Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet/Archive 2

message: I deleted mention of [y] being pronounced like Greek υ because that letter (ypsilon) is pronounced [i] in Modern Greek—except when it's pronounced [f] or [v] in certain digraphs.  All in all, it's a very poor example. —Tkinias 18:48, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: In re Greek

message: There's been a suggestion that we use the material we have at IPA in Unicode here. Could there be a way to use both the tables as well as the images of the charts in the same article? Peter Isotalo 16:31, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)
:I tend to keeping them separate. Quite some people will not be able see the IPA font properly, because they have computers, browsers or settings that are not compatible with the IPA font. They will still see the IPA page, with its graphical pictures, straight from the IPA handbook. The separate IPA in Unicode gives the same information. I use this page often in a separate window to cut and paste from. I am afraid merging the two would give a rather cluttered article. −Woodstone 18:59, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)
::There is now a merger notice on the IPA Unicode article, put there by someone who believes that the tables should be removed from this article and placed as links (to avoid clutter), as IPA support is nearly universal. I've been tempted to start the merger myself. You might want to comment there. kwami 07:21, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)
I'm not sure what the point of the "article" IPA in Unicode is....... It should be merged. --Menchi 07:46, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been meaning to merge them for months, but I was worried it would be controversial.  — Chameleon 08:38, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Join with [[IPA in Unicode]]? 

message: Nohat sorted the consonants alphabetically. I guess he did not notice they were sorted more logically as in the IPA chart. I also do not understand his remark about complex German vowels. Ask any German to say a, e, i, o, u and you will get a perfect rendering of the corresponding IPA symbols. I am inclined to revert. −Woodstone 21:41, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC)
:The order that they were in would only be meaningful to someone who already knows about IPA and what the letters stand for, which is not the intended audience of the sentence. Putting them in alphabetical order makes it easier for someone who is unfamiliar with IPA to note whether or not a letter they're thinking of is in the list. As for German vowels, the reason I removed the comment is because in written German, the letters a, e, i, o, and u often do NOT correspond to the sounds [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u], quite like they do in Italian or Spanish. For example, in the very common German words es, mit, and von, the vowels do not correspond to [e], [i], and [o], respectively. So saying that the IPA vowels are like German vowels would be misleading at the very least. Nohat 04:36, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note to "description" section 

message: A big thank you to all who contributed to this page! I use it very often and it already saved me lots of time. - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 11:14, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thank you for this page 

message: Shouldn't the stuff on here be moved to International Phonetic Alphabet?
This is not specifically about Unicode at all (as I thought) but just happens to be written in the character set.  All OSs and browsers worth talking about now support Unicode.  It is the de facto and official standard for WWW pages now.  There seems no reason to not move the stuff here to International Phonetic Alphabet.
In fact I found it very annoying going to International Phonetic Alphabet and finding images (that didn't tell me much, that I couldn't search in or copy from &c, that took time to download, &c).  It is the images that sould be removed from International Phonetic Alphabet and moved somewhere else (if they are really nessecary).
--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley (c)(t) 03:48, 2004 Dec 24 (UTC)
* Oppose. IPA in Unicode is such a useful reference here. I refer to it all the time; it's quite handy. If we had to find this table buried somewhere 70% of the way down a much longer article, I'd cry. QuartierLatin 1968 21:12, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Move Page Contents? 

message: In my browser, the characters in the table that happen to be in the Latin character set appear in an ordinary weight, while the ones that are unique to IPA are heavier, as if they were bold.  The contrast is quite distracting.  This is probably due to a misconfiguration in my browser (which is Firefox).  Does anyone else see this contrast?  What can be done about it?
ACW 21:25, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: IPA is probably handled by a different font, unless your main Latin font happens to be a huge one containing IPA (Arial Unicode MS, Gentium, or similar). This second font is apparently heavier. One way to fix it is to set the font for the IPA range to one that closer resembles your normal font (if Firefox has this option at all), another is to change your normal font to a larger one. Jordi·✆ 22:29, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spurious contrast between Latin and IPA 

message: ...
===Pulmonic consonants===
...
====Nasals====
These are the IPA symbols that represent nasal consonants.
symbol	sound            	IPA Name              	IPA number	Unicode Name
      	bilabial nasal   	Lower-case M          	114       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M
      	labiodental nasal	Left-tail M (at right)	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M WITH HOOK
      	alveolar nasal   	Lower-case N          	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M
      	retroflex nasal  	Right-tail N          	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL N WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
      	palatal nasal    	Left-tail N (at left) 	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL N WITH LEFT HOOK
      	velar nasal      	Eng                   	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL ENG
      	uvular nasal     	Small capital N       	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL N
</div>
Of course, the columns are just examples, we could do something totally different if desired. This way, we can put e.g. the epiglottal fricatives in with the rest. Nohat 01:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Consonants

message: ...
====Nasals====
These are the IPA symbols that represent nasal consonants.
symbol	sound            	IPA Name              	IPA number	Unicode Name
      	bilabial nasal   	Lower-case M          	114       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M
      	labiodental nasal	Left-tail M (at right)	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M WITH HOOK
      	alveolar nasal   	Lower-case N          	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M
      	retroflex nasal  	Right-tail N          	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL N WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
      	palatal nasal    	Left-tail N (at left) 	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL N WITH LEFT HOOK
      	velar nasal      	Eng                   	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL ENG
      	uvular nasal     	Small capital N       	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL N
</div>
Of course, the columns are just examples, we could do something totally different if desired. This way, we can put e.g. the epiglottal fricatives in with the rest. Nohat 01:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Pulmonic consonants

message: These are the IPA symbols that represent nasal consonants.
symbol	sound            	IPA Name              	IPA number	Unicode Name
      	bilabial nasal   	Lower-case M          	114       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M
      	labiodental nasal	Left-tail M (at right)	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M WITH HOOK
      	alveolar nasal   	Lower-case N          	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL M
      	retroflex nasal  	Right-tail N          	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL N WITH RETROFLEX HOOK
      	palatal nasal    	Left-tail N (at left) 	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL N WITH LEFT HOOK
      	velar nasal      	Eng                   	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL ENG
      	uvular nasal     	Small capital N       	115       	LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL N
</div>
Of course, the columns are just examples, we could do something totally different if desired. This way, we can put e.g. the epiglottal fricatives in with the rest. Nohat 01:19, 15 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Nasals

message: I frequently run across articles with haphazard pronounciation keys. Some of these I've rendered into IPA. Others I avoid as I am unsure the correct transliteration. What I want to know is if there is a WikiProject that addresses this problem. If not, one could be created similar to Wikipedia:Translation into English. -Tydaj 20:45, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, look what I found: . -Tydaj 20:56, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject?

message: I'm having a lot of trouble seeing unicode characters in this website. I use "Arial Unicode MS" but the characters are always invisible, and the only way I can see them is by copying and pasting them. Some of them even display incorrectly (boxes) even though I know that some of those characters are supported by this font. It's only this website in which I have this type of problem. I'd appreciate any advice, thanks.
I also have trouble with the subscript linking bar (absence of a break). It shows up correctly, but when I use it with other characters, it displays a box.--Potupchik 20:11, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Font issues 

message: Surely to goodness this should be a featured article? -- ALoan (Talk) 00:28, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[WP:FAC]]

message: International Phonetic Alphabet#See also includes 
* IPA is preferred in Wikipedia articles, however. 
(which BTW is good "news for everyone here in the castle", thanks for relieving us finally of the unlearnable SAMPA blots on articles).  Is this not a violation of our advice to "avoid self-references [to WP]"? IMO it belongs on both this talk page and (especially prominently) on talk:SAMPA and someplace in the WP:MoS, but not in this page's article.--Jerzy•t 16:11, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  WP self-ref 

message: How many letters are there in the IPA? I think that many casual readers would like to find this information in the lead. Seabhcán 12:28, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: As in just standalone characters (i.e. the consonant and vowel symbols), or including diacritics and prosodic symbols?  If you are referring to only the standalone characters, there are 107.  Taking the diacritics and prosodic symbols into account, that number rises to 158, and that's not counting the various contour tone posibilities.  Denelson83  20:26, 14 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How many sounds can the alphabet represent? Seabhcán 09:30, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hundreds of thousands, I'd guess. A lot would depend on what you allow as possible sounds. kwami 11:19, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How many "Segment (linguistics)" can it represent? Seabhcán 11:46, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: If you do not count combinations of vowels and tones, then I'd guess tens of thousands. (I was assuming 150 tones.) Don't really know, though. kwami 00:15, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Actually, considering only the standard IPA, there are about 100 segmental symbols, and 30 diacritics for them. Assuming (and this is just a guess) that on average each segmental symbol can sensibly take an average of 3 diacritics at a time (they can take more, but not all combinations are possible), that would make 100×30³ = 2,700,000 segments. So lets just say "millions". kwami 00:22, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Simple Question 

message: Chameleon uses rounded vowels, while I do not.  I suspect he speaks with Received Pronunciation.  Perhaps we should represent both points of view here?  Denelson83  19:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think it's worth it. It's just an illustrative example. When I wrote it, I used my pronunciation, which is [ɑ]. However, there's no reason we can't use RP [ɒ]. When transcribing a language I generally try to keep as many phonemic distinctions intact as possible, so I'm sympathetic to Chameleon. Either way will work, but trying to accommodate both will just make the passage difficult to read. kwami 19:52, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think either it's worth it, so I've searched another sample that doesn't suffer from this ambiguity: pets and beds. I like the dogs-cats sample, and I second Kwamikagami's reasoning, but we don't need a controversial sample if there can be uncontroversial ones. -- j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 20:03, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  /dɑgz/ or /dɒgz/?