Help talk:IPA/Marshallese

Latest comment: 1 year ago by Nardog in topic This needs to be totally reworked

Request for IPA transcriptions

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Hello. Could anyone please provide the broad and narrow IPA transcriptions of the following words? They are on the list of tropical storm names and I want to transcribe them into Thai language, but I don't know how to convert the symbols used in MED into IPA.

  • aere {hayẹrẹy}
  • kōdọ {kedaw}
  • ḷañ {ḷag}
  • utọr {witarʷ}
  • barijat

--Potapt (talk) 20:04, 7 March 2015 (UTC)Reply

Move discussion in progress

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There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)Reply

Inappropriate English approximations

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The initial consonants in "beach", "meat", "near" and "peace" are not palatalized in English. Similarly, the consonants in "subway", "dust", "gym wear", "numb", "sleepwear" and "tough" aren't velarized either! Furthermore, it's pretty much impossible for a native speaker of English to differentiate between the initial /r/'s in "rat" and "roof". Why would we want to list "differences" between consonants that are never made in English? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 07:52, 12 December 2019 (UTC)Reply

This needs to be totally reworked

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This creates grossly inaccurate transcriptions that sound like a foreigner who just stepped off the airplane in Mājro. For example, the word-medial allophone of the palatalized coronal stop is not [z]. It is an affricate, [d͡ʒ] or [d͡ʑ]. Epenthetic vowels are never so high and front as [i], which is the transcription presented in the Marshallese Language page: [kɑzʲinʲ(i)mˠɑːzʲɛlˠ]. Nor can I ever remember hearing epenthesis in that phrase. Finally, as a narrow transcription, this over-uses the palatalization and velarization superscripts [ʲ] and [ˠ]. This, if I read it out loud, might sound like a foreigner with a mouthful of bwiro ... but not a native Marshallese speaker saying [kad͡ʑɪn maad͡zelˠ]. This is the narrow transcription, so we should only be showing the velarization and palatalization symbols if they are actually there to be heard. I could go on, but basically, this needs to be totally reworked for phonetic accuracy and a delineation of narrow vs broad transcription, with citations to Marshallese Reference Grammar (Bender et al., 2016), or scholarly journal articles. Not even close to being worthy of Wikipedia right now, and will certainly mislead anyone trying to learn (about) this wonderful language. Seraphimek (talk) 01:44, 1 March 2023 (UTC)Reply

It also abuses the tie bar for diphthongs, which is non-IPA usage. Nardog (talk) 08:48, 4 March 2023 (UTC)Reply