Questions tagged [ipa]

The International Phonetic Alphabet: A Latin-based alphabet designed for transcribing all sounds of all languages.

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If you hear three sounds in the pronunciation of wuss, are they correctly described?

Go here https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wuss and play the pronunciation. I hear the semiconsonant/semivowel /w/ clearly, but then to me follows a short /ə/ or a sound more to the Romanian /ɨ/ than the ...
DanielC's user avatar
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Is there any sound change that can result in /ɞ/?

I am making a conlang where one of the distinctive sounds is /ɞ/. It is a rare vowel sound, and I searched Index Diachronica but couldn't find a sound change that results in it. The sound also does ...
Neil Iyer's user avatar
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Is this diagram accurate for [ɾʲ]

I've been having trouble realizing the /ɾʲ/ sound in Irish, and I wanted to know if I am interpreting the IPA correctly. I find it very difficult to tap the alveolus with my tongue raised to the ...
Sriotchilism O'Zaic's user avatar
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1 answer
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Most and least common places of articulation across world's languages

Which place of articulation is most common for oral pulmonic stops in the world's languages? In order, which places of articulation are the LEAST common in the world's languages? In order, which ...
teatime's user avatar
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How to type IPA quickly on Mac?

I want shortcuts (pre-existing or customised) for IPA symbols. I've installed IPA Unicode keyboard, which works fine on notes/ google docs but not on pages. I don't have ms word. Keyman does not come ...
BB12's user avatar
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How exactly are vowel qualities plotted on a neat quadrilateral chart?

How exactly are vowel qualities of a particular speaker, or average qualities of the speakers of an accent, plotted on a neat quadrilateral chart like these (from the Wikipedia articles for Received ...
Vun-Hugh Vaw's user avatar
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How can we represent a stressed monosyllabic word?

According to Wiktionary, in Chinese, the word 是 means "truly; indeed" when it is stressed. However, according to Wikipedia, it appears that the concept of word stress is not applicable to a ...
siffleur's user avatar
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Why is the vowel in “caught” in General American English transcribed to /ɔ/

The /ɔ/ sounds (as in “caught”/“bought”) in RP and GA sound very distinct to me. The one in GA sounds more like /ɒ/ to me. Why isn’t it transcribed to /ɒ/ in the dictionary? And I wonder what the ...
Robin's user avatar
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Swedish dalmål "ö" pronounciation

I speak swedish with a heavy dalmål accent and my pronounciation of the swedish ö feels most similar to ɤ̞ in the IPA chart since my tongue is pretty far back. I could not find this mentioned anywhere ...
Emil's user avatar
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recommendations on turkish-->ipa dictionary

Preferably a research-quality text. It doesn't need to be edited in English necessarily; and can be based on any dialect or standardization since the republics founding. I'm not a native speaker, so I ...
Paul Eugenio's user avatar
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What is the difference between traditional and modern IPA?

I have recently come across this while researching the phonetic spelling for "love", and I have come across a website (the website) that had both traditional and modern IPA spellings (with ...
Beathan Mann's user avatar
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Why does the IPA use four main vowel heights?

Because vowels exist at infinitely precise points on large acoustic and articulatory spectrums (vowel spaces), the study of phonetics uses generalized waypoints to describe them. The International ...
Graham H.'s user avatar
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Can broad and narrow transcription be distinguished by whether a transcription makes use of diacritics?

When doing transcription of English (British or American) in IPA, is broad transcription exactly the kind of transcription which doesn't make use diacritics, and narrow transcription the kind which ...
Tim's user avatar
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Is the vowel quadrilateral in IPA 3 by 2 or 3 by 3?

I found some difference between the vowel quadrilateral from https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/IPAcharts/IPA_chart_orig/pdfs/IPA_Kiel_2020_full.pdf and the one from https://pressbooks....
Tim's user avatar
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What written notation is used in IPA for the letter "A" in the English words "hand", "man", "and", et cetra?

In American English, the letter "A" is pronounced at least five different ways. What written symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is used for the vowel, or vowel group, shown ...
Samuel Muldoon's user avatar
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How are the varying boundaries of phonemes across idiolects and dialects objectively described?

I am taking a language I know nothing about as an example. In Vietnamese, I am told “hello” is *Xin chào”, pronounced |sin tʃaw|, with a mid tone like saying “aaah” at the doctor, and a falling tone ...
Julius H.'s user avatar
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How close are the Italian and the Romanian open central unrounded vowels?

The "a" sound in Italian and Romanian, is identified as the central unrounded vowel and represented as being practically identical, very close to [ä]. Although a is used in these images to ...
cipricus's user avatar
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The pronunciation of nasalized cardinal vowels

I hope to find the standard pronunciations of nasalized cardinal vowels and English vowels. Where can these pronunciations be found? I looked for them in many places. But they can’t be found in IPA’s ...
hangover's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
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Phonemic transcriptions for English compound words

I have a question about the phonemic transcription for compound words in English. Is there a general rule? Specifically, Should there be space/hyphen/no space between each element in a compound? How ...
amai's user avatar
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What does it mean when a phoneme represented by one IPA is "phonetically" a different IPA?

I have been studying Hungarian and its pronunciation for a long time, using references such as the Hungarian Phonology Wikipedia page and comparing that to the General American Phonology page. The ...
David R's user avatar
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Bilabial speech sounds with lower lip inserted between teeth

I have noticed the existence of several phones that can be produced with a place of articulation that I haven't seen discussed before. Basically, the two lips contact each other (as in bilabial sounds)...
Graham H.'s user avatar
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Single syllable breakdown of the word strawberry in IPA

My intro linguistics class was doing a demonstration of how to break up single syllables into their vowel trees. We came up with three different interrpretations and were looking for more opinions. ...
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What transliteration/romanization scheme does Strong's Hebrew Dictionary use?

I can't find anywhere a description of how to convert the Strong Hebrew Dictionary pronunciation transliteration entries into IPA, or a close approximation to IPA. What romanization scheme are they ...
Lance's user avatar
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There are roughly 46 speech sounds in the English language, however only 26 letters. Why?

There are roughly 44-46 speech sounds in the English language. However, we just have 26 letters which denote some of those 44-46 sounds. Why is that? Why we don't represent each of those 44-46 sounds ...
Harshit Rajput's user avatar
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Is there any free API that can translate from French to IPA? [duplicate]

I have invented a language that actually is just French but each phoneme is replaced by another one. So to build an application that can translate from French to that language, I need the phonetics of ...
nanto's user avatar
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1 answer
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Why are intervocalic coronal plosives apparently so unstable in English?

There are a plethora of words in the English language in which the phonemes /t/ and /d/ appear between two vowels, whether they be in adjacent syllables in the same word or in different words as a ...
Graham H.'s user avatar
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Is the rarity of dental sounds explained by babies not immediately having teeth?

Dental consonants, which involve the corona of the tongue contacting the teeth (typically the upper teeth) are known to be rare throughout the world’s languages. More specifically, phonemic ...
Graham H.'s user avatar
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Can someone explain the ambiguity of the vowel [ø] and null segment [∅]?

Typically the IPA avoids using the same glyph in different scales to represent similar ideas however it seems to me that the representation of the Close-mid Front Rounded Vowel [ø] and the null marker ...
An Amateurish Linguist's user avatar
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Is there a difference between /tʲ/ (palatalized t) and /kʲ/ (palatalized k)? [closed]

I've noticed that what some languages refer to as "soft k" and others as "soft t" seems to be the same sound. Is it so? I was able to find a wiki page discussing the "soft g&...
Džuris's user avatar
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Why are the coronal approximants so different from the others?

I’m aware that there has been some criticism of the IPA’s classification of approximants, as well as debate over the merit of the term itself. However, my understanding is that approximants are the ...
Graham H.'s user avatar
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Tool for phonetic transcriptions of a specific list of words

Looking for a tool that will accept a file with a list of Basic English words as input and give the phonetic spellings/ transcriptions of the words in IPA as output. If that's not available, any ...
Meenu's user avatar
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How do I represent SAMPA glottal stops in IPA?

I come from SAMPA world, and I am used to using a glottal stop. In German language, glottal stops are quite common: For example: z i ts ? E k @ The "?" is the glottal stop and intrudes a ...
tmighty's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
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What is unicode character turned AE ᴂ(U+1D02) used for?

The near-open front unrounded vowel is written as æ(U+00E6), commented as "Latin Small Letter Ae". But I found the character ᴂ(U+1D02) commented as "Latin Small Letter Turned Ae" ...
C.K.'s user avatar
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Could the Midwestern (Wisconsin) L sound be described as a semivowel/glide?

In Midwestern accents, words like "love" (with the L in word initial) the L sounds close to the /j/ glide, but I wonder if anyone has noticed this or come across it.
Mahesh Sundaram's user avatar
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Voiceless Schwa after a plosive consonant

Take American English as an example, what is the difference in sounding between [pʰə̥ˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯] and [pʰˈtʰeɪ̯ɾoʊ̯]?
Gaai Chia's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
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Difference between Cantonese /gw/ and Mandarin /gu/?

As a native speaker of both languages, Cantonese /gw/ like in 過gwo3 and Mandarin /gu/ like in 过guo4 sounds the same, but I've checked that the Cantonese one is [kʷɔː] while the Mandarin one is [kwo], ...
Gaai Chia's user avatar
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The o-o-o-ol’ shakuh-shakuh: how can we describe this extended “o” sound?

Just after the 3-minute mark in this video, the chef tells us to give the pot “the o-o-o-ol’ shakuh-shakuh“. I think the pronunciation is in imitation of a stereotypical elderly man. I would like to ...
Guest's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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why pronunciations of cardinal vowel No.4 [a] are so different?

The cardinal vowel No.4 [a] pronounced by Daniel Jones and some other linguistics sounds more like /æ/ as in cat. but this cardinal vowel pronounced in the IPA website(by 4 speakers) sounds more like ...
hangover's user avatar
-2 votes
2 answers
112 views

Why the phonetic /ɔ/ is used in totally two different position?

Why the phonetic /ɔ/ is related to the phonetic /ɑ/ and the phonetic /oʊ/ at the same time even though they're totally different in pronunciation? /ɔ/&/ɑ/ /ɔ/ Awesome, autumn, Australia, Talk, ...
Abdullah 's user avatar
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What is the difference between these three IPA phonetics in American pronunciation?

"ɔ" Like (awesome, autumn, Australia), "ɒ" Like (octopus, October, occupy), "ɑ" Like (arm, art, argument). I know it's going to be hard to explain them in writing, but ...
Abdullah 's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
170 views

What does the superscript x in Finnish IPA mean?

IPA transcriptions like /muːtːuɑˣ/ from here show a superscripted x. The Finnish Phonology Wiki page says, in the Sandhi section: Gemination of a morpheme-initial consonant occurs when the morpheme ...
Lance's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
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Does double tone mean long vowel?

After looking into the IPA for some words in tonal languages, I am starting to see things like ăn (Vietnamese), which are transcribed with two like tone marks, like ʔan˧˧. What does it mean when two ...
Lance's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
116 views

Are there languages which have h following a consonant, that contrasts with aspiration?

I am working on a conscript and want to make sure I can handle all of Earth's languages. In some Indian languages they have the aspirated consonants like bh like bhavya. It is basically a breathy b. ...
Lance's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
346 views

Does the IPA have a symbol to mark a letter that can be dropped in pronunciation?

I would like to mark a letter in a syllable with some kind of symbol that denotes that the letter can be dropped. Is there a symbol for that in the phonetic alphabet?
Zoltan King's user avatar
1 vote
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In the IPA transcription do I need to show the global fall/rise before or after the stressed syllable?

I put the global fall symbol (down arrow) after the stressed syllable because it makes more sense to me. The last content word in a though group is where final inflection usually occurs, the syllable ...
Zoltan King's user avatar
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is this sound [ɾ] or [ɹ]?

Here my native language is claimed to have alveolar tap or trill as its rhotic sound but recently I've wondering if it's actually a plain alveolar approximant [ɹ] instead since I noticed that my [ɾ] ...
LinguisticsFanatic's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
132 views

Is it more correct to use the minor and major foot groups in the IPA than commas and periods?

I transcribed some phrases from TV. This is casual American connected speech: As you can notice I'm using the | and || symbols instead of the commas and periods. Also, I do not show the question mark,...
Zoltan King's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
40 views

Is there a database that lists all ways of spelling IPA phonemes?

I'm looking for a list, database, table, etc. of different ways that IPA phonemes (like /f/) can be represented (e.g normally just f, but also the gh in cough).
Jabster28's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
152 views

Why do many languages analyse [e̞] as /ɛ/?

I experience that most analyses of many languages that I know, in particular Swedish, (Flemish) Dutch, Norwegian and Icelandic, analyse the languages' short ⟨e⟩ as /ɛ/, while they sound a lot more ...
Masimatutu's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
199 views

Is there an IPA symbol to represent both primary or secondary stress?

I was just wondering if there is an IPA symbol to represent stress in general, be that primary or secondary stress, just one symbol for both?
Zoltan King's user avatar

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