Talk:Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet

Some of these are standard

k* etc. is standard IPA. L used it in its standard sense of don't-have-a-symbol-for-this. Likewise, kʰʰ follows a common pattern of extension of the IPA, such as aːː for extra-long a, ˈˈa for extra stress (both of which are mentioned explicitly by the IPA) and a˞˞ for extra-rhotic a. We don't list all IPA symbols which have ever been superscripted, such as ^ts, as nonstandard, so I'm removing k* and kʰʰ from the list. kwami (talk) 17:29, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

cover symbols

We should have a discussion of cover symbols, but they aren't IPA, and so IMO don't belong in this chart. I removed C for "any consonant", V for "any vowel", and G for "glide". There are others: N for "any nasal", F for frics, S for sibs, K for velars, T for alveolars, A for low vowels, R for rhotics, L for laterals, etc. etc. This should probably be covered under phonemic transcription and linked from the IPA & nonstandard IPA articles. kwami (talk) 22:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Somewhere or other, long ago, I saw turned small capital K for 'any consonant' and turned small capital U for 'any vowel'. Wish I could remember where. I like these because they cannot be mistaken for /c/ and /v/. —Tamfang (talk) 21:17, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Found them! The Principles of the International Phonetic Association 1949 (reprinted 1974):

38. Among suggestions lately made we may mention the following:—

[something like a backward comma] has been proposed as a sign to denote that a stop consonant has no plosion (as in Burmese, Cantonese, etc.). [turned small K] and [turned small U] have been suggested as general symbols denoting any consonant or vowel respectively. π has been suggested to denote the voiceless labio-dental plosive, [small turned 2] to denote voiceless r, [turned ɰ] to denote voiceless m.

The length-mark ː is not considered entirely satisfactory, but none of the alternatives hitherto proposed seem any better.

It has been proposed that ħ and ʕ might well be replaced by the symbols [turned 2] and [turned 3] which suggest the Arabic signs for these sounds (ع,ح).

The Association's treatment of a and ɑ as different letters denoting different sounds has not met with the success originally hoped for. In practice it is found that authors and printers still generally regard the two forms as variants of the same letter. The difficulty might be solved by altering the value of æ and assigning this letter to cardinal vowel No. 4 (and sounds near to it), leaving cardinal vowel No. 5 (and sounds near to it) to be represented by a or ɑ according to the fount of type employed. This would involve designing a new letter to replace our present æ; [mirror a] has been suggested for this.

The turned K was included in Adobe's Stone Phonetic Alternate (1991?). —Tamfang (talk) 19:01, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Umlauted letters

There are some technical issues with the umlauted letters ä, ö and ü. For some reason, the umlauts are shifted to the right when I'm using MSIE. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 19:03, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

That's because IE is improperly designed. The solution, unfortunately, is to use a different browser. kwami (talk) 21:09, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I guess I should. I thought about removing the template, but decided it might be better taking it up here, first. Well, thanks for replying. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:51, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Could you give an example, so I can test it? I'm assuming it's like the tie bar, which MS screwed up, but maybe there's something else going on. kwami (talk) 22:59, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

These codes are copied straight from the article, there happens some bugginess mixing ä, ö and ü with the IPA template.

ä | It is sometimes used as [ɛ] or [æ].
ö | It is sometimes used as [ø] or [œ].
ü | It is sometimes used as [y] or [ʏ].

惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:55, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

They look fine to me in both FF (which I use) and in IE. I don't know what the problem is. I've never heard this complaint before. kwami (talk) 11:32, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

It's not a big difference, but it's shifted for the template, Maybe a difference between precomposed characters and Unicode automatization or something. I'm using Windows Vista and IE 7, currently.

IPA template	No template
ä	ä
ö	ö
ü	ü

惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:47, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

I am super confused - based on this article, I thought the IPA rejected ä as an official symbol? I noticed that ä is all over wikipedia as an official symbol? Have I stumbled on some sort of Wikipedia guerilla campaign being waged by Phonological professionals unhappy with how the IPA council vote went? Furicorn (talk) 07:55, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

That article says the IPA rejected devising an official symbol for the open central unrounded vowel, not that it rejected ⟨ä⟩ as that symbol. ⟨ä⟩ is an official IPA symbol, but it means a centralized open front unrounded vowel, i.e. a vowel between cardinal /a/ and the central point. Many Wikipedians with only a beginner's understanding of phonology and the IPA use ⟨ä⟩ for the central vowel because they don't realize that all IPA symbols (especially the vowel ones, but the consonant ones as well) are flexible in their referents and don't have to be adorned with diacritics whenever they refer to something other than their ideal cardinal values. It is perfectly correct to use plain ⟨a⟩ to refer to any vowel in the open front-to-central area; using ⟨ä⟩ is necessary only if you're going into such fine phonetic detail that you need to distinguish between a fully front [a] and a more centralized [ä] in some language. Angr (talk) 09:09, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Digraphs

Also the digraphs for affricatives ʣ, ʤ, ʥ, ʦ, ʧ, ʨ (maybe also the digraphs ʩ, ʪ, ʫ?) belong here. Dan ☺ 16:29, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

You mean the ligatures. The digraphs (combinations of two letters) are still current. +Angr 16:58, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for answering Dan so helpfully. We all know, that's why wikipedia is so great. -DePiep (talk) 22:30, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Uhm, at first I wrote "ligatures", but then I saw that their Unicode names use "digraph" (e.g. here). I've seen ʤ, ʦ & ʧ in articles here be replaced with d͡ʒ, t͡s & t͡ʃ with ed sums saying the first were obsolete. Was that sarcasm back there? Dan ☺ 00:39, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was sarcastic, aimed at Angr clearly ('answering'). Fact: Angr did not answer your question. Which makes h/h post useless. Why did h/s not spend (less) time improving the article, instead of doing smart-talk here? -DePiep (talk) 00:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

And Dan, I do not know enough about IPA & so to react. I do know that there are are big areas & topics of discussion, so the IPA-profession clearly is not converging for a while. -DePiep (talk) 00:49, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Dan didn't ask a question, he stated a fact, but got his terminology wrong. (I didn't realize that Unicode also gets its terminology wrong.) +Angr 08:32, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Fair enough, Angr. I stroked. -DePiep (talk) 22:24, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm happy we're all friends again , so: the ligatures are obsolete, so they belong on the page, right? Dan ☺ 01:37, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, at least the ones for the affricates. I don't know enough about the extended IPA for disordered speech to know if ʩ, ʪ, ʫ are also deprecated, but since they aren't affricates, I doubt it. +Angr 05:56, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Aren't these already in the (first) table, second row from below? -DePiep (talk) 06:37, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I was blind. Dan ☺ 22:06, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Incorrect article class

This should be a list class article, not a start class one. /ˈswɛ̹͡yn/78 07:16, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

"ᴀ" listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect ᴀ. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you wish to do so. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 11:27, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Table contains not only obsolete and nonstandard symbols

The table contains many current standard symbols, such as “a”, “ä”, “ɑ”, “ʃ”, “j”, “r” and “c” (even twice!). Clearly, they shouldn't be listed in a table of “obsolete and nonstandard symbols”. Now there are three possible ways to deal with that:

1. Remove them. That would be according to our rules since there are no references for these, which casts doubts on their reliability.
2. Move them to another table. They might still be useful for some readers. But then we would have to rename this article.
3. Move them to another article. More work and doubtful if it is worth it.

What should we do? ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 14:14, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Their values are nonstandard. I don't see why they shouldn't be listed. Nardog (talk) 01:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I already gave two reasons above, but maybe I can put the first one more clearly:

• They are and remain standard symbols. You can use standard letters for any nonstandard purpose - even for an encrypted message - but the letters remain standard symbols. As an example: Would you add to our article about the letter A that it can mean Z in Caesar cipher with shift 1?

I could provide more reasons, but I'd first like you to understand this one. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 07:14, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

If a number of linguists have consistently used a standard symbol in a nonstandard way - especially historically - then that should be listed here. It's pedantic and unhelpful to omit them. Theknightwho (talk) 13:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Any source or examples for ʮ and ʯ?

Does anyone have any source or examples for 〈ʮ〉 and 〈ʯ〉? They were introduced in 2005 by user:Ran. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 09:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)