Questions tagged [ipa]
The International Phonetic Alphabet: A Latin-based alphabet designed for transcribing all sounds of all languages.
209
questions
3
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1answer
38 views
Google Translate Thai with IPA transcription?
IPA is international standard for transcribing phonetic of any language (AFAIK, I am not a linguist), and https://translate.google.com/ is excellent tool for translating between languages. But when I ...
20
votes
3answers
3k views
Can the IPA represent all languages' tones?
The IPA's current tone system can show five different tone levels, and any contours formed from them.
Is there any language for which this is insufficient? In other words, is there any (known, ...
2
votes
2answers
157 views
How can I write an interdental lateral in phonetic transcription?
Inspired by this answer here is my question: How can I write a interdental lateral in phonetic transcription (IPA preferred, but not a necessary requirement, other wide spread phonetic notation ...
2
votes
1answer
220 views
Can someone explain the English 'W' sound?
I have found out that the English letter 'W', as in the word "weep", is classified as a voiced labiovelar approximant. To quote Wikipedia:
Its place of articulation is labialized velar, which means ...
2
votes
2answers
83 views
What is the standard representation of a stop which could be either ejective or aspirated?
I’m working with a language which differentiates between aspirated and ejective stops. Is there a linguistic convention that I can use in writing descriptive rules for processes which both aspirated ...
2
votes
1answer
135 views
IPA Sound used for grapheme 'R' in some English dialects?
A number of years ago, I was working with some friends on conlanging for a fictional society. At the time, we didn’t know about IPA or formalized sound descriptions like “voiceless ...
1
vote
1answer
55 views
IPA transcriptions for Norwegian
Are there online sources for Norwegian transcription?
NAOB gives an orthographic one, UiB Ordbokene do not have transcription at all.
3
votes
1answer
364 views
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) words with IPA
Are there any resources that can show IPA pronounciation for each PIE word? Either with laryngeals or without laryngeals?
Wikitionary gives me only small list Category:Proto-Indo-European terms with ...
19
votes
4answers
2k views
Is the schwa sound consistent?
The first syllable in "about" (ə'baʊt) is schwa, so is the second one in the "salad" ('sæləd), but iv'e never heard them pronounced the same way.
in salad it sounds more like the i in "trick".
...
0
votes
2answers
66 views
British English offglides
The offglide of the English diphthongs /aʊ/ and /əʊ/ is represented by the vowel /ʊ/. In other languages, such as Portuguese and Spanish, they are represented in the same way, but they sound ...
25
votes
2answers
3k views
What do you call an IPA symbol that lacks a name (e.g. ɲ)?
Some IPA symbols such as ɲ lack any name, and when I tried searching for the symbol online, the pages I got only showed palatal nasal.
But I wonder what I should call it when I talk with others. Is ...
0
votes
1answer
90 views
The TRAP vowel: a or ä?
If my mouth is open and my tongue is completely relaxed, do I make an [a] or an [ä]?
Which one is more common for the TRAP vowel in British English?
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vote
1answer
40 views
With SSML phoneme tags using IPA phonetic symbols, how can I insert pauses to slow down pronounciation?
Note
For my text to speech engine (I use Cereproc, William Voice).
The engine can be used on the website here:
https://www.cereproc.com/
and it supports the ssml tags used in this question..
...
10
votes
1answer
857 views
How to split IPA spelling into syllables
First, please forgive my ignorance, I'm completely new to linguistics.
Given the IPA spelling for word, is it possible to programmatically split it into its sounds? So, for example, given the word "...
1
vote
0answers
156 views
Why do we transcribe the vowel sound in 'how' as /aʊ/?
The diphthong /aʊ/ doesn't really make sense to me as a transcription. I'm a Southern British English speaker, and when I say and hear 'how' it sounds to me like /hæɒw/.
/a/ doesn't seem to exist as ...
1
vote
1answer
110 views
What does a long mid-high unrounded back vowel sound like?
I'm trying to figure out what the Livonian character ȱ sounds like. As far as I can tell, it's a long mid-high unrounded back vowel. In IPA it seems to be written as /ɤː/ but that seems to be a non-...
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votes
3answers
125 views
Why are two versions of a word written in the same IPA pronounced differently?
My question is to be applied on any language; why do I find for instance two versions of the same word written in the same IPA symbols pronounced differently, in case of different accents for example. ...
3
votes
2answers
147 views
Do any modern orthographies use capital esh?
The letter "esh" (ʃ) is well-known from the IPA, and is also used in some languages' orthographies. Because of this second use case, Unicode includes a capital esh at U+01A9 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ESH (...
2
votes
0answers
45 views
What is the difference between ŋ͡͡j and ɲ? [duplicate]
I was thinking about how a "b̃" is the same thing as an "m" and a "s̪" is the same thing as a "θ". Maybe the same applies to ŋ͡͡j and ɲ?
5
votes
2answers
341 views
Question about nasal vowels in IPA
Probably a silly question, but why are there no nasal vowels in IPA charts? Should we assume that nasal vowels are placed in the same position as the corresponding oral vowels in the vocal chart? So ...
3
votes
2answers
308 views
IPA Pronunciation of Unvoiced Consonants Seems Like Voiced
This might be a trivial question, but it seems to me that certain unvoiced example pronunciations for IPA sounds resemble the voiced one. For example, on this site:
http://www....
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0answers
92 views
Is it appropriate to say that [ɕ] is an intermediate form of [ʃ ç]?
The description is found in a paper about the German fricatives
https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/labphon.2014.5.issue-1/lp-2014-0005/lp-2014-0005.xml
How do the three sound differ from each other in ...
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votes
1answer
93 views
What is the maximum number of IPA diacritics that can be added on a vowel?
What would the symbol look like, and how would it sound like? E.g. a long rhotacized nasalized vowel with tone?
1
vote
1answer
180 views
What the palatalized [ʲ] means
So I'm pretty sure I understand labialized [ʷ] and some of the other superscripts, but I don't fully understand palatalized [ʲ]. An example of palatalized is Abkhaz, Selkup, Bulgarian, and Yanesha. ...
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votes
1answer
97 views
What IPA does in these complex cases
I'm trying to think of examples where the IPA symbols get really complex, and find phonologies with those symbols. I'm not quite there in understanding all the aspects of IPA, but I wanted to see if ...
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vote
2answers
95 views
System for intermixing IPA with Orthography
So in English the word hi sounds like /haɪ/, but can be spelled "hi", "high", etc. So if you wanted to define the word "high" in English you would have to write two things:
high (the spelling/...
2
votes
2answers
139 views
Given both a word and the corresponding IPA, how to match/map the letters together?
Given both the word and the corresponding IPA equivalent, is there any stable algorithm for mapping the letter of each word to the IPA letter?
For example, given close-quote and IPA kloʊzkwoʊt -- I'd ...
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votes
2answers
142 views
Some questions on pieces missing from the IPA sheet [closed]
So the tilde used on the top vs. the bottom means different things (nasal vs. creaky voice). This got me wondering if the [ ̥ ] ring means anything differently when it is on the top as seen here ŋ̊. ...
0
votes
1answer
75 views
Accurately representing stress
Wondering how to accurately represent stress. In IPA, stress, is marked with ˈ◌. But in languages like Spanish (don't know of other languages that use acute accent, other than Ancient Greek), you have ...
0
votes
1answer
71 views
How to annotate the difference between blended vowels and non-blended vowels
Similar to this question about consonants, I'm wondering how you annotate with IPA (or any other system if IPA doesn't support it) the difference between blending vowels together (morphing between ...
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votes
1answer
65 views
If diacritics cause duplication in IPA
So in first learning the IPA I went through the consonants and the vowels. This is confusing because in the consonants chart you see stuff like [d̪] or [ʎ̥˔]. At first I thought these were just some ...
1
vote
1answer
63 views
How to annotate “popping” vs. non-popping sounds of sequential consonants
How to write (orthography) words in a distinct way to capture the essence of these pronunciations (I'll try to use IPA but probably will do it wrong so adding another variation).
hip /hɪp/
hipo /hɪpo/...
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votes
1answer
46 views
How to write IPA for a slovenian word Midva? [closed]
can someone please help me how to write the pronunciation for the word "Midva" that English speaking people will understand?
In Slovene it is [ˈmiːdva]
0
votes
1answer
132 views
General American English words for IPA vowel sounds
Looking at the Danish vowels, it came up with this translation:
a hat
ɑ art
ɑː father
ʌ off
ɒ og
ɒː dog
æ bet
æː bed
e face
ɛ ?
eː phase
ɛː ?
i leaf
iː leave
o oak
ɔ thought
...
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votes
1answer
775 views
The difference between [h] and [ħ]
I am trying to tell the difference between [h] and [ħ]. I get the technical difference of pharyngeal vs. glottal, but I don't see how it's possible to control those two regions of your anatomy ...
2
votes
1answer
260 views
What parentheses and tildes mean in IPA / phonology chart
Why some symbols in phonology charts are put in parentheses or brackets, such as (z), or [ɲ], and why there is a tilde ~ in some places, such as dz [dʒ ~ dz]. Wondering what that means exactly, if it ...
1
vote
1answer
107 views
Missing IPA symbols
Sometimes phonologies have symbols that I haven't seen in the IPA, such as ᵘa or k͜xʰ. Wondering how I go about finding out what these mean, and/or why they don't use the IPA symbols. Wondering if ...
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vote
2answers
774 views
When should I use /ə/ or /ɪ/ and why does it seem like they're not used correctly?
So I'm trying to learn the vowel sounds of the IPA, and I'm looking at the words "temerity" and "moment" in AmE. What is especially confusing is that first word, where wiktionary lists the ...
2
votes
1answer
116 views
How these close sounds are distinguished in native language
This is not a comprehensive list but just a few snippets from languages that have a few consonants that sound pretty much the same to me. I wanted to ask how I can learn to hear the difference between ...
0
votes
1answer
37 views
Audio library for all IPA vowels and consonants
Wikipedia has a pretty good intro to the IPA sounds, even some of the "click" sounds:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio
https://en....
3
votes
2answers
160 views
Germanic Philology: “translate” a word from indoeuropean language to the germanic language
I'm having a philology test next week. One of the questions will be to "translate" an indoeuropean word into a germanic word, like: i.e. Agros -> germanic Akraz (i.e. "g" --> germ. "k" for Grimm's Law,...
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votes
1answer
162 views
Diagram of all IPA sound places
Wondering if there is a diagram similar to the following one, but that lists all of the mouth configurations such as for ʃ and everything else.
2
votes
4answers
204 views
Why d͡z is not considered two consonants
Wondering why d͡z is not considered two consonants. Same with p͡f, t͡s, etc.
5
votes
2answers
110 views
Can we simulate the pronunciation of sounds that we can't make?
There's certain non-filled places in the IPA chart because we physically can't pronounce them. For example, a velar trill or glottal trill.
Using computers, is it possible that we could simulate how ...
0
votes
2answers
79 views
If any of these stranger human voice sounds have IPA annotations
Wondering if the following sounds have written transcriptions / annotations in IPA or any other system:
Snooring sound (breathing in, "hoooonk" is a trill of some sort, then the breathing out "shoo" ...
0
votes
3answers
204 views
If these letter pairs are used to distinguish two words in any language
Wondering if there are languages in which there are 2 words, 1 containing letter (a) and the other containing letter (b), such that they sound pretty much the same, yet they mean different things. The ...
1
vote
3answers
150 views
The anatomy of the L sound
Starting to learn the IPA and having a few questions. One is about the L sound. Here are the L sounds I've seen:
l
l̥
ɬ (No language uses this).
ɫ: both velarization and pharyngealization
lˠ (...
0
votes
1answer
88 views
Do animal sounds have linguistic symbols or classifications?
Wondering if animal sounds have any formal classification or linguistics symbols like the IPA.
For example:
Chicken sounds (pretty awesome, done by a human)
Cat sounds (purr, like trilled t, or ...
-1
votes
1answer
432 views
Complete list of sounds in all languages (IPA)
Wondering if there is a list of all the IPA sound combinations and how to pronounce them. Searching brings up a bunch of partial and not too well done lists, so wondering if there is a standard or ...
1
vote
1answer
44 views
Dental and labiodental fricatives with different relative positions of the articulators
Are there distinct phonemes for labiodental fricatives articulated with the upper teeth touching the lower lip from the inside (like in English /f/) and ones that are articulated with the tip of the ...
