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Linking single IPA symbols

User [[1]] has started systematically delinking IPA symbols from their formal description article. This destroys a lot of work done by other people. Before continuing, we should discuss first if this is the right way to go. I have always found it useful to have easy access to the more formal description of the sound in question and would like to keep the links. −Woodstone 16:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

IPA symbols are hard enough to read as it is. Having them linked (and therefore by default including an underline) makes it even harder to read them. Compare ʐzɳnɲŋ vs ʐzɳnɲŋ. Nohat 17:57, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
There are specific examples, such as in greek mid vowels, where the diacritic is obscured by the underline. So [e̞ˌliniˈka] would look like [e̞ˌliniˈka]. In narrow transcription of Russian vowels, there will also be some trouble as well. As in, пал [pɑ̟l] or [pa̠l] and режу 'rʲɛʐʊ]. Of course, what is most likely is that the link will be just an individual IPA character, but the retroflex sounds and any others with hooky things at the bottom will be obscured.
Here are two examples where de-linking did not obscure knowledge of the characters at all:


  Front Back
  unrounded rounded unrounded rounded
Close /i/ ι /y/ υ    
Mid /e/ ε     /o/ ο
Open /a/ α


Alphabet Pronunciation Pronunciation with /p/ English eqivalent
अ /ə/ /pə/ short Schwa: as the a in above or ago
आ /ɑː/ /pɑː/ long Open back unrounded vowel: as the a in father
इ /i/ /pi/ short close front unrounded vowel: as i in bit
ई /iː/ /piː/ long close front unrounded vowel: as i in machine
उ /u/ /pu/ short close back rounded vowel: as u in put
ऊ /uː/ /puː/ long close back rounded vowel: as oo in school
ए /eː/ /peː/ long close-mid front unrounded vowel: as a in game (not a diphthong), or é in café
ऐ /əi/ or /ai/ /pəi/ or /pai/ a long diphthong: approx. as ei in height
ओ /οː/ /poː/ long close-mid back rounded vowel: as o in tone (not a diphthong)
औ /əu/ or /au/ /pəu/ or /pau/ a long diphthong: approx. as ou in house
ऋ /r̩/ /pr̩/ short syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: approx. as American Eng. bird or meter
ॠ /r̩ː/ /pr̩ː/ long syllabic vowel-like retroflex approximant: a longer version of /r̩/
ऌ /l̩/ /pl̩/ short syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: approx. as handle
ॡ /l̩ː/ /pl̩ː/ long syllabic vowel-like retroflex-lateral approximant: longer version of /l̩/

In the first table is designed to be so specific, that you already know the position and rounding of the vowels; that's all you really need to know to destinguish most vowels. The second table puts the link on the description so that if you read the description and still don't understand you can click somewhere. AEuSoes1 23:05, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we can have it both ways if the underlining is suppressed by default for the IPA links. Most of those are indicated by the IPA class or template. The stylesheet could be adapted to not only set the right fonts, but also suppress the underline, even if the normal user's preference (or lack of it) is underlining. It could look somewhat like:
  • .IPA:link IPA:visited { <all the fonts as is>; text-decoration: "none" }
We should ask the experts to check this out and insert it in wikimedia:common.css. −Woodstone 12:41, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
This seems like a very complicated solution for a type of linking I'm not terribly excited about begin with. I feel we should avoid linking IPA, ragardless of the problem that the actual linkage causes, since it seems like over-wikification to me. But if a compromise must be reached, I feel Aeusoes' solution is much better. Something other than the characters themselves should be linked.
Peter Isotalo 17:25, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. We should only link English words so people have a clear idea of what they're getting when they follow a link. We shouldn't link IPA symbols or Chinese characters or anything like that for the simple reason that unless someone already knows what the "funny" characters are, they have no idea what they're clicking on. Nohat 18:11, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Kirshenbaum

I see most of the IPA symbols as little boxes with hex numbers in them (running Mozilla 1.7.8 on Debian stable). It would be very helpful if we could have the IPA represented in Kirshenbaum, in addition to the unreadable Unicode. --Trovatore 05:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

apt-get install ttf-freefont or ttf-dejavu. —Keenan Pepper 12:56, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, but the point is not really whether I personally can see the symbols. There are lots of people who can't. An ASCII-based representation of pronunciations would be a good thing in itself, and Kirshenbaum is the best of those. --Trovatore 15:04, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
I think introducing yet another transcription system is a really bad idea, even if we have some problems with displaying IPA. I'm afraid it would lead to yet more lead clutter, especially when combined with all the transcriptioncruft present in articles about many non-English, and especially non-Western subjects.
Peter Isotalo 19:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, in the final analysis I think Kirshenbaum is better than regular IPA. It maps to IPA one-for-one but is much easier to read (which is also its main advantage over SAMPA). In particular the lower-case vowels have pretty much the values you'd expect them to have in any European language other than English. So if it came down to it, I'd be in favor of replacing the IPA with Kirshenbaum. --Trovatore 01:15, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh, another big advantage is that it's much easier to enter. To add an IPA pronunciation to an article, even if I knew the symbols, I couldn't just type them; I'd have to enter HTML entities, or find a table and do copy-and-paste symbol by symbol. With Kirshenbaum, I just type the letters. --Trovatore 01:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I consider it more, not less, difficult to read Kirshenbaum since the symbols involved are that much more abstract and because one needs to learn another set of symbols besides normal IPA. (Learning Kirshenbaum without internalizing standard IPA is not realistic.) And entering IPA is not that complicated considering that most of the symbols can be found in the Insert-table when editing.
I believe there are more downsides to using Kirshenbaum than there are advantages.
Peter Isotalo 07:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't know what you mean by the symbols being more abstract. The ones used for most sounds from English and European languages are just lower- and upper-case letters, and in most cases are the letters used, in at least one context, for that sound. I don't know why we have to make transcribing English and European pronunciation harder than it needs to be, just to make Xhosa look less complicated by comparison. --Trovatore 15:28, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
All the IPA characters are in the "Insert characters" box just below the "save page" button, so the argument that they are too hard to enter doesn't obtain. All you have to do is click to insert the character. And it is possible to type IPA symbols: there are a number of IPA keymappings available for a variety of computing platforms. But the main benefit of IPA is that it is much more known. Kirshenbaum is not used in any dictionaries, whereas there are many dictionaries that use IPA, such as most British English dictionaries, as well as nearly all English–foreign laguage translation dictionaries. Kirshenbaum is not taught in linguistics and other related classes the way that IPA is. The number of people who know Kirshenbaum is a tiny subset of the people who know IPA.
I don't think there is any point in arguing over which set of symbols are less complicated or more abstract or whatnot because that's not an argument that can ever be decided. In the final analysis, Kirshenbaum (and the similar SAMPA/X-SAMPA) are systems that were invented because it was not possible to type and store actual IPA characters, and now that it is possible to type and store IPA, they cease to have a raison d'être. I don't really see any benefit to cluttering up articles with another transcription, especially one that doesn't have the force of any international organizations behind it and doesn't enjoy significant usage in the "real world". Nohat 20:24, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately the argument about external recognition is a strong one. The rest of your argument isn't, though; the fact is that many users see most of these characters as little boxes, and thus can neither read them nor enter them. --Trovatore 20:36, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
We could also transliterate all scripts other than Latin, and represent diacritics by quotes, but that wouldn't be a good idea either. —Keenan Pepper 21:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds overly pretentious to me

So, basically, all the IPA-only advocates are saying that Wikipedia is NOT to be used by all those NOT "educated" in IPA, nor any of those who, for whatever reason, don't have access to the technology needed to display the IPA characters. And do any countries have more than 5% of their 'average Joe' population "educated" in IPA? 24.18.210.22 06:13, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I'm not saying that at all. None of the other schemes are much use without prior "education" either. Pseudo-English pronuciations require familiarity with English orthography, which is not universal, and the various schemes in Pronunciation respelling for English require prior knowledge as well. IPA is the only international standard which is fair to people from all over the world. People who aren't already "educated" in IPA can read IPA chart for English, which is easy to understand. It doesn't take a genius. —Keenan Pepper 06:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Pseudo-English pronunciations may not be "universal", but it seems like they are FAR more commonly understood among English speakers (EN's primary audience) than IPA. Why not reach out to the masses instead of just the "educated"? And doesn't IPA chart for English basically use pro-nun? So you're just adding extra links to a 'translation table', instead of just providing pro-nun within the articles? And you didn't address the necessity of 'latest technology' to even display IPA characters. Again, why not aim for maximum accessibility? Isn't that what Wikipedia is about? And isn't accessible approximate pronounciation better than inaccessible exact (if such a thing even exists) pronounciation? Is this an encyclopedia or a linguistics dictionary? 24.18.210.22 06:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Nor did you address any countries' 'average Joe' knowledge of IPA. Any over 5%??? Is Wikipedia for the masses, or for the educationally and technologically elite? And most articles link to the non-helpful International Phonetic Alphabet, not IPA chart for English. 24.18.210.22 07:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
The problem with the alternatives is that they are parochial and misleading. What seems like a perfectly reasonable pseudo-English transcription to you might be completely confusing or just plain wrong to someone who speaks a different dialect. Better not to have anything at all than something that misleads readers into believing something incorrect. Nohat 07:06, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Well said, Nohat, you beat me to it. —Keenan Pepper 07:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the problem of "dialect imperialism" is much greater with IPA transcriptions than with pro-NUN, rhotacism being the most obvious issue.--Chris 16:43, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
They're FAR more commonly misunderstood, too. Your argument that IPA is only useful for some pretentious elite is misguided. Anyone can easily learn the basics of IPA. I don't understand what you mean about IPA chart for English; it's just giving examples of English words with those phonemes. You're wrong about needing the "latest technology", too. Unicode is an old, established standard by now and IPA has always displayed correctly for me, not only on my personal computer but also on public computers running all kinds of old software. It's not our fault if your software is broken or you're too lazy or stupid to figure out how to install a font. Would you have all text in different scripts transliterated into the Latin alphabet as well? —Keenan Pepper 07:15, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Would I have all text in different scripts transliterated into the Latin alphabet? I certainly would! And if it was choice between having only the foreign script or only a transcription, I'd take the transcription. I've been a professional editor for 20 years. In works intended for a general audience, I'd never let authors get away with this sort of cruft-loving pedantry. In my experience, it's usually the somewhat educated who push this sort of thing. Real experts wear their learning lightly.--Chris 17:58, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. All of us stupid people are unworthy of Wikipedia's information. So much for 'information for all'--you've just confirmed Wikipedia is for the educationally and technology priveledged. Doesn't matter if continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! says otherwise.
International Phonetic Alphabet for English gives us pro-nun info. UTF reads like crap (a bunch of blank squares) under many versions of IE--I guess we're all just 'too stupid'. Despite having 75% market share. 24.18.210.22 07:41, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
And yes, I consider the English language alphabet to have 26 characters, without any diacritics.
WHERE is IPA an 'old, established' standard??? Maybe UK, but I don't think US, or much of anywhere else. Again, what is the 'global perspective? How many SA or African citizens know IPA??? 24.18.210.22 07:41, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
You're contradicting yourself. On the one hand, you say pseudo-English pronunciation is good because only native English speakers matter, but on the other hand, you're complaining that IPA is bad because African people don't know it already. How many African people know English orthography well enough to understand those silly ad-hoc pronunciations?
Any African who both speaks and reads English can interpret pro-NUN. That camp must be a couple of magnitudes larger than those who read but do not speak English and know IPA.--Chris 16:49, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I have browsed Wikipedia many times using Internet Explorer, and IPA has always displayed correctly. —Keenan Pepper 08:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I would like to verify Keenan's comment as well. --Siva1979Talk to me 17:10, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Notice

The statement below was added by Denelson83 on 2006-03-31 01:55:29Z as a prominent notice at front. It was deleted by someone else and reverted again by a third person. Moved here for orderly discussion. −Woodstone 19:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

"A comment recently left by an anonymous user on the talk page of the International Phonetic Alphabet article has brought this directive into dispute." −Denelson83, 2006-03-31 01:55:29Z

Why IPA shouldn't be the sole pronunciation guide in articles here

I'll concede that IPA should be used to placate the eggheads and pointy-headed-scientist types who like to pretend that Wikipedia is a scholarly resource; let them have their fantasy.

But for the rest of us, it just doesn't cut it. Let me give you a real-world example:

Reading the article on the Turkish musical instrument, the cümbüş, I was hoping to resolve the pronunciation of this little banjo. Someone I know has one, and they pronounce it "joom-bush". According to the article, the pronunciation is

IPA: [ʤym.ˈbyʃ], sometimes approximated as [ʤum.buʃ] by English speakers

Now, I should say that until now, I'd basically ignored IPA, hoping it would just go away. Today, I bit the bullet, took a deep breath and clicked over to the IPA article here. I was hoping I could skim it, find the inevitable symbol chart, and figure out how to get my mouth around "ʤym.ˈbyʃ".

Ha! No such luck. Turns out, you basically need to be a linguist in the first place to even interpret the symbols. For instance, when I tried to figure out the difference between the two examples given (the vowel y vs. u), I was confronted by a chart showing the relationships of vowel sounds using the technical terms "close", "near-close", "mid", "open-mid", "near-open", etc. Now of course all these terms are conveniently linked to more Wikipedia articles explaining them. So if I had the inclination, and maybe a couple hours of reading time, then I could work out these sounds for myself.

I'm going to some extravagant overdramatizing here to try to drive home the point that for the average reader, using IPA just ain't going to happen. It's basically a closed academic system, meaning that if you don't already understand it, or don't have some other reason to study it, then it's basically just a bunch of gobbledygook, as someone put it up above. The barrier to gaining the knowledge to interpret these strange symbols is just too high; a fact which is not helped by the poor quality of the tools given here (the article on IPA) in explaining this to the layperson. (This seems to be yet another article written at an academic level too high for the average reader, with little attention paid to accessibility.)

Therefore, the reasonable solution is to have both IPA (because the academics insist on it) and "pro-nun" guides. The pro-nun version, had it been present in the article in question, would have saved me much frustration and fruitless searching, and would have done the job, which is to impart a reasonable facsimile of the pronunciation of the word.

Further data point: if you read any newspaper (at least in the U.S.), words which need explaining use pro-nun guides. I'm sure this is governed by their style guides.

==ILike2BeAnonymous 23:54, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I think a reasonable summary of the arguments against pro-nun is that it gives different pronunciations (often incorrect) depending on the reader's dialect. For example, "joom-bush" is not the correct pronunciation of "cümbüş." Ardric47 00:18, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for reminding me to ask for pro-nun guides for cümbüş. I'm not convinced that it's true that there are no accurate pro-nun renditions. How would you render this word in pro-nun?
Actually, your answer itself argues against what you say; if you say that '"joom-bush" is not the correct pronunciation', that implies that you know what "joom-bush" (correct or not) sounds like, right? ==ILike2BeAnonymous 00:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd say that in an English-language context "joom-bush" ([ʤum.buʃ], if you like) is a perfectly correct pronunciation, while [ʤym.ˈbyʃ] borders on the pedantic (exceptions made for people with native or near-native ability in Turkish). In a Turkish-language context, it's different, of course.
As far as IPA vs. pro-nun goes, it's worth stressing that, to a naive reader, IPA often conveys no pronunciation whatever, or a highly inaccurate pronunciation. So, there's a strong case for using both, at least in non-linguistic articles. In a few articles, I've done something like this:

cümbüş (IPA [ʤym.ˈbyʃ], roughly joom’-boosh)

with a link to Kwami's Pronunciation_respelling_key, and no-one's complained.--Chris 00:46, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
What can I say but "you the man"? (regardless of gender, of course)==ILike2BeAnonymous 00:48, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Cümbüş can't be rendered in pro-nun because it has a sound ([y]) not present in English. I guess an additional symbol could be added or something, though. I do know what "joom-bush" sounds like—to me at least. To me it is [ʤumbʊʃ]. In other dialects, it is different (e.g. someone in Scotland might say [ʤʉmbʉʃ] according to Help:Pronunciation respelling key). I said that "joom-bush" is not the correct pronunciation because "joom-bush" would not be pronounced [ʤym.ˈbyʃ] in any native dialect of English. Ardric47 02:31, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
No offence, Ardric, but you've missed my point. Please re-read my comment. A monolingual English speaker is unlikely to master the Turkish pronunciation of cümbüş, no matter what transcription you use (in fact, not even if you provide an audio recording). Even phonetically savvy speakers may regard the authentic, native pronunciation as pedantic in a colloquial English-language context. So you need to provide an approximation alongside the IPA; that's what pro-nun is for. If he speaks Standard American, he'll say something like [ʤumbʊʃ] or [ʤumbuʃ]; if he's Scottish, he may say something like [ʤʉmbʉʃ]. Both these approximations are well represented by the pro-nun spelling "joom-bush" or Kwami's joom-boosh. --Chris 03:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying that. Yes, Ardric, you're probably correct that there's no way to render a correct Turkish pronunciation through pro-nun; the larger point, elucidated above, is that in this context, an approximate pronunciation for a non-native speaker is plenty close enough. Anything more is pendantic and overkill. Another example would be some of the umlauted vowels (ö, ü) in Hungarian. I have a passing familiarity with that language, and yet I really cannot pronounce those vowels correctly. One shouldn't expect the random man or woman on the street who wanders in here to have that level of proficiency in a language they don't speak, particularly one like Turkish or Hungarian with very peculiar pronunciations that are difficult for English speakers. This isn't pandering to the ignorance of such people, but rather just recognizing reality and delivering information that's useful, rather than trying (and failing) to fulfill some lofty goal. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 03:40, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I will agree that "joom-boosh" (not "joom-bush") for cümbüş is "close enough" (unless of course [ʤumbuʃ] means something else in Turkish...does it?). There will inevitably be other situations in which a pro-nun rendering will produce an entirely different meaning. Pro-nun literally obfuscates the pronunciation; there are several examples above. You said, "I'll concede that IPA should be used to placate the eggheads and pointy-headed-scientist types who like to pretend that Wikipedia is a scholarly resource; let them have their fantasy." (I hope "pointy-headed-scientist types" was not an insult). That "fantasy" is actually a reality in some cases. Well-referenced comprehensive articles (specific citations for every fact) on Wikipedia are better than anything a paper encyclopedia has produced, and it does a disservice to the reader to place the IPA second to an ad-hoc, inconsistent, and confusing system. Ardric47 06:02, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Fine, then; put the IPA first and the pro-nun second if you think the other way around would be a "disservice". And yes, it was meant as an insult. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 06:11, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to not take it personally, but please read Wikipedia:No personal attacks. Ardric47 06:28, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Then don't take it that way, because it wasn't intended that way. I have read that, by the way, but choose to ignore it. It's the human way, you know. ==ILike2BeAnonymous 08:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
"I will agree that "joom-boosh" (not "joom-bush") for cümbüş is "close enough" (unless of course [ʤumbuʃ] means something else in Turkish...does it?)."
Ardric, it makes no difference whether it means something else or not. A linguistically naive reader cannot interpret exotic IPA symbols, and if they could, they could not pronounce the sounds they represent. There is no way you can get a linguistically naive English speaker to say [ʤym.ˈbyʃ]. The only options are:
  • [ˈkʌmbʌs], or perhaps [ˈkumbəs], based on a naive reading of the Turkish orthography,
  • [ˈdzɪmbɪ] or [ˈdzɪmbɪz], based on a naive reading of the IPA, or
  • [ʤumˈbuʃ] based on pro-nun or the English respelling key.
Which would you prefer?--Chris 07:39, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I came here to post this, thanks for covering it already. NO ONE can pronounce anything with IPA pronunciation, I believe we should go back to the "sounding it out" thing, or just post both. --Liface 05:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I can, so your claim of "NO ONE" is already proven false. Please stick to the facts. —Keenan Pepper 17:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
OK, it's true only as a very broad generalization. A large majority of North Americans - even most university graduates - are not conversant with IPA. Claims are made that tbe vast majority Britons understand it, but I'm frankly skeptical that even a bare majority do. IPA is clearly the best transcription for those who understand it, but since most WP users don't, a dual IPA/respelling solution seems logical.--Chris 18:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Uh... thanks for your comment. I guess I'll refrain from making generalizations in the future. Having just IPA is ridiculous, I'm going to start adding pro-nun to articles also. --Liface 18:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Then you'll find yourself quickly reverted. User:Angr 06:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

What cümbüş and similar articles need is two things: an IPA transcription and an audio file of someone (preferably but not necessarily a native Turkish speaker) pronouncing the word. That way people who don't already know IPA don't have to spend forty-five minutes learning it just to find out how the word is pronounced, without having to rely on insulting and patronizing "pro-nun-see-AY-shuns". User:Angr 06:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

"Insulting and patronizing" - Bingo! That's why the IPA-only folks are so adamant despite the thinness of their arguments. They're embarrassed by pro-nun and similar schemes. Yes, they do look a bit like an illiterate hillbilly's attempt to write standard English. But emotional reactions are not a good basis for policy. Reason tells me that pro-nun etc. are on many occasions more useful than IPA for many people, and therefore a dual system makes sense as an option.--Chris 08:19, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Audio files are not a bad idea, but are not a panacea as some people seem to assume. It can be remarkably difficult to pick out the actually pronunciation from audio, particularly if pronounced with a foreign accent. If you think about it, providing a audio file is the equivalent of providing an ultra-narrow phonetic transcription... a few moments of thought will show you that that wouldn't be such a great idea, and not just because of the usual IPA difficultie--Chris 08:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)s.
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