User:Keffy/IPAc

[A provisional pronunciation key for IPAc transcriptions, in preparation for the Pronunciation Flood. When people agree on it, this page will get moved to somewhere more central than Keffy's User pages.]

For readers

All the transcriptions in Wiktionary marked with the IPA^c tag use the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) consistently in the way indicated in the following pronunciation key.

The entries were originally made for pronunciations in a dialect of Canadian English. If the entry you're looking at still only mentions Canada, the pronunciation and its sound file are very probably just as applicable to most American speakers. For some words, it may even be applicable to the UK's Received Pronunciation and to other dialects.

IPA^c	example	IPA^c	example
[ɑ]	caught, father, not	[b]	but, cab
[æ]	bad, cat	[d]	do, wood
[aɪ]	rise, my	[dʒ]	judge, gin
[aʊ]	house, now	[ð]	this, father, clothe
[ɛ]	bed, bet	[f]	fool, enough
[eɪ]	bait	[g]	go, bag
[ə]	about, sadness, magic	[h]	ham
[ɚ]	enter, fur	[j]	yes
[i]	ease, see, happy	[l]	left
[ɪ]	city, bit	[k]	cat, kill, queen
[oɪ]	noise, boy	[m]	man, him
[oʊ]	boat, nose	[n]	no
[u]	boot, soon	[ŋ]	singer, ring
[ʊ]	put, foot	[p]	pen, top
[ʌ]	run, enough	[r]	run, very
[ʲu]	new, student (see note below)	[s]	see, pass, city
		[ʃ]	she, sure, emotion
		[t]	to, mat
		[tʃ]	chair, branch, nature
		[v]	voice, love, of
		[w]	we, which
		[z]	zoo, roses
		[ʒ]	pleasure, rouge (zh)
		[θ]	thing, moth

Other symbols:

IPA^c	indicates
ˈ	primary stress (goes before the loudest syllable in the word)
ˌ	secondary stress (goes before medium-loud syllables)
.	division between syllables (used only occasionally for clarity)

Notes:

[ʲu] marks words where the presence or absence of [j] depends on dialect. For example, in new [nʲu], many British and many Canadian speakers will use [nju], while many Canadians and almost all Americans will use [nu]. (Synthetic audio files will illustrate the version without the [j].)
Vowel-[r] sequences are written as: [ɑr], [ɛr], [ir], [or], [ur]. For most speakers, [ir] is really pronounced somewhere between [ir] and [ɪr], [ur] between [ur] and [ʊr], and [or] between [or] and [ɔr].

A few brief notes on the dialect transcribed:

There is no contrast between [ɑ], [ɒ], [ɑː], and [ɔ]. Cot and caught are both [kɑt].
There is no contrast between [w] and [ʍ]. Witch and which are both [wɪtʃ].
There is no [ær]; it has merged into [ɛr]. Mary, merry, and marry are all [ˈmɛri].
There is no contrast between [ə] and unstressed [ɪ] or [ɨ]. Not all speakers have such a contrast. Even speakers who do have a contrast can't agree on which word has which.

For editors

(The following is just to illustrate template syntax. The sound files don't actually exist (yet).)

Changing the transcriptions

Please don't change the transcriptions listed for any given region unless you are very sure that nobody in that region would ever pronounce it like that (for example, if there's a blatant typo). If there is a different pronunciation in your region, add it on a new line.

If your region uses the same pronunciation as a region already listed (and the pronunciation key above is valid for your dialect, at least for this word), please add your region to the first argument of the ipacregion template. For example,

(Canada)

IPA^c: /bɪg/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

might eventually become:

(Canada, UK, US)

IPA^c: /bɪg/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

If an existing region shows more than one alternative pronunciation, and your region only uses one of them, please add a line with a new ipacregion template and copy the ipac template for the right alternative. As a contrived (and not completely accurate) example, the entry for again might evolve from:

(Canada)

IPA^c: /əˈgeɪn/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

or IPA^c: /əˈgɛn/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

{{User:Keffy/ipacregion|Canada}} {{subst:ipac|əˈgeɪn|en-ca-synth-again.ogg|CA synth}} '''or''' {{subst:ipac|əˈgɛn|en-ca-synth-again.ogg|CA synth}}

to:

(Canada)

IPA^c: /əˈgeɪn/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

or IPA^c: /əˈgɛn/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

(UK)

IPA^c: /əˈgeɪn/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

(US)

IPA^c: /əˈgɛn/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

{{User:Keffy/ipacregion|Canada}} {{subst:ipac|əˈgeɪn|en-ca-synth-again-1.ogg|CA synth}} '''or''' {{subst:ipac|əˈgɛn|en-ca-synth-again-2.ogg|CA synth}}

Replacing the audio with a real human voice

This is strongly encouraged!

If your accent is comparable to the one used in the synthetic sound file, simply replace its filename (in the second argument of the ipac template) with the name of the file you uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and adjust the region in the third parameter to the ipac template. So:

(Canada)

IPA^c: /bɪg/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

CA synth:

noicon

(file)

might become:

(Canada, US)

IPA^c: /bɪg/ replace g with ɡ, invalid IPA characters (g)

US:

(file)

If your accent isn't very similar to the one in the synthetic file, but the transcription is still valid as a broad transcription for your dialect, then don't delete the link to the synthetic file, but just add a link to your new file with the audio template. For example: