Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Pronunciation

Pronunciation discussion
There is a discussion that may be of your interest at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section. Regards,-- Thinker78  (talk) 19:46, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I took the liberty of editing your link so that it should go to where you intended it to go. --Trovatore (talk) 21:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What gives you the right to edit what I am looking for or what I say? 2603:9001:72F0:83A0:5910:510C:6D8C:8E1A (talk) 23:24, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Proposal to Footnote IPA
I would like to submit a petition regarding the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet, abbreviated as the “IPA”.

I have observed that the Manual of Style prefers a plain text format of the IPA pronunciation of the subject’s title, which is beneficial for clarity and accessibility, however, those who may not be familiar or knowledgeable about the IPA may find the plain text format be cluttering the page.

Although there is a Footnote section on the IPA subpage that addresses highly technical and multiple IPA pronunciations, it does not extend to suggesting that main pronunciations also be footnoted.

I suggest that all pronunciations—whether they are common, uncommon, or multiple variants—be moved to footnotes. This approach maintains an uncluttered lead section with the detailed IPA information accessible via a footnote for those who seek further clarity.

This change balances the need for a clean, readable article while also providing detailed phonetic information for those interested. I welcome feedback on this proposal and am particularly interested in hearing about potential drawbacks or alternative solutions that might preserve both accessibility and readability. WorldClassChampion (talk) 10:25, 20 April 2024 (UTC)


 * I second that petition, the IPA is cryptic and likely only readable by a minor fraction of visitors, while taking a top spot in the article. Though rather than a footnote (which are often cluttered), maybe having it moved to the info box for main pronunciation, and a subsection for the variants? Wkyx (talk) 07:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree. A single IPA pronunciation is good to have, especially for names and foreign words where the pronunciation is often not obvious. It's also not hard to learn. Therefore it's fine for the first sentence in such cases, though in more complicated ones (such as with several possible pronunciations), a note may be more appropriate. Gawaon (talk) 08:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * IPA is usually considered very hard to learn. The number of symbols alone is a barrier, and TBH even in the linguistics field, it's not that easy: many of the pronunciations can require months of training with tutoring. And if your ears were never trained at a young age, you may never be able to get them right.
 * If wikipedia was primarily about linguistics, then yes, it would make sense to have IPA up there in a prime spot, otherwise english pronunciation respelling is more practical (it's accessible to all visitors). Wkyx (talk) 08:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)
 * While US dictionaries normally don't use IPA, UK dictionaries normally do. So the fraction of visitors who can read it may be greater than you think.
 * Anyway, we often do have both pronunciation respelling and IPA, and in some cases they're even both relegated to a footnote or the infobox (e.g. technetium, Łódź). The trouble is that there are some words where respelling doesn't work very well (because English spelling is messy enough that there's no unambiguous way to write a vowel), and of course it doesn't work at all when it's specifically a foreign-language pronunciation that is being presented. Double sharp (talk) 09:04, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Stress marks in East Slavic words
Please join the work on the content of Stress marks in East Slavic words. - Altenmann >talk 12:59, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Notification of RfC: Should we keep delimiting diaphonemic transcriptions with single slashes?
I have opened a request for comment to discuss the matter: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Linguistics. --mach &#x1f648;&#x1f649;&#x1f64a; 13:07, 9 July 2024 (UTC)