronounce Melbourne. On that front I am 100% certain I am right. And I THINK (not know) that the IPA code there now is wrong. Nobody has convinced me otherwise. I SUSPECT (not know) that some non-Australians really don't accept what I am saying. Does the sound file for "Melbourne" not help demonstrate my point? HiLo48 (talk) 00:47, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * You show no understanding of or interest in the notion of diaphonemes, the notion that the Australian pronunciation of the name is predictable from (language-wide) /ˈmɛlbərn/, the idea that /ˈmɛlbərn/ and /ˈmɛlbn̩/-or-[ˈmɛlbn̩] could usefully be presented together as Theurgist suggests below. This would in no way imply that US pronunciations (which just happen to resemble the former) are in any way more standard than, let alone superior to, the Australian pronunciation. As for your 100% certainty that you're right about how Australians pronounce "Melbourne", I don't question it. But I suggest that you question yourself about matters of pronunciation, because what's blazingly obvious to people about their own pronunciation (let alone other people's) can turn out to be wrong. (Simple example: Most speakers of my particular variety of English -- possibly of yours too, though I'm not assuming it -- will say that the sounds of "bright" and "bride" differ only in the voicing of the consonants that end them. Not true: the vowel sounds too are different.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'd agree about "bright" and "bride". Still think I'm right about how Aussies say "Melbourne". And it doesn't SEEM to be reflected in either version of the current IPA code. HiLo48 (talk) 01:28, 23 February 2020 (UTC)


 * In Melbourne English, can words like auburn and stubborn be spelt "aubn" and "stubbn" without anything being lost in the pronunciation? --Theurgist (talk) 02:54, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes. HiLo48 (talk) 02:56, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * In that case, this is a standard situation that can be handled the way I've seen it handled in other articles:
 * Melbourne /ˈmɛlbərn/, locally [ˈmɛlbn̩]
 * See Phonetic transcription. The square brackets represent a narrow (exact) transcription (the diacritic below the "n" indicates a syllabic consonant), while the slashes represent a broad transcription that only shows underlying, functionally distinct sounds, without intricacies specific to and predictable from the language variety (in this case, /-bərn/ becoming [-bn̩] in Melbourne English). --Theurgist (talk) 03:17, 22 February 2020 (UTC) (Note: posted after multiple edit conflicts with the comments below.)
 * Theurgist, if [ˈmɛlbn̩] is so written (within brackets), ought one to worry about which /l/ it is? (Though for all I know it's bog-standard, diacritic unrequired, [l]. And of course there are degrees of "narrow"ness. But I'm straying beyond my pitifully limited understanding of phonetics/phonology.) -- Hoary (talk) 03:57, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's actually the dark l, [ɫ], predictably so for a syllable-final /l/ in English. But there are degrees of narrowness as you rightly say, and it's not the /l/ that calls for a narrower transcription, so I don't think it's necessary to drag attention to that detail. --Theurgist (talk) 00:35, 24 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The problem with Melbn is that it is impossible to transition directly from b to n. The lips must open to allow the tongue to touch the palate. I (American) usually say MEL-burn, but when I try to imitate the natives' pronunciation, my tongue trills very slightly before touching the palate to give a hint of an r. Jmar67 (talk) 03:05, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * "The problem with Melbn is that it is impossible to transition directly from b to n. The lips must open to allow the tongue to touch the palate." But it's wrong to think there's anything extra between the two letters. If I asked you to just say "b", and then immediately say "n", is there anything between the two sounds that isn't part of the sounds when they are not together? HiLo48 (talk) 03:53, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * To take this point even further, what is the IPA representation of the letter "b"? (Because that's what the sound of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth letters in "Melbourne" is.) HiLo48 (talk) 21:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Simply, IPA represents sounds. It doesn't represent letters. -- Hoary (talk) 23:43, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * OK< what is the IPA representation of the sound of "b"? I mean by this the way we teach kids to say the lower case letters? HiLo48 (talk) 01:45, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Nitpicking: It's possible to transition directly from b to n, but English language seems to have some problem with it. Consider "pneumatic" and its cognates in various languages. In the vast majority of those the p is not silent. 93.142.87.124 (talk) 04:48, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I'd argue that it is in Australian English. And maybe this demonstrates the problem I'm encountering here. We Aussies DO talk funny. Maybe most English speakers can't speak the way we do. In fact, when we hear a non-Australian actor trying to do an Australian accent, it usually sounds quite odd to us down-underites. Hence my constant requests for people commenting here to listen to the sound file at the beginning of the article. HiLo48 (talk) 01:45, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Waddaya mean "we Aussies do talk funny"? It's all those foreign weirdos that are the funny talkers. :) But seriously, you're right. Maybe it's just a sign of (my) age, but the way a lot of younger Aussies talk now is close to incomprehensible even to me. When - and why - did "phone home" become "foyn hoym"? --  Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:20, 25 February 2020 (UTC)


 * No, what's between / / is an abstraction. If, in the context of English (and this is the English-language Wikipedia, not the Australian Wikipedia), we say that it's pronounced, we're not saying that people in Melbourne pronounce it [mɛlbərn] or that the majority of English-speakers pronounce it this way. (Both assertions would be wrong.) Now, you could reasonably object to all this, saying that somebody who just wanted to know how it was pronounced in Melbourne shouldn't have to study phonology in order to understand what the [expletive] was meant by the Wikipedia article's pronunciation "help". Consider the article Newcastle upon Tyne, which starts "(/ˌnjuːkɑːsəl/, locally /njuːˌkæsəl/". (The latter is odd, as it's shown as having secondary stress but no primary stress. But let's ignore this oddity.) It's a good model for Melbourne: "/ˈmɛlbərn/, locally /ˈmɛlbn̩/". &para; As for the different kinds of " r", [r] is trilled and, if you're Australian, probably not part of your English; [ɹ] is probably what you use most of the time. /r/ is an abstraction that can be realized as either of these (or other sounds besides), depending on where it occurs and who's saying it. -- Hoary (talk) 03:16, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It's actually "/ˌnjuːkɑːsəl -/, locally /njuːˌkæsəl -/". The dashes indicate the omission of "upon Tyne", which carries the primary stress, which is why only the secondary stress is shown. --Theurgist (talk) 03:36, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Well spotted! - Hoary (talk) 03:57, 22 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I take my cue from "forecastle" and say "/njuːksəl/. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  01:59, 25 February 2020 (UTC)