Difference between revisions 102188765 and 102189571 on enwiki

This is an example of my '''IPA Quickhelp Templates''' idea for templates to use rollover "status text" to make IPA more comprehensible for beginners. The idea is that each letter is a link. When the user rolls over the link, they should get a short (under 15-word) jargon-free text explaining how to pronounce that phoneme. This links to a redirect which links to the jargon-titled article about that sound.

(contracted; show full) we could make it easier for editors to enter IPA.  By typing, say, "<nowiki>{{b}}{{ay}}{{zh}}</nowiki>" we could have this "<span title="Pronunciation in IPA" class="IPA"><span class="nopopups" style="cursor:help;">[[b as in bat|b]][[eɪ as in face|eɪ]][[ʒ as in beige=beɪʒ|ʒ]]</span></span>" displayed. This suffers from the [[#Case|capitalisation problem]], though. [[User:Jimp|Jimp]] 08:30, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
⏎
⏎
== comments from a linguist ==

i spend a fair amount of effort editing pages with IPA transcriptions of words.  i'm not sure whether anyone else commenting on this page is from the same group of people.  i would strongly object to anything that required us to either

*use separate templates for each character in a word's transcription, or
*use non-IPA symbols in the transcription, e.g. "<nowiki>{{b}}{{ay}}{{zh}}</nowiki>".

i'd suggest instead, before trying to muck around with a new template, first fix the existing pages so they're more friendly:

*change the ipa template so that instead of linking to to IPA page, it links to a page that is an "IPA for newbies page".  it explains at the top what the IPA is, with a link to the actual IPA page, and then lists the symbols and clearly explains what each corresponds to in english or some other relatively familiar language (when possible).  order them so that english sounds come first, followed by sounds that are in well-known european languages, followed by other sounds that aren't too hard to explain (e.g. retroflex sounds), followed finally by the really weird ones.  (probably in these lists you want to group sounds together that are phonetically related, e.g. vowels vs. consonants, stops vs. fricatives, retroflex vs. velar, etc., however it ends up being easiest.) then, give another list ordered by approximate shape, so that (e.g.) all of the n-type symbols or r-type symbols are listed together and clearly distinguished from each other.  then, finally give the full IPA table as it's usually presented.

*then, fix the individual articles on the various sounds so that e.g. if you go to [[voiced postalveolar fricative]] there is a '''Quickstart:''' section (or some such) at the top that says "sounds like English ''bei'''ge''''' or ''vi'''si'''on''; often written 'zh' in English." the one for [[retroflex nasal]] might say "like '''n''' but with an r-coloring; something like American English ''Lo'''rn'''a'' with the '''r''' as short as possible." referencing swedish would ''not'' be a good idea here since very few English speakers know swedish.  generally, i think that only french, german and spanish are reasonable languages to reference in such a section, and even then this should only be supplementary; the primary description should be without reference to other languages.  with a little thought you can find reasonable descriptions for the vast majority of IPA sounds.  try to avoid saying vague things like "sounds like x but with the tongue tip farther back" because a phonetics-naive person will have no idea how to move their tongue tip farther back without also moving lots of other parts that shouldn't move, or how much farther back to move, or even what direction "back" is referring to.  try to refer to sounds that are already known and specify directions in terms of things that can be heard, e.g. for [[voiceless velar fricative]], something like "the scraping sound sometimes heard in 'yeccchhhh!!'; or, hold a 'k' with a lot of tension and don't let go, and then gradually release the tension until the air starts to get through and you hear a scraping sound." these descriptions should be succinct but as long as necessary, and not artificially limited; for really unusual sounds, e.g. [[voiced pharyngeal fricative]], you might need quite a lot of instructions.

[[User:Benwing|Benwing]] 10:29, 21 January 2007 (UTC)