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Transcriptions that are probably WP:Original research

This is a list of transcriptions that are probably WP:Original research. Now we could put Template:OR in all the articles where such transcriptions are used. However, for sake of usability, I am putting Template:Original research on this help page. I know this help page is not an article in the strict sense. However, unlike other help pages its recommended transcriptions will be put as information into the articles.

Transcriptions that are probably WP:Original research include the following:

• The use of //aː// for /æ/ (in some notations, /a/) or /ɑː/
• The use of //ɒ:// for /ɒ/ or /ɔː/
• The use of //.// as a (dia)phonemic sign
• The use of //ɨ// for /i/ or /ə/
• The use of //ʉ// for /u/ or /ə/
• The use of //ɵ// for /oʊ/ or /ə/
• The use of //u// for /uː/ or /ʊ/
• The use of //oər// for /oʊr/
• The use of //ɔɪər// for /ɔɪr/
• The generalization of rhotic transcriptions with an explanation of non-rhotic pronunciation in the fine print instead of the generalization of non-rhotic transcriptions with an explanation of rhotic pronunciation in the fine print

We need to improve the help page by verifying the transcriptions and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:06, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't understand the point. If a pronunciation is OR, it doesn't matter which sounds are in it. Or do you mean you don't like the transcription? That's irrelevant, since symbols are arbitrary.

Also, /./ is a syllable boundary. — kwami (talk) 08:14, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The symbols are certainly not arbitrary. Why should they be arbitrary? We are not at liberty to invent new symbols. Inventing new symbols is pure WP:Original research. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:16, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Symbols are arbitrary by definition. And of course we're free to invent new ones. Calling that OR is like calling infobox format OR. We can't provide RS's for the layout of our info boxes, but that has nothing to do with OR. OR deals with the infomational content of an article, not its presentation. — kwami (talk) 08:19, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't care for your self-proclaimed definitions. Pronunciation transcriptions are different from infoboxes, tables etc. Pronunciation transcriptions are a part of the informational content of the articles, whereas infoboxes, tables etc. are merely a part of the presentation. The informational content of an article must not be WP:Original research. That is one of the WP:Core content policies. I know it is your personal POV that we are free to invent whatever transcription symbols we like. However, Wikipedia is not about your personal POV. Wikipedia is about WP:NPOV. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:31, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Since you're intelligent enough to know your arguments are false, I take it you're not interested in debating in good faith if you think that won't get you what you want. I don't care to waste my time with bullshitters. — kwami (talk) 18:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

/u/ for /uː/ or /ʊ/ is not original research when /u/ is a weak vowel akin to /i/ (as in situation). It's exactly how Longman Pronunciation Dictionary uses this symbol. Peter238 (talk) 09:35, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Sure, but that is not how it is used on this help page, where it is used for a stressed vowel that may either be /uː/ or /ʊ/, e.g. in the word roof. Such a usage of /u/ is probably OR. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 10:00, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

For a general discussion whether OR pronunciation symbols are acceptable, please see Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard#Is it OK for pronunciation symbols to be Original Research? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 10:22, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. We might want to get rid of using /i, u/ for anything other than weak vowels. Peter238 (talk) 10:54, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Now that's a legitimate discussion. Can we all admit that we're intelligent enough to understand the issues, rather than pretending to be idiots if we think that noise rather than reason will get us what we want? — kwami (talk) 18:30, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

I didn't realize we were using /i/ for non-weak vowels. Regarding /u/, my question is the same as I posed here; how many articles would be affected? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 09:15, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I don’t know. I don’t think it’s relevant (though it sure would be interesting to know). The relevant question is: Are there any sources? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 09:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

For me it's relevant. We already have a handful of articles with terms that can't be presented in one transcription, even in a diaphonemic system. Since having such a number of transcriptions is unavoidable, I can see taking out some of these diaphonemes from our system and doing two pronunciations for these as a viable choice if the number is sufficiently small. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:41, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

I really don't think it's more than 50-100, probably less. I have no idea how to check that though. Peter238 (talk) 18:13, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Plus we have precedence in articles like Iraq, where we already have variant transcriptions in spite of our OR diaphonemes. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 00:51, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that's pretty much what already said in my comment above. Am I missing something here or are you?— Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 07:01, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

"in spite of our OR diaphonemes": Mach still seems clueless as to what's going on, unless he's just being careless with his wording. The BATH vowel, the first diaphoneme he objects to, is not "OR". You can find hundreds of sources for it. — kwami (talk) 22:14, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The issue that Mach has is with the use of one symbol for a difference of incidence. Is there a source that transcribes the BATH vowel differently than both TRAP and PALM? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 22:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

I believe we went over several when we introduced these distinctions. — kwami (talk) 03:00, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm not seeing any in the archives. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 05:19, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Idle claims. Sources have to be cited, not vaguely hinted at. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:14, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

That's my thinking, too. We could cite such a source at Help:IPA conventions for English — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:53, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

We don't need sources at all, unless the transcription is making an unsourced theoretical claim.

I just came across Flemming & Johnson (2007) for ⟨ɨ⟩ for the e of roses, but all the barred vowels were taken from specific sources when we introduced them. I suppose one might object to the more recent additions, the BATH and CLOTH vowels, if we cannot find sources that assign them a single symbol in the IPA, but there is no unsourced content here, just a novel transcription. — kwami (talk) 00:55, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Please have a look at WP:VER. It says: “All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists and captions, must be verifiable. All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material.” There are no exceptions of the type you have claimed (“unless the transcription is making an unsourced theoretical claim”, “novel transcription”).

I guess that by “Flemming & Johnson (2007)” you mean Rosa’s roses: reduced vowels in American English. That is hardly relevant to our dictionary-style phonemic transcription system because it is a phonetic study without phonemic analysis. It never specifies what phoneme the sound [ɨ] belongs to, or whether it is the reduced allophone of different phonemes. It hints at the possibility that [ɨ] and [ə] could be the non-final and final allophones of the same phoneme. This means that the roses [ɹoʊzɨz] – Rosa’s [ɹoʊzəz] minimal pair could be analyzed as /roʊz#ɨz/ vs. /roʊzɨ#z/ (p. 94).

I am even more concerned about sources for the signs ⟨ʉ⟩ and ⟨ɵ⟩, though. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 01:58, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

According to your fundamentalist interpretation, we cannot have maps unless they are directly copied from a map in a RS. We cannot have tables unless they are directly copied from tables in a RS. We cannot caption an image unless the caption is taken from a RS. Those standards are for Wikisource, not Wikipedia.

Oh, and categories: we can't put articles in categories unless we have RS's that they belong there.

I take it that you have no substantive objection to our conventions? — kwami (talk) 03:12, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Don’t be ridiculous. Categorization and original images are of course allowed. Have a look at the WP:Core content policies. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:16, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I think the point was that you can't categorize someone in a way that is not supported by sources (e.g. adding a homosexual category to Barak Obama or whatever). It's not a good analogy, though. Our transcription systems are novel, synthetic systems originated at Wikipedia, and are WP-generated metadata, not subject to WP:RS as to their orthography. One is loosely based on IPA, the other loosely based on how American [DIK-shun-air-eez]] do it, and neither system is subject to any third-party, external verification. RS is satisfied as long as the pronunciation that emerges in the reader's brain is broadly correct (i.e., does not result in "coffee" being interpreted as pronounced "kerfer" or "coh-fee-eh"). Either of our transcription systems is purely a style of presentation of data, and is not the information itself, like our quotation and citation formatting templates, which are presentational processing of externally sourced data. How the word is said in mainstream varieties of English is the externally verifiable data in a pronunciation, not the encoding mechanism we used to convey it (even if one of them is based on an external standard). I agree we should actually more closely follow the standard, for several reasons I detailed at that NOR noticeboard thread, but "this violates NOR!" is no one of them. It's a broken argument.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:11, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I don’t quite understand why you shy away from calling things by their name. “[N]ovel, synthetic systems originated at Wikipedia” is WP:Original research in a nutshell. Fortunately, the symbols of our broad IPA transcription scheme are for the most part based on relevant sources. I only have a problem with those symbols that are not. If you prefer I should argue for this on the grounds of common sense, so be it. I still think calling it original research is more concise.

A broad IPA transcription like /prəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/ can introduce new, synthetic material on two different levels: (a) The pronunciation it represents might not be backed by relevant sources (e.g. */prəˌnjuːnsiˈeɪʃən/), or (b) the symbols it is composed of might not be backed by relevant sources (e.g. /prɵˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/). But you and others are saying that only (a) can be called original research, but not (b). Why do you think that? I do not understand it, and nobody has given me an answer yet. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 15:04, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

In (b), we're using and effectively promoting a vaguely IPA-based system of WP's own devising. It's no different, from a policy standpoint, from the fact that we use our own templating language, and now use an adaptation of Lua to extend it, that doesn't do everything the normal Lua way. Our use of this pseudo-IPA system does not assert any real-world, off-WP facts about its symbolic orthography; it's tied directly to a WP specification for what WP means by these symbols. Your point about why (b) is problematic is a valid objection to it, that I share; it's just a WP:COMMONSENSE one, not a WP:NOR one. Our use of this not-quite-IPA system is presentation not content. The pronunciation we convey with it is content, and as long as we're not misrepresenting it, it's not an NOR matter either. That one possible interpretation "might not be backed by relevant sources" doesn't even translate to NOR; that's a speculative "what if", and is ultimately a WP:V question (is the alternative pronunciation viable? Is it a plausible enough interpretation that we think it will arise Is there any evidence this pronunciation exists in zero dialects anywhere? And so on. If any enough of these questions seem to indicate we have something real to look into, is it potentially controversial enough to bother? WP:V requires that things be verfiable, not verified already. My question would be basically, who cares? It would take more work to research these nitpicks than to just fix the transcription system we're using to stop doing potentially confusing things, without going down that rabbit hole (or rat hole).  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:30, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

That is your POV. I have a different one. But I think neither of us should present their POV as if it were the truth – your view that NOR does not apply to pronunciation symbols is just a POV, and so is my opposite POV. You think that using our pronunciation symbols in the articles is no different from using our templating language or our Lua adaptations. I disagree. I think that these things are very different, because templating and Lua work under the hood, whereas the pronunciation symbols are a palpable part of the article text. You think that “[o]ur use of this not-quite-IPA system is presentation not content. The pronunciation we convey with it is content, and as long as we're not misrepresenting it, it's not an NOR matter either.” Why sure, conveying a verifiable pronunciation on level (a) is not original research – only conveying of a newly invented pronunciation such as */prəˌnjuːnsiˈeɪʃən/ would be. However, I think it is exactly the same on level (b): Using a verifiable pronunciation sign on level (b) is not original research – only using a newly invented pronunciation symbol such as ⟨ɵ⟩ for ‘/oʊ/ OR /ə/’ is. I still do not understand how the presentation/content dichotomy that exists on level (a) could possibly have any influence on the original research issue on level (b). It feels to me like a gap in your argumentation.

I am sorry I used an unclear “speculative ’what if’” wording. I thought the examples made it clear that I was referring to a real case: We are indeed using symbols that are not “backed by relevant sources”, e.g. the symbol ⟨ɵ⟩. I agree with you that this is a WP:VER issue. However, WP:VER and WP:NOR are tightly interrelated (see e.g. WP:NPOV, V and OR and WP:VER#Original research). You are correct that VER only “requires that things be verfiable, not verified already”. But if things have been challenged, VER also requires that they be really verified. When no verification exists, then we have original research – that is how original research is defined on WP:NOR: “The phrase ‘original research’ (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist.” That is how not being “backed by relevant sources” does indeed “translate to NOR”.

If you wonder who cares about VER/NOR in our pronunciation symbols, then please have a look at my below post where I have gathered a few diffs that show other users have shared my POV [1] (though one or two of them have changed their mind in the meantime, but I do not know why). --mach 🙈🙉🙊 15:15, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 7 December 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Pronunciation respelling key moved into help space, no consensus for any other move or renaming. Jenks24 (talk) 13:16, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

---

• Help:IPA for English → Help:Adapted IPA key for English
• Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key → Help:Pronunciation respelling key

– Help:IPA for English is not exactly IPA, but a WP-specific simplification and adaptation of IPA to our own encyclopedic purposes, like our Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key is an adaptation of (mostly American) dictionaries' pronunciation styles. The current name has been inspiring perennial dispute for a long time now, a belief that WP cannot create its own pronunciation keys and/or that it cannot do so by basing them loosely on something else, but can only use someone else's, found in a reliable source. Most of us understand that WP:CORE does not apply to internal documentation like our "Help:" namespace pages, or guidelines like MOS:PRONUNCIATION. Those who do not, appear to simply not be internalizing the fact that Help:IPA for English is not IPA, but a "WP-IPA" derivative and modification. Simply stating this in the name of the page should be enough to make this clear. This pronunciation key does have problems, but they're a WP:COMMONSENSE matter, not a WP:CORE matter. Next, it's confusing to have what are presently Help:IPA for English and Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key be in different namespaces and named with no verisimilitude. Both should be "Help:", and both IDed as pronunciation keys. The Help:IPA conventions for English page can stay where it is, since it's a comparison of different publishers' conventions. (However, much of it perhaps should move into a mainspace article, as it is encyclopedic information, and not Wikipedia help material; this is not an RM matter, and should be discussed on its talk page.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:56, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Pardon me if I'm being obtuse, SMC, but how is this not IPA? If you've explained it above or elsewhere, feel free to give me a Reader's Digest version (and, if you'd like, direct us to wherever you made a more detailed rationale). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:51, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

• Mildly oppose – This is no solution to the problem of poor pronunciation symbols. The problem is not in the name of this page, but in the choice of pronunciation symbols. The name of this page is quite irrelevant. However, I agree that the page about our respelling key should be named in the same fashion as this page. If consensus is to rename this page, then I would recommend we also insert the word adapted into the name of the respelling key while we’re at it. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 23:37, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose/Support - I'm pretty much with Mach on this one as it stands. If there's a problem with the system, renaming it won't solve anything. I do like the idea of putting the respelling key in help space. It's my understanding that all of the IPA for X pages could go easily in Help or WP space and we chose at some point to stop switching back and forth between the two. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:51, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose/Support - The page "IPA for English" is not any less IPA than similar pages for other languages, so for consistency we should keep the name. The respelling key plays a similar role, so should be in the same namespace (they were both in WP some time ago).−Woodstone (talk) 08:57, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

---

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

/ɔɪər/ as in _loir_ vs. /ɔɪ.ər/ as in _employer_

We are distinguishing /ɔɪər/ as in loier vs. /ɔɪ.ər/ as in employer. Is there a source where this distinction is made? I have not found the word loir in any pronunciation dictionary (Jones, Longman, Kenyon & Knotts, Windsor Lewis). In the only dictionary where I have found the word loir (OED2), it has the same /ɔɪə(r)/ as in the word employer.

I think we should not make this distinction unless we have a source. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 08:50, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to the CUBE, I found there is another word like loir that is more frequent: coir, see CUBE search for oJ@# (also search for oJ@r and oJr). By the way, the CUBE search is extremely helpful for finding specific sound sequences and I can highly recommend it. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 15:52, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

This issue shows up a few times in the archives. Here, OED is cited as listing loir as one syllable and lawyer as two. We originally had loir form a minimal pair with lawyer; loir/employer still sort of has a minimal pair, which makes me lean towards keeping loir. But I don't use either loir or coir so I couldn't comment on how useful they are as standalone example words. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:59, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

I also have reservations about 'coir' as a single-syllable triphthong. My copy of OED (the CD-ROM version) doesn't show syllable divisions (nor does the Oxford Dictionary of Pronunciation), so unless there is an OED version that does show these divisions it can't be relied on as a source. LPD and CEPD both give 'coir' as two-syllable for RP, though they are less clear on American pron - CEPD gives /kɔɪr/ for American (and the audio is clearly monosyllabic, while the British version is equally clearly disyllabic). LPD has /kɔɪər/ for American: there is no syllable division marked, but the schwa is superscript, indicating that it is optional. So it looks as if the claim of a coir/lawyer difference (ɔɪə/ɔɪ.ə) should be restricted to AmE. RoachPeter (talk) 11:55, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

(edit-conflict) Thanks for pointing to the archive. That discussion seems rather unconclusive, though. I think providing a word whose pronunciation can be readily verified (coir) is more important than providing a word that can form a quasi minimal pair (loir). The word lawyer is not good for a minimal pair. According to several sources, it can be pronounced with the THOUGHT lexical set as /lɔːjə^r, and not with the CHOICE lexical set (see Jones 2003, OALD – “lawyer”, or dictionary.com – “lawyer”). I hope I can get access to OED3 so I can verify whether it makes a distinction between the rhymes of coir and employer (the OED2 does not).

I think it would be great if we had a source that explicitly dealt with the distinction between a one-syllable pronunciation and a two-syllable pronunciation of triphthongs. It seems to me that the dictionaries are not the best source for this distinction. I think they rather mechanically attach the /ər/ ending to words ending in a free vowel, so the apparent two-syllable pronunciation might be a mere artifact of automated composition. The current note about the distinction should be improved because it uses typical weasel words: “Some speakers pronounce higher, flower, lawyer, layer (stratum) and mayor with two syllables, and hire, flour, coir, lair and mare with one. Others pronounce them the same.” --mach 🙈🙉🙊 12:21, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It seems hard to find any well sourced examples. Looking at CUBE, for example, it supports a coir/sawyer difference – ˈkɔɪə vs. ˈsɔːjə, but not a coir/lawyer difference – both have ɔɪə. (However it also distinguishes Sawyer from sawyer, the former being ˈsɔɪə, which seems very odd to me.) Peter coxhead (talk) 15:34, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Inconsistency in length marks

We are using length marks on /ɑː iː ɔː uː/, but not on /ɑr ɔr ɜr/. That is different from what other transcription systems normally do. They either use length mark in every case (/ɑː ɑːr iː ɔː ɔːr uː ɜːr/) or no length marks at all (/ɑ ɑr i ɔ ɔr u ɜr/), see Help:IPA conventions for English#Free vowels.

I think it would be more consistent if we recommended length marks for /ɑːr ɔːr ɜːr/ as well. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 12:33, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't see a problem, go ahead. Peter238 (talk) 12:39, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, a benefit of that is that non-rhotic speakers, who are asked to ignore post-vocalic /r/, are less likely to make the mistake of believing that e.g. /ɑː/ and /ɑːr/ are different for them. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:05, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

So nobody is opposed to replacing /ɑr ɔr ɜr/ by /ɑːr ɔːr ɜːr/? --mach 🙈🙉🙊 11:34, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

No objection here. −Woodstone (talk) 16:16, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Syllabification

I am concerned about the section "Syllabification" in the chart on this page (bottom right). Superficially, the use of the dot ‘.’ to mark a syllable division is perfectly normal. It is used, for example, in all polysyllabic words in the Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary. There is an explanatory note which says “Syllables are indicated sparingly, where necessary to avoid confusion, for example to break up sequences of vowels (Moai) or consonant clusters which an English speaker might misread as a digraph (Vancouveria, Windhoek).” In other words, the dot helps the reader interpret the spelling in a way that avoids wrong interpretation of letter-sequences. The transcription of Moai is given a dot to indicate that there is a syllable division after ‘Mo’, and Windhoek has a dot apparently to stop the reader from interpreting ‘dh’ as a single consonant. But these examples only show a need for a syllable division when the word is seen in its spelling form. As soon as one looks at the IPA transcription, the possibility of confusion disappears. When Moai is transcribed as /'moʊaɪ/ the pronunciation (assuming the representation is being read by an English speaker) is quite predictable without the need for a dot. I can’t see how ‘Windhoek’ and ‘Vancouveria’, which are transcribed /ˈvɪnt.hʊk/ and /væn.kuːˈvɪəriə/ in WP, could be pronounced any differently if the dot were removed. The most puzzling is the example of Mikey/Myki, where the writer transcribes the former as /maɪki/ while the latter is given a syllable-boundary dot thus: /maɪ.kiː/. I can’t see what purpose the dot serves, as the boundary is bound to be placed in the same position in both words. RoachPeter (talk) 10:08, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, the syllabification dot is optional and can be inserted or not and can be added at discretion of each editor. We are mentioning it on this help page because some articles may feature it.

My concern about the syllabification dot is rather that we are proposing a distinctive use of the syllabification dot with /aɪər, aʊər, ɔɪər/ vs. /aɪ.ər, aʊ.ər, ɔɪ.ər/.

Incidently, the name Mikey can be syllabified as /ˈmaɪk.i/ – that is the syllabification Wells would probably use. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 09:47, 26 December 2015 (UTC)

We're using it to show morphology, not a phonetic or phonemic difference. I think the point of the dot in /maɪ.kiː/ is to indicate stress on the second syllable, like /maɪˈkiː/. I don't know the word, but I assume that's the reason for the transcription. DavidPKendal (talk) 19:10, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

According to this help page and according to the article Myki, the stress is on the first syllable. The difference in pronunciation to Mikey is that the second syllable of Mikey is always reduced, whereas the second syllable of Myki can have the full FLEECE vowel. In our system, this difference is adequately expressed by the use of /iː/ in Myki /ˈmaɪkiː/ vs. /i/ in Mikey /ˈmaɪki/. In another system, the difference might be expressed by the use of a secondary stress symbol in Myki (e.g. /ˈmajˌkij/) vs. no secondary stress in Mikey (e.g. /ˈmajkij/). Of course, we can add redundancy to our system (which is a good thing) by using the secondary stress symbol as well: /ˈmaɪˌkiː/ vs. /ˈmaɪki/. I see no benefit in using the syllable divider dot, though. And for the record: I do not see any benefit of using it in the words Windhoek, Vancouveria or moai either, so I fully agree with RoachPeter.

However, the wording of this help page suggests that the syllable divider dot in /aɪ.ər, aʊ.ər, ɔɪ.ər/ goes beyond merely showing morphology, but may at least potentially mark a difference in pronuncuation from /aɪər, aʊər, ɔɪər/. This potentially distinctive use of the syllable divider seems rather questionable to me. So far, it seems only dictionary.com has a similar usage of a syllable divider (see Help:IPA conventions for English#Free vowels). I wonder whether there are any Wikipedia articles that really make use of this distinction. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 23:56, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I’m not objecting to the use of the dot when it’s used as an optional device to show different realizations of triphthongs (as it is in WP charts). My point is that the examples contained within the chart in the “Syllabification” box don’t do what the explanation says they do, and must be confusing to readers. It seems to me that ‘Moai’ (read by an English speaker) must contain at least two syllables; if two, then they must divide /moʊ.aɪ/ and the dot is doing nothing useful. Likewise, ‘Vancouveria’ and ‘Windhoek’ don’t seem to me to benefit by having a dot marking a syllable division, since we assume that all other words given IPA transcriptions in WP are syllabified by the reader without assistance; I can't see how the dot in these examples could be needed to help a reader to avoid a mispronunciation. It is true that Wells would syllabify ‘Mikey’ as /maɪk.i/; I don’t know whether he would transcribe ‘Myki’ as /maɪ.ki:/ or as /maɪk.i:/, but in LPD he gives ‘Nike’ as /naɪk-i/. (In CEPD we would always place the boundary before the /k/). However, I don’t see it as likely that WP would want to use syllabic dots to impose one particular syllabification in such a case; it seems to me that the difference in pronunciation between ‘Myki’ and ‘Mikey’ lies principally in the final vowel, not the position of a syllable boundary. If the dot is to be used in WP transcriptions also to indicate morpheme boundaries, as DavidPKendal suggests, then I think this bit of the chart and its explanatory note really need to be rewritten to make this difficult point clear to readers. My choice would be to take out the present examples and use triphthongs as examples of how a dot may be used for explanatory purposes. A note might also explain that the dot could be used in a discussion of whether a word like ‘Myki’ might be divided /maɪ.ki/ or /maɪk.i/, pointing out (as is currently done) that for general purposes of advising on pronunciation this information is not given. RoachPeter (talk) 12:01, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

I agree. Replacing the examples moai, Windhoek, Vancouveria, and Myki by examples like higher, buyer, flower, or employer would be a good idea. It would illustrate the benefit of the syllable divider dot and be in accordance with the vowels section of our key. Any objections against replacing the examples moai, Windhoek, Vancouveria, Myki by the examples higher, buyer, flower, employer?

I still think we should have better sources for the distinction between a monosyllabic and a dissylabic pronunciation of triphthongs “triphthongs” (or, more properly, between actual triphthongs and diphthong + reduced monophthong sequences). I mistrust impressionistic observations. We should cite studies with measurements of production and perception instead. But that is really a different question.

And while I’m at it: Any suggestions for a better example word instead of flower? Something composed like buyer, higher, or employer would be preferrable. The word flower is not composed, but etymologically derived from a monosyllabic word (just like the words bower, cower, dower, glower, lower, power, shower, tower) – exactly like the word flour. Some sources even explicitly say that flower is homophonous with flour (was it the CEPD? I forgot). Among the verbs that end with /aʊ/ (CUBE), there is none that habitually takes the -er ending (it is worse with adjectives – the only ones in the CUBE are highbrow and lowbrow). The best candidate might be the word plougher (or plower), but I fear most dictionaries do not explicitly provide a pronunciation for that word. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 16:09, 28 December 2015 (UTC)