User talk:Aeusoes1

Reverting Syriac Additions to Sound Articles

Hi Aeusoes,

I've noticed that you reverted my edits to several articles on sounds (voiced bilabial plosive, etc.), removing the Syriac entries citing "modern spoken languages only" for many of them. I didn't see a requirement for that anywhere, could I ask where exactly that rule is written (like on a project page, maybe)? More importantly, it's true that classical Syriac isn't a modern spoken language, but modern Syriac is. All of the examples I used are present in classical Syriac and various modern Syriac dialects.

I look forward to hearing from you. :) --334a (talk) 01:11, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Certainly. The guidelines are buried over in the archives at WP:PHON, an admittedly obscure place.

The idea is to limit examples to natural languages that are (or have been) spoken natively in modern times. This excludes some other classical liturgical languages like Latin and Sanskrit. If there's a "modern" Syriac, then Wikipedia doesn't seem to cover it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 01:40, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

At the top of Syriac language, there's a link to Northeastern Neo-Aramaic languages (described as "Syriac" dialects, with Syriac in quotations). They use the Syriac alphabet in writing and are more closely related to classical Syriac than other Neo-Aramaic dialects (e.g., Western Neo-Aramaic or Neo-Mandaic). While the technical term for them is Northeastern Neo-Aramaic, they're often (somewhat informally) known as "Syriac" or "Neo-Syriac". There's also a bit at the bottom of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic itself about how ISO 639-2 combines different dialects into a generic Syriac or somesuch.

Would it be alright with you if I added the Syriac examples back in? --334a (talk) 02:31, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I see now. Re-adding the examples is fine, though your examples should link to Northeastern Neo-Aramaic rather than Aramaic language or Syriac language. If you can find sources for your examples, that would also be helpful. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:30, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

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Notice of WP:ARBMAC

Please note that the article Croatian language and other articles relating to the Balkans fall under the ruling of WP:ARBMAC. Note in particular Wikipedia:ARBMAC#Discretionary sanctions, which states

"Any uninvolved administrator may, on their own discretion, impose sanctions on any editor working in the area of conflict if that editor fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, the expected standards of behavior, or the normal editorial process. The sanctions imposed may include blocks of up to one year in length; bans from editing any page or set of pages within the area of conflict; restrictions on reverts; or any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project. Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to this decision."

Repeated blanket reversions, repeatedly and knowingly restoring material with large amounts of poor English and grammatical errors, and repeated introduction of material rejected by consensus all fall below the expected standards of behaviour at this project. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:31, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Gooder English

A "Good Article" nominee. Hmm, I wonder. -- Hoary (talk) 08:35, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Macedonian phonology

Macedonian does not have a /ʎ/, but it does have a /ɫ/. If you're going to revert every edit, then please correct the table yourself. Please also see the table at Macedonian language. --58.7.182.176 (talk) 14:24, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Several sources describe Macedonian as having two lateral phonemes. One may be represented as l or ɫ, and another may be represented as lʲ, l, or ʎ (obviously, you wouldn't want to represent both as l. At least two sources argue that the latter phoneme is actually a cluster, lj, which means there's a scholarly dispute on the matter. Thus, there are two separate issues: how to represent the laterals and whether one is a phoneme or not. I'm neutral as to the representation, as I don't see a serious problem with phonemic representations that may be a little off from phonetic accuracy. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 15:11, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Could you please list those sources for me? It just seems quite odd that a specialist, especially one presumably from Macedonia, would recognize a /ʎ/ versus /lj/ and /ɫj/ sequences. I think a /lʲ/ can be dismissed altogether as Standard Macedonian does not have palatalization process (a technicality) and the /l/ - /ɫ/ contrast has been proven by the examples of minimal pairs. That aside, we have two sources agreeing with one another (Lunt and Friedman) and one which contradicts (Bojkovska). --203.59.92.170 (talk) 23:25, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

It looks from the article that Lunt and Friedman themselves have a two-lateral interpretation, though I may be getting confused here. I don't know what you mean by a "palatalization process" as having a palatalized consonant is a phonetic description (raising of the tongue toward the hard palate to produce secondary constriction), though it can also be the result of a process of assimilation with front vowels. I don't know enough about Macedonian to say either way. Are you saying you'd prefer to see a velarized alveolar vs. nonvelarized alveolar contrast presented in the table? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:34, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

IPA-xx templates, broad vs. narrow transcription

Hi. May I ask you (if you know) why our IPA-templates use [narrow transcription] IPA brackets, when we clearly use /broad/ transcription systems for all supported languages. For example, {{IPA-es}} employs narrow, while {{IPA-en}} uses broad brackets (as they IMO should). I'm reluctant to change them unilaterally, before consulting with a better-knowledgeable person... such as you. No such user (talk) 15:03, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Keep in mind that this isn't a binary dichotomy. Phonetic notation, too, can be quite broad (as is the case with how we use French). Phonemic notation has a number of problems when we use it to indicate pronunciation, the most damning being its abstraction away from phonetics; particularly problematic are phonemic representations that differ from phonetic accuracy in ways that native English speakers would not be expected to be familiar with. For example, Spanish /d/ is lenited to [ð] so that /ˈnada/ ('nothing') is pronounced [ˈnaða]. We can't represent this process in a phonemic notation and we shouldn't ignore it.

However, we can still gloss over phonetic features in phonetic representation. Spanish /d/ is dental, though there's little reason to add a difficult-to-type diacritic for a group of speakers (our readership) who are unlikely to appreciate the difference between dental and alveolar.

Similarly, scholarship on a particular language may include phonemic representations dependent on controversial or debatable analyses. While it's uncommon, an analysis of Spanish could see the lenited pronunciation as default and represent nada as /ˈnaða/; similarly, minimalist analyses of Spanish may see a default (or unmarked) stress paradigm so that the stress isn't even marked unless it violates the rules construed by linguists.

It gets even more complicated with a language like Russian, which not only has a complicated set of vowel reduction rules, but also competing analyses on the presence or absence of a sixth vowel phoneme and whether palatalized consonants are separate phonemes or present from a phonological process.

It's not exactly objective how we decide which phonetic notes are worthy of transcription and which aren't, but the idea is that our readers aren't linguists and we don't want them to do unnecessary work to figure out what all the symbols and diacritics mean nor how to go from abstraction to pronunciation. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:57, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Point taken, but in my (admittedly amateurish) book, what we do is still more phonemic than phonetic, although our approach is decidedly non-minimalist. For languages like Spanish, we record only some allophones, or phonemes in complementary distribution, depending on which view you take. On the other side, for Russian we provide comparatively much more phonetic detail, but then, Russian phonology is notoriously complex. Additionally, the very fact that we represent pronunciation from different languages using different (harmonized, but still different) transcription systems indicates that our approach is phonemic. Not a big deal, though; just wanted to throw in my 2c. No such user (talk) 07:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Brackets and slashes aren't narrow and broad, but phonetic (acoustic) and phonemic (cognitive).

For me the important distinction here is that for foreign languages we indicate the actual pronunciation, whereas for English we intentionally don't. Japanese Chiba is [tɕiba], not /tiba/, but we don't indicate such details for English. Even if we don't indicate any allophonic variation for a particular language, because it wouldn't be significant for an English speaker, the brackets show that it's how the word is actually pronounced, and the reader doesn't have to worry about it phonemic analysis. — kwami (talk) 09:08, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

An AAVE WP?

Your answer is of course a good one, but it assumes that your interlocutor is interested -- whereas his list of contributions makes it blazingly obvious that he's a mere troll. Let's not do any more to encourage him. (Incidentally, you -- sleepily? -- made some typos that you may want to fix.) -- Hoary (talk) 01:48, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I may have been doing some troll-feeding by answering [in AAVE]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:42, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Cyberstalking

... is frowned upon in Wikipedia, so give it a rest, Fresno. Varlaam (talk) 05:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

There are appropriate places to make accusations. Reverting two of your edits is hardly stalking. Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with contractions, even in an encyclopedia and not having them can often (as in the two cases in question) sound overly stilted. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 13:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

History of the Hmong in Merced

Hi! I looked at your merge proposal It is not a reasonable proposal. All of the material in the article is specifically about the Hmong as they were in the City of Merced. This is a specific topic. And adding this to "Hmong American" would weight the article too heavily in favor of Merced. Wikipedia:NPOV#Due_and_undue_weight says that a particular aspect could not be given an undue weight of a general topic

I also responded to Talk:History_of_the_Hmong_in_Merced,_California#Oddly_specific WhisperToMe (talk) 17:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Redlinking

Hi! About my redlinking, sometimes I do it to encourage article creation, as in I believe that such an article should be created. In any case I'll hit Ulrich's and I'll see if I can write a stub about that one. WhisperToMe (talk) 17:44, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay. Redlinks in citations feel weird to me, like there's an error in the citations. But I understand your motivations (I certainly do that myself in article prose). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:33, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

IPA Ligatures

Except for the monospaced font, it is hard to tell the difference between [ʦ] and [ts] — an even better reason not to use ligatures.

Now, you must be judicious with those tie-bars. If the ascenders on the letters are higher than on t, the tie-bar obstructs and confuses. I don't like them. Doesn't IPA have a dot-on-the-line to mark a syllable break? So I can write [kʰæt.ʃɪt] (litterbox stuff) and [kʰætʃ.ɪt] (imperative) in my idiolect. Or is this confusing? — Solo Owl (talk) 04:16, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

That's a good solution for English (and one that I think we utilize at WP:IPA for English), but not necessarily other languages, particularly those that make a contrast between affricates and stop+fricative clusters. I often find the tie-bars redundant, which is why I don't usually add them in; though I rarely take them out, either. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 04:51, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Turkish Phonology

We are changing e symbols to ɛ, cause it is correct! And why are you undoing something that you don't have any idea? My native language is Turkish, OK? And if you don't trust that I'm making them correct, I can give you a link. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.43.98.98 (talk) 18:24, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

If you'd like to provide a source, that would be welcome, but can we keep this discussion at Talk:Turkish phonology? I'd rather it be a communal conversation for others to participate in. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:50, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The transcriptions need to correspond to WP:IPA for Turkish. All articles should be changed and the key as well, or else none of them should be changed. — kwami (talk) 19:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It looks like an anonymous editor added the open-mid front vowels, though it's not clear if they're supposed to be allophones or if the anon simply prefers the other characters. For consistency's sake, we should probably adjust the vowel quadrangle image used at Turkish phonology so that the front mid rounded vowel is ø . — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:30, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Valencian

Hi Aeusoes! I think you could participate on the Valencian article, we need some professional advice ;)

Thanks :) Jaume87 (talk) 14:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Lipski on Spanish phonology

Dear Aeusoes -- in support of your recent deletion from Spanish phonology ("Lipski" on the fronting of ch in Castile): I tried in vain to find a published source for that statement; then I contacted John Lipski personally. He pointed out some on-line class notes of his at <http://www.personal.psu.edu/jml34/Castile.pdf> from which the assertion is evidently quoted (it's item 11 on p. 2). But he hasn't answered my follow-up query for a more "substantial" published source. Kotabatubara (talk) 18:10, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation of μπ in Greek

Thanks for your work on cleaning up IPA in various places. I'm not sure where you're getting your info on Greek phonology, though, because you have introduced some errors. For example, μπ is pronounced [b] word-initially, but either [b] or [mb] medially, depending on speaker, register, and the individual word, hence the transcription [(m)b]. In some words (mostly loanwords), [b] is obligatory (e.g. μπαμπάς 'daddy' is [babas] and never [bambas]), but in most words, there is considerable variation, with [mb] usually being considered more 'standard' and [b] being more informal. Similarly for ντ. Also, I don't know where you got the pronunciation for England -- it is [aŋˈglia], possibly [aˈglia], but never [aˈɣlia]. --Macrakis (talk) 17:39, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I was trying to edit according to WP:IPA for Greek, which doesn't parse the b~mb distinction like you have. If that's how it works (and your explanation correlates with my understanding), I think the better solution would probably be to have the nasal without the parentheses with a note at IPA for Greek explaining that there's variation on that. But we should probably move this conversation to Wikipedia talk:IPA for Greek so other editors can contribute to the discussion. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:05, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:IPA for Greek is incomplete and I'll add to it when I get a chance. In the meantime, you've also changed e.g. [iˈraklio] -> [iˈrakʎo], where in fact both are possible. Though most of your edits prefer the informal form, you've done the opposite in one case: kastorˈʝa -> kastorˈia, which is simply wrong. Not even kastori'a is possible. On your user page, you don't mention that you know Greek, so presumably these edits are based on some source which you consider reliable -- but it seems not to be! --Macrakis (talk) 19:27, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It's probably best to stick to formal pronunciation, but yeah, best discussed on the IPA talk page. Any help you can provide there would be appreciated. — kwami (talk) 19:50, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

It is actually a bit more complicated than Macrakis described. I will be laconic, but I hope not cryptic: it's not accurate that [mb] never occurs initially — nasality is not necessarily position-dependent (the speaker is able to select freely from free variant allophones, based on personal habit or preference). Nasality indeed reflects the "original" pronunciation of Greek words, containing the /mb/, /nd/, /ng/ complexes, that ultimately derive from ancient Greek words; but by analogy nasality can occur in recent loanwords as well. Nasality is considered more formal but in effect it is not the standard; in fact, it's considered antiquated and the majority of speakers avoids it. The bottom line is that before we start editing Wikipedia:IPA for Greek, we should all try to support our claims with appropriately described evidence and/or references to the relevant literature. --Omnipaedista (talk) 05:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

this might be of some help. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 06:16, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Helike

Hello, I would like to ask for your help. I saw the comment of Parrot of Doom (delete a load of nonsense, and possibly a copyvio) and I would appreciate if someone could explain to me why it is nonsense to show to everyone the 20 persons who studied, researched and wrote, about the lost city of Helike, in the past. These informations were published in several greek magazines, plus one of the most reliable magazine for archaelogists (Archaeology magazine issue No 9 November 1983 wrote: In the Corinthian Gulf and in the area of Aegeion the Greek diver-explorer Alexis Papadopoulos has discovered a sunken town. It lies at a depth of 25m-45m with exhibits walls, fallen roofs, discarded roof tiles, streets, etc. Whether or not this town can be identified with Eliki is a question to be answered by extensive underwater research. In any case, the discovery of this town can be regarded as an extremely interesting find). Please advise to whom I can send the permission of the owner for using material from his site. Please find the link for the underwater documentary film in greek and english version http://oudeterapleustotita.blogspot.com/2009/11/blog-post.html Thank you for your time. Happy New Year.Alchemistria (talk) 13:54, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

You don't need permission to use sources, though you should provide attribution in the article if you use information from it. It's also best to change the wording so that you are not plagiarising. Any time you use a source's words directly, you should enclose it in quotation marks "" and provide attribution that it's clear where the quote comes from. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:13, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Hope everything I added in the article now is o.k. Thank you very much for your prompt reply and precious help.Alchemistria (talk) 23:51, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Croatian+Serbian

Yes, having both in the list is a fork, just like having both an American and a British English entry separate from one another. The differences between these standard languages are at most comparable to the Englishes. That's why they are linguistically considered one language, Serbo-Croatian, and why having both constitutes a fork. --JorisvS (talk) 19:15, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I was hoping to have this discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Phonetics. The standard languages are the same, but we might want to treat it like we do Chinese. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Not much discussion so far...(we could copy this there later) The Chinese situation is actually SC in reverse: linguistically they are quite distinct languages, while for sociological factors they are often lumped together, while for SC they are linguistically the same language (no ambiguity there) being separated on sociological grounds. It would thus be strange to treat them as if these situations were comparable. It'd also give them undue weight, akin to giving the Englishes undue weight if we were to always include the various English standards separately (even when all have the sound). --JorisvS (talk) 20:09, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

True, though the issue gets a tiny bit trickier when/if we move outside the standard languages, particularly with SC dialects in Croatia. I can't think of any situation where that would be necessary, so perhaps Serbo-Croatian can be the default and dialectal additions/divisions be made as they're needed.— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:36, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, like we do with English. --JorisvS (talk) 20:46, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Postalveolar sounds

Hi. I was triggered by this edit of yours, and accidentaly, you already had a section on Serbo-Croatian on this page :). Do you perhaps have an access to Hamann, Silke (2004), "Retroflex fricatives in Slavic Languages", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 1 (34): 53–67? The point is, Serbo-Croatian post-alveolar sounds are really (apical) retroflex, though not many sources describe them like that (due to tradition I suppose, just like alveolar Catalan sounds you encountered recently). For most speakers (and in standard languages), those are almost identical as in Polish: see this paper with comparative Croatian-Polish analysis. I would like to have a note in that sense somewhere at Serbo-Croatian phonology, Voiceless postalveolar affricate and in other sound articles, but I don't have a source to cite. No such user (talk) 10:15, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about that source you've provided. The author makes the assertion that Croatian's non-alveolopalatal sibilants can be referred to as retroflex because of Hamann (2004) but I've read Hamann (2004) and it deals explicitly with only Russian, Polish, and Bulgarian. Hamann does mention Keeting's article in The Special Status of Coronals (1991) as including Serbian in the mix but says that the matter needs to be investigated more.

Because Ćavar & Hamann cite this article, they may have done some phonetic studies that they don't mention in the article. If they haven't, then the cross-language diaphonic identifications between Polish and Croatian isn't evidence of phonetic similarities.

Without further data, there's nothing to show that it isn't just the case that Croatian has palato-alveolar affricates and Croatian listeners simply identify retroflex sounds as being palato-alveolar because the sounds are so similar that they can easily map these new sounds to their native phonology. As the authors note in the conclusion, that Croatian makes a contrast between alveolo-palatal and...well... non-alveolopalatal, they can make native-like contrasts with Polish sounds better than speakers of languages that don't.

Hamann's expertise seems primarily to be in retroflexes, which gives that conference paper a little more weight. Still, if Serbo-Croatian's sibilants have been investigated more thoroughly, Hamann either didn't publish it or didn't cite whoever did publish it. I suppose we could ask her ourselves. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:10, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, as a native speaker of SC, I can certainly witness that <Š>, <Ž>, <Č> and <DŽ> are much closer to [ʂ], [ʐ], [tʂ] and [dʐ], than to [ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], and [dʒ], though I didn't find much sources to back that up.

OTOH, it is generally true that the contrast is "alveolo-palatal ([tɕ] and [dʑ]) and...well... non-alveolopalatal": <Š>, <Ž>, <Č> and <DŽ> are subject to greater dialectal variation, and there is even a merger in some dialects. Still, the "canonical" sound is much closer to retroflex; I'm not a trained phonetician though (not even a linguist). Moren [1] describes the sounds as apical, and says:

First, the apical post-alveolar affricates have rounded lips. As Miller-Ockhuizen and Zec (2003:165) have shown, differences in lip protrusion/compression “categorically distinguishes the two affricates” because lip protrusion causes a significant lowering of the spectral peaks associated with the frication noise of the affricates. As we will see in section 4, this lip rounding is best analyzed as a phonetic enhancement strategy, not as an indication of a phonological feature.

No such user (talk) 09:27, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and given the two postalveolar places of articulation, I wouldn't be too surprised if the non-alveolopalatal postalveolars were retroflex. I might be able to utilize both Moren, Hamann (2004) and Ćavar & Hamann to mention that said postalveolars may be describable as retroflex but I'm not sure if it would be enough to transcribe them as retroflex (notice that we haven't switched to doing that with Slovak), particularly because of the dialectal variation you mention. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:56, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

What about Hindi and Urdu? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages?

I see that you and I seem to have different views of what a disambiguation page is. My understanding of the guidelines is that a disambiguation page is used when there are different topics that might be referred to by the same title. When there is a single topic that can be divided into subtopics, that is a list or summary article (depending on how the information is presented), not a disambiguation page. That is why I disagree with your reversion of the changes I made this morning. --R'n'B (call me Russ) 13:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I can see where you're coming from and I agree with your criteria for disambiguation pages. An important factor here is that e.g. [o] and [ɔ] are often referred to as "mid" vowels, especially in descriptions of languages that don't contrast the two.

I think we can come to an agreement, though. These particular articles are in the midst of content shifting (content from subsections are being moved to become their own articles) and we may elect to disambiguate through hatnoting rather than having separate disambiguation articles. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:03, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

trapezoids should be images like at the other phonology pages

Front Central Back Close i u e̞ o̞ ä Mid Open

Spanish vowels

I'm not sure what you mean. The image Blank vowel trapezoid.svg is in there, but useful links to each vowel article and to umbrella terms like Mid vowel are superimposed onto it, as opposed to the plain image you restored to Modern Hebrew phonology, which offers no links at all to phonetic articles (leaving the entire section with one single, general "vowels" link) and also displays the misleading symbols of close-mid vowels and the open front unrounded vowel. Plus you left the articles Modern Greek phonology and Spanish phonology with no trapezoid image at all: your reversions [2] [3] seem to be point making, rendering the article poorer than it was before them.

Did you mean the precise, scaled trapezoid table? Which is great and should maybe become standard, but why's it on the talk page and not in the article?

Please explain in what way you believe your reversions to have been constructive. Dan ☺ 17:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

The trapezium used at e.g. close-mid front unrounded vowel articulates cardinal vowel points. These are abstract concepts that help define vowel space but don't necessarily correlate with phonetic/acoustic reality. Thus, /i/ in Modern Hebrew is a slight bit further back in the mouth than the cardinal value. The difference between cardinal points and actual formant values is even greater with languages like Portuguese and English. In other words, the images are more precise and the trapezia can be misleading.

The ability to use links is helpful, but keep in mind that these charts usually explain everything sufficiently enough as the vowels are placed in a coordinate system so that readers who understand what frontness and closeness mean (something the individual vowel pages don't explain anyway) can understand the vowels. There are alternatives that we can explore, such as linking in a separate table.

On a side note, the images we use should use the same vowel transcription that we use in the articles. Since we transcribe Spanish and Greek without the lowering diacritic, it's not "inaccurate" to have an image that presents them as such. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:59, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Wow

Thank you! Did you know, it is my first barnstar ever? I'll cut it out & glue it on my screen. (Also, it stimulates me working more this way). -DePiep (talk) 14:55, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Akhal-teke

Hi, I see there seems to be some working with IPA markup at the Akhal Teke article. I am a noob at IPA, but just so you know, in the USA, people usually pronounce the breed name "ACK-ul Tech" (rhymes with "tackle heck"). So whatever you are doing there, do note that -- at least as a US-English form. Thanks!  ;-) Montanabw^(talk) 08:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Could you clarify if it's AK-əl TEK with stress on both words, or AK-əl-tek, with only one stress? — kwami (talk) 12:21, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

A quick google search shows some variation amongst people claiming experience with the breed, so I've added a second pronunciation to the article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:16, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

AK-əl TEK. There probably is pronunciation variation, but if not due to infighting between breeders, (I run into people who debate if Andalusian is 4 syllables or 5 too) then it's often as much linked to regional US dialect variations as anything! I'm OK with showing more than one pronunciation if its justified and not a fringe view. LOL! Montanabw^(talk) 05:20, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Trinidadian English

Re your change to this article - are you contemplating consolidating TE, TCE and TC into maybe 2 articles (or even one)? I suggested consolidating them into 2 articles in one of the discussion pages, but so far no takers! What do you think? Jpaulm (talk) 16:48, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure about consolidating Trinidadian English and Trinidadian Creole into one page, though I can be convinced. In my edits the other day, I wondered if we couldn't combine Trinidadian Creole and Tobagonian Creole, though I hesitate to suggest it before efforts at beefing up the two articles. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:54, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Non-native pronunciations of English: Ukrainian

Wouldn't it be simpler to have put a "citation needed" tag into the article instead of removing my entire contribution? I intend to add references to the posting as I am able.

I dislike original research. It's never my intention to avoid providing references when I make edits. Yet when I feel that I can add something to Wikipedia based upon sound experience I add it; I put in references as I revise. I view this project as a work in progress. I have no doubt that we should uphold rigorous standards, but I think that contributors ought to be able to improve their edits over time. Edits get better with age. Reverting new edits immediately for their juvenile imperfections halts the collaborative process that makes Wikipedia great.

I wrote about Ukrainian-speakers' pronunciation of English because I live in Ukraine, speak Ukrainian, and teach English to Ukrainians. Having the edit reverted makes me less enthusiastic to contribute to the article and improve it over time. If edits are not allowed to remain as they develop and undergo development by multiple users there is little incentive for many Wikipedia users to add information.

I'd appreciate your help and advice in seeking out scholarly publications and references—perhaps through a note on my talk page or by email (auranor@gmail.com).

Sincerely, Auranor (talk) 16:23, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I know it seems as though an insufficient amount of time has been given to allow verification of your edits, but there was already a similar unsourced section added in March of 2006 that was removed in mid-2007, when all unsourced statements were removed after it was clear that editors were unable or unwilling to verify their original research claims.

More generally, Non-native pronunciations of English is an article that draws well-intentioned editors to provide, at best, original research synthesis. Since 2007, unsourced statements have, for the most part, been removed fairly quickly. I understand that this might be frustrating for you, but remember that your edits remain in the article's history so that, if you are able to find sources that back up such claims, your work hasn't been lost.

As for areas to look for this sort of information, you might take a look at what journals the article's sources appear in like American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, and Applied Psycholinguistics. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 02:05, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Spread of areal features in Asian languages?

This is not directly related to Wikipedia, but it's something I'm interested in and I wonder if you have any references. There is obviously an enormous amount of areal influence among East Asian languages, but I've seen little discussion trying to track how these changes spread from one language to another. Presumably this should not be impossible to work out.

One such question is, where (if anywhere) did tone "come from"? Sino-Tibetan and Austroasiatic languages once had no tone, and if you believe the Austro-Tai hypothesis, neither did the Tai languages. Perhaps the Hmong-Mien languages? Benwing (talk) 04:43, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Ahh, I see tonogenesis#origin isn't much help, either. I've been under the impression that tone is shared across language families in Southeast Asia because of areal spreading but that it's not understood where it started, though I haven't really read up on it. Probably, the most helpful article would be N.J. Enfield's "Areal linguistics and mainland Southeast Asia" in Annual Review of Anthropology Vol. 34 (2005).

If you can access it (I can't seem to) Shankara Bhat's "Retroflexion: an areal feature" may provide a sort of lit review about areal spreading in general, which might also be helpful. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:34, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

dental/alveolar nasal

Must say I'm surprised. Spanish, Catalan, and Italian (all three with sourcing) seem to use an alveolar nasal (along with dental plosives), making it a bit surprising if Portuguese uses a dental. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get a hold of the sources myself. --JorisvS (talk) 19:29, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, when the anon put that there I looked it up myself just to be sure. The JIPA articles both say it's dental and this book even says (p. 32, 36) it's "apicodental." If it were just one source, it might be suspect. Sources, especially those exploring phonology over phonetics, tend to gloss over terminology so that "dental" can lump in alveolar sounds. This is why the surprise is actually that Italian, Catalan, and Spanish don't have dental nasals, despite some descriptions. Another thing to consider is that French, which has a number of innovations that seem to be in common with Portuguese, also uses a dental nasal. Maybe there's an areal spread going on. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 20:31, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Could be, I don't know. An areal spread in what way, dental nasal becoming alveolar in S+C+I? An areal spread between French and Portuguese not involving Spanish doesn't look likely, does it? As for personal experience, I have noticed the French dental nasal myself in a French-language course, but I didn't notice it in a similar Portuguese-language course, though it was less clear either way. Guess we should move the French entry at alveolar nasal. --JorisvS (talk) 20:58, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

The areal spread could go either way. After all, the guttural r skipped over Spain. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 21:19, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's right. Maybe an interesting question is why it skipped over Spain? --JorisvS (talk) 21:31, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Intrusive R

As I said in the edit summary, I didn't know how to reference it. However, I have witnessed first-hand that Edgar Stiles and Jack Bauer have both used intrusive R more than once; for example "the data-r-is" and "the eye dear is". The usage was very rare, but it still happened. Not knowing how to reference it, as I stated, does not mean it should be deleted. It means that someone who DOES know how to reference it should do that. The correct statement about rhotic accents and intrusive R should include the phrase "not USUALLY", because it is clear that rhotic people DO occasionally use the intrusive R - although it is very rare indeed, it does happen. I'm bringing this to your talk page because it's you who reverted it, so I'm hoping you can suggest a way to incorporate this into the article so it is acceptable by the majority of people. Thanks for your help and understanding. 90.214.108.162 (talk) 20:09, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit summaries

Hi - you really should always use these, I almost hit rollback when I saw you deleting a load of text with no explanation. Thanks. Just a heads-up really. Dougweller (talk) 17:19, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Which recent edit are you referring to? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:31, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Oops, apologies, Ancient Greek. Dougweller (talk) 20:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, it sounds like you might be a little trigger happy with the rollback feature. Not only did my edit not actually exhibit any massive load of text deletion, but there actually was an edit summary. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 23:03, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I was trying to be helpful. I didn't revert because I'm not trigger happy, but your last few edits there cut almost 1400 bytes with no edit summaries, the edit summary was a few minutes earlier and far down on my watchlist. It's probably [4] that showed up at the top of my watchlist when I refreshed it. Never mnind, I don't want to have an argument with you. Dougweller (talk) 05:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, "trigger happy" isn't the right thing to say. But I was responding to you saying you almost used rollback. I hope you can understand my confusion, as I figured the edit summary provided would be sufficient for the other edits I made to that section. I'm not sure how rollback is normally used, but if it only shows the most recent edit summary in a group of edits, it might behoove its users to not use byte counts as a criterion for obvious vandalism. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:11, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

It's just a tool you can be given to speed things up. You use it from your watchlist. It's the Wikipedia:Recent changes patrol that is most likely to be a problem for editors not using edit summaries because it won't show your changes as a group of edits, so there may be a number of edits shown to editors on the recent changes patrol between your edits. Um, that's a bit clumsily put, but I hope you get the gist. Dougweller (talk) 06:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I see. I'll keep that in mind with future edits. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:32, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Wish I had your facility with IPA, Ƶ§œš¹

Thanks, you've done a kindness worthy of

This user wants to be your friend.

How much of the IPA do you verbally pronounce, besides having a full command of the included phones and their symbols?

Warmest regards,

Pandelver (talk) 18:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty good at pronouncing most of the consonants, though I still have some difficulty with pharyngeals and velar-labial stops. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 19:13, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Partition of JIn

Hi, nice work on the Partition of Jin. I'm just curious as to why you removed the hanzi in the Battle of Jingang section. I put them in when I created the article as disambiguation aids for cross-reference with Chinese material. Best ► Philg88 ◄ ^talk 00:14, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, right now the hanzi is getting in the way of the flow of the article's prose, so I thought I'd at least remove the redundant ones. There might be a better solution, but I'm not sure yet. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 02:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

re:User:Belchman

I'm fairly inactive these days, so I'm really not able to look into this situation presently. If I were you, I'd see if problems persist and if they do go back to WP:AN/I or maybe try WP:Wikiquette alerts. That board is specifically designed to deal with civility issues. If no one responds, keep replying to your own thread so it isn't archived and make someone respond. AniMate 08:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 11:34, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

ɣ - ɰ

I already saw the intro. Now the ɣ is used without the diacritic ˕ and I thought that it would be more accurate to use ɰ and not ɣ˕ to use less diacritics as possible as it is preferred in IPA when a specific symbol is already available. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 18:38, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

{ɣ can be used as well (even without the diacritic). This is how it's normally represented with Spanish, particularly because the pronunciation can be more constricted in emphatic speech. It's the same with Icelandic. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 18:49, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

usage of high/low vs. close/open, stop vs. plosive

Hello. I made a suggestion concerning renaming articles about particular phonemes so that "close/open" -> "high/low", "plosive" -> "stop", e.g. close front unrounded vowel -> high front unrounded vowel and voiced bilabial plosive -> voiced bilabial stop. I put the suggestion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonetics, because I'm not sure whether there's a better place for discussions of this sort that refer to multiple articles. I gave a lot of reasons why these changes should be made; IMO the arguments are fairly compelling (but of course I might think that way :-)). Please take a look and comment, thanks. Benwing (talk) 10:42, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Diaphoneme

Hello, I just wanted to introduce myself and let you know I am glad to be reviewing the article Diaphoneme you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. -- Cirt (talk) 07:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

• GA passed, excellent work! ;) -- Cirt (talk) 02:58, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

IPA Cleanup

If you could check:

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Alexandre_Herchcovitch

Listen to his name pronounced on YT or elsewhere. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.101.243.17 (talk) 13:03, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

You could check this one too: http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Ricardo_Teixeira and then delete this whole section, if possible! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.170.111.185 (talk) 20:16, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative

Hello Aeusoes1

I noticed you removed the Icelandic section I put into the Voiceless alveolar lateral fricative page, saying that the "ll" in "allt" is an approximant. It is in Swedish, but it is not in Icelandic. Normally, "ll" is pronounced "tl" in Icelandic, but not in "allt". Here it sounds completely different. There is definitely either a voiceless velar fricative before the alveolar lateral approximant [ˈaxlt] or an alveolar lateral fricative [ˈaɬt]. Having been taught by Icelandic friends how to say this word, I'd be inclined to say the latter.

I think you should be using sources to justify its inclusion. The acoustic differences between a voiceless lateral approximant and a voiceless lateral fricative are so slight that no language is known to contrast the two. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:10, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Need some help with IPA

The musician Kasim Sultan needs an IPA spelling in the lead of the article. His first name is pronounced either Ka-SIM or most often, "Ka-ZIM Sultan". Could you help? Thank you. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 04:04, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

voiceless apico-alveolar sibilant

Please see what I wrote about this sound in the talk apge. The fact that I called this page "voiceless alveolar retroflex sibilant" should be enough to clue you in to the fact that this is NOT the same as the "apical alveolar" (grooved) sibilant described in SOWL, as is the fact that Basque has both the grooved alveolar and retroflex ("apico-alveolar") sounds. Benwing (talk) 07:58, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

Uvular "r" map

On your map, I notice you have Zurich overlapped as using the guttural "r" in educated speech, but only in the Northern parts of the canton is the uvular "r" used, in the city itself and the areas south of it, the pronunciation is alveolar.--Cyrrk (talk) 12:35, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that's what the source says. Perhaps there is a super-educated elite that meets in stuffy libraries that you don't know about. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 16:42, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

IPA for Greek

Hello. Thank you for reverting my edits of Wikipedia:IPA for Greek in good faith. The reason I made those edits is because, in Greek, "ε" is pronounced as a mid-front, not a close-mid-front unrounded vowel. Therefore, the correct IPA for it is /e̞/ and not /e/. This does make a difference which is not a matter of simplicity: The latter is just wrong, and sounds wrong to any native Greek speaker such as myself; /e/ is not a sound of the Greek language, and therefore, the speaker sounds as if they are unable to pronounce the vowel correctly. I have recorded both pronunciations of the word "φαινόμενο" to assist in understanding this. Here is the pronunciation of the Greek work "φαινόμενο" in both manners, by me:

• Incorrect manner, /fe'nomeno/
• Correct manner, /fe̞`nome̞no/

The difference is quite audible. Having said this, I recommend that we revert back to this revision of the Wikipedia:IPA for Greek page, where the correction has been made. Thank you.

--dionyziz (talk) 09:56, 18 June 2011 (UTC).

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough in the edit summary. I agree with you that this is true of the mid front vowel of Greek (it's also true of the mid back vowel, by the way). However, because it's not contrastive with any other mid vowel, we don't actually need to put diacritics on. It's clear enough either way. This is also true of Modern Hebrew, Spanish, and Japanese, which have very similar vowel inventories. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 17:24, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. --dionyziz (talk) 16:28, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

IPA-cmn

When you get back from break, you might want to take a look at the changes at Template:C-cmn. — kwami (talk) 06:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Also, considering all the entries you added to the IPA articles for Tilquiapan Zapotec, I thought it might be nice to summarize them in the language article. I made a stub and linked it to the IPA articles. (I don't have access to the JIPA article.) — kwami (talk) 17:45, 17 October 2011 (UTC)