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Frequently asked questions

The IPA is gibberish and I can't read it. Why doesn't Wikipedia use a normal pronunciation key?

The IPA is the international standard for phonetic transcription, and therefore the Wikipedia standard as well. Many non-American and/or EFL-oriented dictionaries and pedagogical texts have adopted the IPA, and as a result, it is far less confusing for many people around the world than any alternative. It may be confusing in some aspects to some English speakers, but that is precisely because it is conceived with an international point of view. The sound of y in "yes" is spelled /j/ in the IPA, and this was chosen from German and several other languages which spell this sound j.

For English words, Wikipedia does use a "normal" pronunciation key. It is Help:Pronunciation respelling key, and may be used in addition to the IPA, enclosed in the {{respell}} template. See the opening sentences of Beijing, Cochineal, and Lepidoptera for a few examples. But even this is not without problems; for example, cum laude would be respelled kuum-LOW-day, but this could easily be misread as koom-LOH-day. English orthography is simply too inconsistent in regard to its correspondence to pronunciation, and therefore a completely intuitive respelling system is infeasible. This is why our respelling system must be used merely to augment the IPA, not to replace it.

Wikipedia deals with a vast number of topics from foreign languages, and many of these languages contain sounds that do not exist in English. In these cases, a respelling would be entirely inadequate. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation for further discussion.

The IPA should be specific to a particular national standard, and the national pronunciations should be listed separately.

Listing multiple national pronunciations after every Wikipedia entry word quickly becomes unwieldy, and listing only one leads to accusations of bias. Therefore, we use a system that aims at being pan-dialectal. Of course, if a particular dialect or local pronunciation is relevant to the topic, it may be listed in addition to the wider pronunciation, using {{IPA|und|...}} or {{IPA|en|...|generic=yes}}.

The use of /r/ for the rhotic consonant is inaccurate. It should be /ɹ/ instead.

The English rhotic is pronounced in a wide variety of ways in accents of English around the world, and the goal of our diaphonemic system is to cover as many of them as possible. Moreover, where there is no phonological contrast to possibly cause confusion, using a more typographically recognizable letter for a sound represented by another symbol in the narrow IPA is totally within the confines of the IPA's principles (IPA Handbook, pp. 27–28). In fact, /r/ is arguably the more traditional IPA notation; not only is it used by most if not all dictionaries, but also in Le Maître Phonétique, the predecessor to the Journal of the IPA, which was written entirely in phonetic transcription, ⟨r⟩ was the norm for the English rhotic.

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This page was nominated for deletion on 1 March 2008. The result of the discussion was Keep.

Starting 'a...'

I can't find the IPA for 'a' as in 'as', or 'accent', or 'advent' in the list; neither "ɑː" (cited: palm, bra, father - all longer vowel sounds), nor "ə" (cited: comma, abbot, bazaar - all more schwa sounds), fit well. What should be used, please? - MPF (talk) 00:38, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Use /æ/. /ˈæz ˈæksɛnt ˈædvɛnt/. It's in the chart with sample words "TRAP, bag, sang, tattoo". Indefatigable (talk) 01:35, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indefatigable: Really? I read that as da:æ, same as de:ä, like a short -ae-, which is a very different sound. I also see /æ/ has a note "Some British sources, such as the Oxford English Dictionary, use ⟨a⟩ instead of /æ/ to transcribe this vowel. This more closely reflects the actual vowel quality in contemporary Received Pronunciation", so should it not be ⟨a⟩, which sounds far more realistic? Nobody æctuælly says an 'æ' sound when they mean æn 'a' sound? - MPF (talk) 09:43, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have formal training in linguistics, but it is my understanding that /æ/ has been the de facto standard notation for this English phoneme for over a hundred years, and it has been in use for this purpose on Wikipedia since its inception. Indefatigable (talk) 00:12, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indefatigable: Thanks! I'll not fight it then, even if it does look strange. - MPF (talk) 15:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Indefatigable or anyone else - I've been looking (and listening to the recordings) further, and it's definitely IPA 304 Open front unrounded vowel [a] that I need, and not IPA 325 Near-open front unrounded vowel [æ], which is definitely the wrong sound. But when I put in [a], it gives me an error message? How can that be sorted so it doesn't give the error message? Thanks! - MPF (talk) 14:48, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Have you read the prose parts of the help page? We don't represent specific sounds in transcriptions linking to this key, just abstract categories (diaphonemes). Nardog (talk) 14:59, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nardog - I've taken a look, and don't see anything particularly relevant there! But it is rather out of my depth, unfortunately - MPF (talk) 15:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@MPF: What Ndog is saying is that if you think ⟨as⟩ is pronounced /az/ instead of /æz/, that's an issue with your dialect and not standard English. There's a separate article Sound correspondences between English accents that might be more helpful for you to pin down what you're looking for. It lists something similar to your assumed pronunciation for a range of English northern and Midland dialects, along with the 'realized' contemporary form of RP and various colonial dialects like Barbadian and Cameroonian.

If you were trying to figure out what your dialect looks like when it's transcribed into IPA, the [bracket] form will be the exact sounds you make using their IPA symbols (here [az]) but what you'll find on Wikipedia and every standard dictionary will be transcriptions using the /slashy/ diaphonemic form that you find in the far left column on that dialect chart. In other words, what you say as IPA [az] will be transcribed as /æz/ to the point where you might as well just consider ⟨æ⟩ to represent your [a] sound when writing for the general public. (As for how that happened, see Lexical set#Standard lexical sets for English. He considered [æ] to be the transcription of the same sound in both RP and GA and his work's continued to be copied over and over, as with the needlessly smallcapped words on this page.)

You're right that the page should more clearly explain what it's using as the default dialect, because its current form is obviously wonky (e.g. the various yoddy consonants aren't normal in any major dialect these days but are being treated as standard English for some reason). — LlywelynII 14:31, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

J

Why is 'j' used for a 'y' sound? 2001:FB1:10D:B016:FD42:14F4:6BAF:2DB5 (talk) 07:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's a common letter for it. That's the "I" of the IPA. Nardog (talk) 06:34, 18 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not in English, it isn't, so that's not a terribly helpful answer to someone asking the question. — LlywelynII 14:10, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is based on Latin and its kids and not on English. It's the same reason /i/ is used for what became the long E sound in English after the Great Vowel Shift. You already know the letter shape ⟨y⟩ has lots of sounds in English, only one of which is the consonant sound /j/. You probably already know that many other languages use the letter shape ⟨j⟩ for that sound, like the German ⟨ja⟩ that sounds like what you'd write as "yah" in English. That's why. — LlywelynII 14:10, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with ɔː r not visible in the chart.

The symbols ɔː r in the chart don't show up properly in my default sans serif font, which I believe is Verdana rather than Arial (I never use Arial because it makes capital i and lowercase L look identical). I'm using Chrome on Windows.

If you don't put an extra space between "ɔː " and r in Verdana, the "ː " part overlaps with the r and you cannot see it at all (in fact, I had to write it as "ː " with the quote marks intervening to add an extra space, because WP does not allow double spaces and it looked like :part before I added the quotes). This is a significant visibility problem, and I'm not sure if the font is to blame or something else. 2600:1700:B7B0:950:F4A6:4C1D:FBBE:3291 (talk) 20:53, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I assume you mean Tahoma, not Verdana. The font is to blame. See Help:IPA#Rendering issues, including how you can fix it (if you register). Or you can switch to another font such as—well, Verdana. Nardog (talk) 21:05, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

/dj/

The current example for /dj/ is dew, which is terrible as it’s only true for British English, despite examples of words that use the /dj/ sound in both American and British English. I propose the example be changed to pleasure. Note: originally this post stated examples jump and bridge due to a misunderstanding of the /dj/ sound. This has now been corrected.2600:1700:B3A0:1510:7032:33EC:C590:2771 (talk) 02:57, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You're missing the point - it's [dj] in UK and [d] is most of US. 'jump' would be wrong for both. — kwami (talk) 08:12, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oops! All the sources I found at that time said British English dew was pronounced with a “j” sound, but it turns out it is a different sound after all! The current example is still bad though for the reasons I gave in the original post. I now propose the change be made to at least add pleasure if not totally replace dew entirely. I will update the post now. 2600:1700:B3A0:1510:2956:9157:D64E:47AF (talk) 00:58, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

'Pleasure' again has an entirely different sound — kwami (talk) 02:01, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That is the whole point. The key is diaphonemic: if you live somewhere (like most of the US) where dew has [d] and not [dj], then the key is telling you to read /dj/ as identical with /d/. And pleasure has the entirely different sound /ʒ/. Double sharp (talk) 02:10, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just checking—are you familiar with the difference between phonemes (represented between slashes //) and phones (represented between square brackets [])? If not, the responses you've received may be confusing to you.

Also, in case it isn't clear yet: in IPA, the symbol j represents the sound that in English is associated with the letter "y" (but which in some other languages using the Roman alphabet, such as the Norse languages, German, Dutch, and Polish), is spelled "j"). So the word "you", for example, is represented phonemically as /ju/. IPA has a y but it represents a rounded vowel such as the one in French "tu" and German "über". Largoplazo (talk) 02:45, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Jump and bridge have /dʒ/, not /dj/. Nardog (talk) 10:47, 2 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking about deuterium, but some speakers pronounce it with a /dʒ/. I'm not sure is this example useful, as deuterium is not really a common word. Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 12:44, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It has the exact same pattern as dew, like many other words with historical /djuː/. Not sure what your point is; we want a word that's pronounced with /d/ by those with yod-dropping, with /dʒ/ by those with yod-coalescence, and with /dj/ by those with neither to illustrate the diaphoneme /dj/ because that's what it represents. Nardog (talk) 15:04, 3 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I speak southern British English, and pronounce the starts of each of "deuterium", "dew", "due" and "duly" as [dj], with a more intense "d" in "dew" than the rest (not sure how to signify that). Bazza 7 (talk) 10:27, 4 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More to the point is there a reason we're treating the yods here and at /zj/ etc. as standard English at all? They aren't. They were previously standard in some British dialects but now aren't the majority pronunciation even there. They should just be treated as a separate category of marginal consonants like you see in (e.g.) Help:IPA/Dutch. — LlywelynII 13:58, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to agree that it's a bit odd we list /dj/, /lj/, /θj/, etc. almost as if those are phonemes. However, I admit I can't think of any simple/better alternative. I assume the WP editors who made this choice are trying to create diaphonemes which (as Nardog already mentioned) neatly subsume yod-dropping dialects, yod-coalescing dialects, and more conservative dialects that do neither all under a single simple transcription convention. Wolfdog (talk) 14:39, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a separate and less important issue, the note here is wrong. In yod dropping dialects (which—again—are just all the standard English dialects at this point) dew and do aren't homophones. In most phrasing, they'll be distinct to native speakers, because the first is pronounced longer (/duː/) than the second (/du/). — LlywelynII 14:03, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What's your source that yod-dropping is now the norm in the UK? That doesn't seem born out by the Brits I hear.

Dew and do are perfect homonyms in my accent, which is pretty much GA. I can't judge for others, of course, but we have plenty of refs that they are homonyms in yod-dropping accents. — kwami (talk) 19:02, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

/dʒ/

Surely we should include an example word using the letter J here, not just "giant" and "bridge". J and not soft G is the default English transcription for those sounds.

Any preferences? Jay? June? January? John? Japan? just? — LlywelynII 14:12, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

'June' might be problematic. Any of the others would be fine. I'd go with 'just'. — kwami (talk) 19:04, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Most examples are followed by /aɪ/ to form minimal pairs, hence giant. We could replace it with jive. Nardog (talk) 02:34, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That works. I'll make the change. — kwami (talk) 03:27, 13 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Smallcaps

Is there any particular reason to have those at all? What is the benefit to the WP:READER of drawing any attention to John Wells's list, especially if you're getting WP:POINTY and removing some of his own examples from our list? The point of any lexical set is just to serve as what our examples are already doing. If we've improved on Wells's choices, that's great. Why highlight any of his work instead of just lowercasing everything except capitalized proper nouns? — LlywelynII 14:50, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's worth noting them because that's what the vowels are called. 'The KIT vowel' etc. They're not just examples. Also, they don't depend on us choosing our own words that might prove inaccurate if we've overlooked some accent, which is a problem we've had in the past. — kwami (talk) 19:07, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]