26
votes
Accepted
/t͡ʃ/ vs. /ʧ/ vs. /tʃ/
"tʃ", "t͡ʃ", and "t͜ʃ" are the only representations of the affricate currently sanctioned by the International Phonetic Association. The ligature symbols "ʧ", &...
- 4,860
25
votes
Accepted
Is there a reason that /w/ isn't represented on the IPA chart?
Your basic premise is incorrect here: /w/ is listed in the Consonant section of the IPA page on Wikipedia, under Co-articulated consonants where it belongs.
It doesn’t belong in the main table, ...
- 3,536
21
votes
What is the meaning of the number 2 in Proto-Indo European reconstructions? e.g. As in *tewtéh₂, meaning "people" or "tribe"
The numbers are specific to Proto-Indo-European.
Scholars aren't sure how PIE was pronounced: after all, there are no native speakers around now, or records from the time. All of the sounds in ...
- 62.1k
20
votes
/t͡ʃ/ vs. /ʧ/ vs. /tʃ/
In theory, the difference between /t͡ʃ/ with a tiebar and /tʃ/ without is that the former represents a single unit and the latter represents two units. This is sometimes important for theoretical ...
- 62.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Is IPA machine-readable?
IPA is machine readable now, because the IPA characters are all in Unicode, the standard character set of today.
At the time when SAMPA was created, character sets were either 7 bit (ASCII) or 8 bit (...
- 29.5k
11
votes
Accepted
The difference between the phonemes /p/ and /b/ in Japanese
I assume you mean "what is the difference in pronunciation between Japanese /p/ and /b/?". English and French also have /p,b/ but the physical realization of that contrast differs. French ...
- 80.2k
10
votes
Is it possible to have the same symbol for different sounds in IPA?
Yes, this is not only possible but regular practice. In general, one only notates the kind of features of a sound that are relevant for the transcription and it is left to reader to add the omitted ...
- 29.5k
7
votes
Does "You" or "Unicorn" begin with a vowel sound
"You" begins with a consonant, in all senses of the word "consonant".
There is a difference between "vowel" as used in English orthographic pedagogy and "vowel" as used in linguistics. The name of ...
- 80.2k
7
votes
Cyrillic phonetic alphabet?
Nowadays, most major publications use IPA, and among those that don't, it's usually for historical reasons. Creating new phonetic alphabets isn't a particularly active area of research when there are ...
- 62.1k
7
votes
Accepted
Cyrillic phonetic alphabet?
There are a few authors that use the Russian Linguistic Alphabet (Русский лингвистический алфавит) or a variation of it. For example Balgina 2002 (see sections 56, 57, 58).
- 86
6
votes
Accepted
Choice of phonemic symbol for /b/, /d/, /g/, /ʝ/ in Spanish
/ʝ/ vs. /ɟ/
Phonetically, there is a lot of variability in the realization of the Spanish sound that Wikipedia transcribes as /ʝ/, both between dialects, and in some cases between different utterances ...
- 17.4k
6
votes
Accepted
Discussions around symbols included/excluded in the IPA
Oh yes, very much so! The IPA is constantly changing and expanding, and existing symbols are moved, repurposed, and deleted. Many linguists still use the "Americanist" system, for instance, which ...
- 62.1k
6
votes
Use of asterisk in middle of word of an attempted proto-language; does it refer to everything that follows?
I am assuming that you got the "t*amano" from https://gawron.sdsu.edu/fundamentals/course_core/lectures/historical/historical.htm
I think "t*amano" is a typo for "*tamano," with the asterisk in front ...
- 2,354
6
votes
Is it possible to have the same symbol for different sounds in IPA?
As jk mentioned, it's common to only transcribe the features that are relevant (a "broad" transcription). But there are a few other reasons why the mapping from symbol to sound might not be ...
- 62.1k
6
votes
Accepted
What kind of stress is this?
It means it is pronounced either /ˈaɪsˌfri/ or /ˌaɪsˈfri/. This notation of "¦" standing for "primary or secondary stress" was devised in Webster's Third (1961) by its ...
- 4,860
6
votes
Accepted
What is unicode character turned AE ᴂ(U+1D02) used for?
Uralicist notation (sometimes called the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet) rotates vowel characters to indicate a shortened, centralized, or reduced form of the vowel. The original proposal to the Unicode ...
- 62.1k
5
votes
Is there a reason that /w/ isn't represented on the IPA chart?
The layout of an IPA chart is partly arbitrary, by which I mean that there are patterns to it, but those patterns aren't necessary the only patterns that would have been reasonable. They just are what ...
- 17.4k
4
votes
Accepted
Is there a featural equivalent of the International Phonetic Alphabet?
Before such an alphabet could be created, there would have to be agreement as to what the features are, and there is no such agreement. An additional problem is that the resulting system would ...
- 80.2k
4
votes
Difference between [i] and [j] or [u] and [w]
There is no difference that is intrinsic to these transcriptions. IPA letter do not represent exact pronunciations of a Platonic linguistic metalanguage, they snad for ranges of pronunciations in ...
- 80.2k
4
votes
Accepted
How is an archiphoneme represented on the phonetic level?
An archiphoneme is employed when a surface phone (which has a definite phonetic value) could derive from a number of underlying sounds /x,y,z/ and there is no contrast between these segments in that ...
- 80.2k
4
votes
Accepted
What is X in a syllable C=consonant, V=vowel
As you know already
C means consonants
V means vowels
And
X means any phoneme
s means /s/
sh means /ʃ/
() means the phoneme in brackets is optional
- 4,269
4
votes
How do they separate phones' length?
There is an even richer transcriptional tradition used in Finno-Ugric studies which allows up to 8 length distinctions. You can either get trained in transcribing durational distinctions auditorily, ...
- 80.2k
4
votes
which kind of phonetic symbol is it?
I found a copy of the PDF available for download by selecting the Download tab and passing the CAPTCHA.
It's probably a widely pirated English lesson from koolearn, which other websites copied and ...
- 456
4
votes
Accepted
How can I write an interdental lateral in phonetic transcription?
extIPA gives you these options:
Voiceless interdental lateral fricative: ɬ̪͆
Voiced interdental lateral fricative: ɮ̪͆
Voiced interdental lateral approximant: l̪͆
However, I find these diacritics a ...
- 4,860
4
votes
Does "You" or "Unicorn" begin with a vowel sound
You seem to be mixing up letters with sounds - don't mind the downvote; this is something that confuses many people who haven't had much linguistic training.
"u" as the written letter is just a ...
- 6,448
4
votes
Is IPA machine-readable?
I will assume that "machine readable" means that you want a computer to be able to scan/photograph the text and read it with a high degree of accuracy and furthermore the information should be able to ...
- 141
4
votes
What is the meaning of the number 2 in Proto-Indo European reconstructions? e.g. As in *tewtéh₂, meaning "people" or "tribe"
It looks like the ₂ is called a laryngeal:
The phonemes *h₁, *h₂, *h₃, with cover symbol H also denoting "unknown laryngeal" (or *ə₁, *ə₂, *ə₃ and /ə/), stand for three "laryngeal" phonemes. The ...
- 157
4
votes
Source to look up pronunciation of phonetic script
The general answer is "no", but in specific cases the answer could be "yes". First I think you need to pin down what exactly you hope to do.
The internet is now full of phonetic ...
- 80.2k
3
votes
Accepted
Can anyone send me a link or recommend me a book about IPA diacritics?
A good and official source for IPA letters is here. From it you can learn exactly what each diacritic is called, e.g. ̥ is "voiceless". This also includes illustrative performances of most of the IPA ...
- 80.2k
3
votes
How is an archiphoneme represented on the phonetic level?
An archiphoneme is really not a phonetic entity. Trubetzkoy distinguished his archiphoneme from its surface manifestation, which he called the archiphoneme representative (Vertreter). However, there ...
- 12.4k
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