Help talk:Pronunciation respelling key

ew(r)

Since /juː/ and /jʊər/ have been separated in the IPA table, should we also replace "ew(r)" with "yoo(r)" completely, or should we keep it for the coronal consonants?
--maczkopeti (talk) 16:00, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Why don't we keep it the way it is? Ew after coronals is actually one of the few things the respelling is better at conveying intuitively and efficiently than the IPA. So we definitely want to keep it for the post-coronals. And at the same time I suspect it is not only unrealistic but also WP:CREEP to expect every editor instating a respelling to remember after which consonants they must use ew and after which ones yoo. Just "use ew for /juː/ after a tautosyllabic consonant" is way simpler than "use ew for /juː/ after tautosyllabic /t, d, n, s, l, θ/, but yoo for others". I just see no particular benefit in abandoning ew, not even after non-coronals. Nardog (talk) 16:45, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Regional assumption?

Nitpick: The entire article, particularly the key, assumes standard American English pronunciations even though this is never stated in the article. At the very least that assumption needs to be stated, and ideally there should be examples for both the American and BBC pronunciations. (I'm not suggesting that every accent in the world should be listed but most accents in the world are similar to one of the two).

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 20:29, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

It might look at first glance like it's American because of the post-vocalic rs, but it's actually a diaphonemic non-regional pronunciation. You can see an explanation of how it works here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:44, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply.

I would argue Help:IPA/English has somewhat of the same problem though it does at least talk a little bit about the accent differences. The problem is more than just rhoticity. But addressing rhoticity specifically, it is still a problem. For example, this article shows

Vowels

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA
ar	start	/ɑːr/

This is not correct for the RP/BBC pronunciation. That one should look like

Vowels

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA
ar	start	/ɑː/

Indeed, British introductory texts on Spanish (and some other languages) will often describe the letter a as being pronounced like "ar".

Again, I am not advocating that every single accent in the U.S., the U.K., and around the world should be reflected. But at least being a little more specific about the accent being shown is worthwhile to avoid confusion. The simple solution is just something like

Vowels

Rspl.	Example(s)	IPA- Gen Am	IPA- RP
ar	start	/ɑːr/	/ɑː/

-- MC 141.131.2.3 (talk) 19:11, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I think you've missed something. As a non-regional transcription, it encodes aspects of multiple dialects. The post-vocalic r is a prominent feature of this, but as the page I linked to explains:

In many dialects, /r/ occurs only before a vowel; if you speak such a dialect, simply ignore /r/ in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it, as in cart /kɑːrt/.

We're always open to making this clearer, so if you've got a suggestion for changes in how to help readers understand this poly-dialectal system please feel free to share. Convincing the community to do away with the diaphonemic system and doing multiple transcriptions as you have advocated for above would be a much harder task for you, since many editors are entrenched in supporting the diaphonemic system (myself included). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:36, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Respellings that look the same as the respelled word and incidentally vulgar syllables

Hi. Two questions:

1. What should we do when the respelling is exactly the same as the word we're respelling? For instance, the respelling of Limburgish is LIM-bur-gish LIM-bur-ghish. Is it appropriate to include it in the article anyway?
2. What about respellings with syllables that are incidentally vulgar? For instance, Aspergers is respelled ASS-pur-gərz or ASS-pur-jərz (depending on the phonetic realization of ⟨g⟩). This is twice as problematic because people with Aspergers are mocked as having ass burgers.

Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:42, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

1. As it stands, to add or remove a respelling is always and utterly at editors' discretion. I personally tend to regard them unnecessary whenever they are unlikely to help readers much, such as when the IPA and respelling look too much alike. Then of course there's WP:LEADPRON. (As for Limburgish, if there's anything confusing about it it must be how to pronounce the g, in which case you can write LIM-bur-ghish.)
2. Wikipedia is not censored, so I don't see a problem. But again, it's totally fine to remove them if it's too awkward.

Nardog (talk) 17:10, 12 May 2018 (UTC)