Help talk:IPA/Persian

Ahmadinejad

Can someone sort out the stress (and whatever else) at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Lfh (talk) 20:15, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that seems a bit dubious. Also Islamic Azad University, Science and Research of Fars if you please. kwami (talk) 22:20, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Unnecessary notes

I am taking attention to reducing the number of footnotes in some of these IPA for X pages. These pronunciation keys are designed primarily for readers wanting to understand the language-specific IPA transcriptions they encounter in Wikipedia articles. We shouldn't swamp them with irrelevant details. Because this information may still be pertinent to the project, I have duplicated the notes below rather than try to find a place for them. This is irrespective of whether I think these claims are true or whether they are sourced. I will leave it to other editors to move the information to the appropriate article space or check that it already is. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 00:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• Farsi does not have syllable-initial consonant clusters, so unlike in English, /p, t/ are aspirated even following /s/, as in /hastam/ "I am".
• The Persian alveolar stops /t/ and /d/ are either apico-alveolar or apico-dental.
• In Classical Persian, غ and ق denoted [ɣ] and [q], respectively. In modern Tehrani Persian (which is used in the Iranian mass media), there is no difference in the pronunciation of غ and ق; both represent [ɣ] or [ɢ], which are in complementary distribution depending on their position in the word. When /ɣ/ occurs at the beginning of a word, it is realized as a voiced uvular plosive [ɢ]. However, the classic pronunciation difference for غ and ق is preserved in the eastern variants of Persian (i.e. Dari and Tajiki), as well as the southern dialects of the modern Iranian variety (e.g. Yazdi and Kermani dialects)
• An alveolar flap ɾ, which is used in many American and Australian accents for intervocalic /t/; also often heard for /r/ in Scotland. In Persian, as in Spanish, Catalan, and other Romance languages, it has a trilled allophone [r] at the beginning of a word
• Diachronically, Persian possessed a distinction of length in its underlying vowel inventory, contrasting the long vowels /iː/, /uː/, /ɒː/ with the short vowels /e/, /o/, /æ/ respectively.
• Word-final /æ/ is very rare in Iranian Persian, except for /næ/ "no." The word-final /æ/ in Early New Persian mostly shifted to /e/ in contemporary Iranian Persian (often romanized as ‹eh›), but is preserved in the Eastern dialects.
• Word-final /o/ is rare except for /to/ "you (singular)".
• Consider the following: kerm "worm", karam "generosity", kerem "cream", and krom "chrome" are all spelled ‹کرم› k-r-m in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic system of vocalization marks known as harakat is also used to indicate the Persian short vowels, though some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic damma is pronounced [ʊ], while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced [o]. This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries.
• One syllable in each word (or breath group) is stressed

IPA for short Persian/Dari/Tajik "a"

This is to raise the awareness that the Persian/Dari short "a" vowel is not ae as in "bat" but an open front vowel like "a" in "rather" (IPA "a"). Although in his/her undoing of my correction for this vowel Mr Kebab arguest that: "rv <æ> is the traditional transcription and many scholars use it for the open front vowel anyway (see e.g. Roca & Johnson - A Course in Phonology (1999)" hereby I strongly disagree. 1. The adjective "tratidional" is his/her personal opinion and needs prove. Quoting one source does is not enought to prove this is the "traditional" IPA transcription. 2. The same goes for "many scholars" - examples would need to be provided. 3. Tradition is not always the best advisor. In the past many diseases were attributed to "bad weather" "mala aria" (hence "Malaria"). Does this mean in our era we have to stick to this "traditional" explanation and forget about the mosquito or our knowledge of bacteria and viruses because of "tradition" 4. æ for the shord "a" vowel is simply incorect. For those who do not know Persian, just listen to the Persian pronounciation of the city name "Sanandaj" in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanandaj. It does not sound at all like "ae" in bat. It sounds like "a" in rather. 5. Multiplying someone else's mistake is still a mistake. Please discuss and correct, also also in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_phonology — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivonna Nowicka (talk • contribs) 17:21, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

The burden is on you to prove that that sound is [a] and not [æ] as well as to prove that <a> is a more common transcription. [a] and [æ] are very similar sounds anyway, so your post reveals that you don't actually know how [æ] sounds. Also, [a] is the most common realization of /æ/ in contemporary Received Pronunciation...

Lead by example and bring the sources to the table yourself. This guide and Persian phonology shouldn't (and probably won't) be changed just because you have a different opinion. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:39, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

Just had a listen to the pronunciation of Sanandaj - that vowel would pass as a native [æ] in English bat without any questions whatsoever. Mr KEBAB (talk) 18:51, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

My answer:

ad. "Lead by example and bring the sources to the table yourself":

a professional source that everybody can check online is the transcription adopted by Encyclopaedia Iranica, cf.: ::http://www.iranicaonline.org

The short vowel "fathe" is transcribed, natually, as "a".

Other examples in books to learn Persian can be found. It is for the devoted and exact Wiki community to find them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivonna Nowicka (talk • contribs) 18:35, 20 ::November 2016 (UTC)

@Ivonna Nowicka: Please provide an example entry in which their IPA system is used. I can't find one.

Encyclopaedia Iranica is not a work on Persian phonetics/phonology. Also, as I said a month ago, many scholars use the symbol ⟨æ⟩ for the fully open vowel (see Roca & Johnson - A Course in Phonology (1999), who confirm this), and according to the JIPA article, it's not actually fully open, but near-open. The difference between those sounds is very small, but detectable.

Are you from Australia/New Zealand/South Africa by chance? Their /æ/ tends to phonetically be [ɛ] (open-mid front unrounded vowel) and that might be the source of your confusion. The same applies if you're from Denmark - Danish /æ, æː/ are phonetically [ɛ, ɛː]. Remember that we're talking about Persian /æ/ which, according to what I've read so far, can only be [æ].

"Other examples in books to learn Persian can be found. It is for the devoted and exact Wiki community to find them." We're not talking about books to learn Persian, but authoritative works on Persian phonetics/phonology, and it's not on others to provide sources here. It's on you, because you want to change ⟨æ⟩ to ⟨a⟩, and that can't be done without a good reason and multiple reliable sources confirming your theory. Mr KEBAB (talk) 22:45, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

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)

Short Vowels in Dari

The short vowels in Dari should be /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, not /e/ and /o/. Dari preserves this distinction. — Preceding unsigned comment added by RonnieSingh (talk • contribs) 05:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

The "r" example needs explanations

The current "English approximation" for the alveolar flap is water with the 'T' highlighted. That's nonsense on the face of it, because the sound is not pronounced like an English 'T'.

On 20 December, the emphasis was moved to the 'R'. An hour later it was reverted, with a citation pointing to the Flapping page. That page does give all its examples in terms of 'T' versus 'D', which is apparently the reason for highlighting 'T'.

Except that the "English approximation" is not for "random examples of alveolar flaps. It's meant for an example of the given consonant sound, which is definitely an 'R' sound and NOT a 'T'. But at this point, trying to fix it would just end up in an edit war.

I am neither of the previous editors, and I don't actually care how you resolve this. But whatever example you choose needs to be better than claiming "r actually sounds like t".

98.29.142.35 (talk) 19:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)