Wikipedia talk:English phonetic spelling

I think this is a bad idea. The last thing we need is yet another standardised phonetic spelling scheme. Any phonetic spelling scheme for English will require readers unfamiliar with the scheme to consult a key, in which case we might as well use IPA, which is already in use in many Wikipedia articles (and will no doubt increase now that problems of rendering IPA symbols in common browsers have been overcome). In cases where a full IPA transcription might seem excessive it may often be sufficient to say just "stress on the second syllable", or "rhymes with ...".

Also the particular representation chosen is deeply flawed. The idea that cot and caught sound the same, or that either of them should be represented by an a would seem bizarre to British readers or I expect to most non-US readers. rossb 14:34, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * I also do not recommend this proposal. If a non-IPA transcription is preferred why not use, one of the systems found in a common dictionary? - Ish ishwar 15:24, 2005 Mar 12 (UTC)


 * Having had a look at some dictionaries on sale in my local bookshop, they now all seem to use IPA. This was in London, not sure whether it would hold in the USA. rossb 18:03, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Good, but not quite good enough. As a Hoosier, I don't like the idea of merging cot and caught or put and putt; those are distinct to my ear and would represent a mispronunciation. I'm open to the idea, tho. I'm not happy with IPA, since few people (including me) really understand it, and it doesn't display well in many popular browsers. --Tysto 16:37, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)

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This is a funny guide to a nonprofessional and a non-native speaker as I am:

in "A" series: if "au" is the diphthong why is the "ei" not a diphtohong (treated as a 2 phonem sound); why is "ei" under "A" series if it sounds more like short "E" (as in word "pet" :-) );

in "E" series: "ie" in "feed"?! I always thought it is pure long "ee" sound, no two phonem sound (long ee and then short i ??);

in "I" series: the grouping sounds odd to have vowel y in together, maybe you should call it "I/Y" series.

Jacek K. (nanotech.republika.pl)

Bad, bad, bad!
I strongly object to the system. It's complete unnecessary, American-centric, and hard to interpret. It strikes me as some speaker trying to prove that their accent is the basic one, and everyone else's can be derived from theirs.

Why should "a" be used to represent both 'caught' and 'cot', when that merger is almost completely rule-based (the exeption being four words like sorry, sorrow), but the broad a not marked, when it not completely rule based (i.e. no-one who has a different vowel in "bat" and "pass" rhymes "pass" and "mass"; there is no rule, and the only way you know to pronounce "pass" with a long vowel is because you learnt the word from pronunciation). Also, why should "a" be used to represent the vowel marked in the orthography as an O (as in "cot"), and which is definitely a species of O for a significant number of speakers? (FWIW, it's also not very nice to describe broad-a as a British phenomenon. Broad-A is used in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and parts of New England in America; a very similar phenomenon known as A-tensing is also found New York City and Philadelphia (Philly A-tensing is the merger of broad-a and the unpredictable bad-lad split and therefore it is also unpredictable; NYC a-tensing is a generalisation of the Philly system but it is still unpredictable).)

Similarly, it's simply not true to say that you can always divine a non-rhotic pronunciation from a rhotic one (I'll grant this is a common misconception). Rhotic speakers have the same ending in "idea" as in "wikipedia". Non-rhotic speakers don't ( vs ). Non-rhotic speakers also use this r-ish vowel in "theatre". Hence, at least one extra vowel, an equivalent of, is needed, with rhotic speakers merging the in  as  but others as disyllabic ; and non-rhotic speakers merging  as.

Other speakers have noted the problem of not incorporating the foot-strut split. This system rhymes them, but many people don't. Also, some people merge boot and foot, but keep foot and strut separate.

If the IPA is deemed to be inappropriate, then the only possible solution is to use a simple regularisation of the orthography and note where different regions diverge. So, for instance, we can fairly say that 'Worster' is pronounced 'Wooster'-with-a-short-oo.

—Felix the Cassowary ( ɑe hɪː jɐ ) 05:51, 14 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I completely agree that this system is US-centric and poorly designed. The designer seems to be unaware of the extent to which dialects differ phonologically from the one it is based on.  We should stick with IPA, trying to give links to descriptions of the transcriptions used where appropriate.


 * Some specific comments further to yours:


 * On the broad A, it's also true that something like 40-50% (my guess, based on the geography and personal experience) of BrE speakers don't have it in pass etc. (and we don't even generally call it the "broad A"). The scheme doesn't even seem to recognise that outside the US (and even in some places within it) the vowel of father is different from those of both cot and caught: there is no mention of this in the section on the "A series", and the "broad A" transcriptions of path and dance use the same /a/ symbol as for cot etc.
 * Some rhotic speakers (like me, to the extent to which I'm rhotic) do have in idea and theatre (and quite a few more, too).  This, of course, only strengthens your argument.
 * I actually get the impression that this system isn't meant to merge foot and strut; the intention was to use the /9/ symbol for strut and /u/ for foot, and button was either wrongly transcribed or has an unexpected vowel in the designer's dialect. However, merging strut with schwa is wrong for me and I suspect for many others too.  I have a stressed schwa in Ms /məz/ contrasting with the strut vowel in buzz.
 * The identification of the vowels of low and force may make sense for some dialects (it almost makes sense for mine, though I don't know how this system would deal with the way I pronounce gorse, which doesn't rhyme with force) but that's hardly true for everybody.

--JHJ 17:42, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

hwat a streinzh artikl
I think this is well-intentioned, but it's certainly not POV neutral.

The author is correct in that many dialects of English have a ridiculously large number of supposedly different vowels. "Caught" and "cot" are not words that would ever be mistaken for one another in a sentence. G.A.E. has abandoned the "aw" sound because it's not useful. In California people pronounce the vowels in "dude" and "food" differently (/dy:d/ and /fu:d/, more or less), but we don't expect that kind of local quirk to be reflected in worldwide teaching materials.

The "international language" was FRENCH until World War II. English is the new standard because of American influence. Why people around the world are learning British English instead is certainly confusing.


 * This represents a project that was only sporadically used, and has been pretty much abandoned. More than a year ago, there was a kerfluffle about how best to convey the pronunciation of foreign or unfamiliar words.  This was a bigger deal then than now, because the software then could not reliably convey IPA transcriptions.  Some favoured IPA, which still requires some training to read; others a hideous ASCII version called SAMPA, now all but abandoned; while others favoured pseudo-phonetic prah-nun-see-YAY-shun spellings.  I started this as an alternative proposal.


 * I deliberately chose a lowest-common-denominator version of General American in this. This was done to avoid the misleading nature of guides that assume familiarity with the obscure A sounds of British English, and assume non-rhotic pronunciations &mdash; these were two areas that contain pitfalls.  Telling people to pronounce Goethe like Gertie is seriously misleading for speakers of the majority native dialect of English; and if you distinguish short O from AW, the distinction may not carry for those who did not.  Speakers of insular dialects seem uncomfortably aware that their remote archipelago is no longer the centre of gravity of the English language, and as such this article has been subjected to several attempts to Briticize it.


 * The chief motivation for this article --- the inability of the software to reliably carry IPA information --- has been obsoleted by technical developments. IPA is also equal to the task of conveying the obscure A sounds of British English without ambiguity.  As such, this proposal has mostly historical interest now.  -- Smerdis of Tlön 15:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

If that's the case, could we VfD it? —Felix the Cassowary ( ɑe hɪː jɐ ) 23:12, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The only reason I could see to keep this is that the discussion might be useful if the subject ever returns again. Smerdis of Tlön 05:56, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Hm, okay. I'll redirect it then to Manual of Style (pronunciation). That way everything's still around if it's useful in the future, but people will stop coming by this and saying "What a horrible proposal! No, this cannot be!". —Felix the Cassowary ( ɑe hɪː jɐ ) 08:05, 17 November 2005 (UTC)