Edits on Dutch pronounciation

Hi Codecat, though undoubtedly well-intended, I believe your changes to the pronounciation of Dutch words constitute a Netherlands-centric bias / pov. Dutch does not have a standard pronounciation that covers all regions; Dutch is a pluricentric language. The recommended pronounciation of standard Belgian Dutch (e.g., the highly-regarded "VRT-Dutch") is markedly different in several ways from the recommended pronounciation of standard Netherlandic Dutch. I propose to undo all your recent edits concerning the pronounciation of Dutch words.

Dutch is not a pluricentric language at all. There is only one standard, the one regulated by Taalunie, and it only regulates spelling, not pronunciation. There is no standard for pronunciation at all.

What is standard, though, is the common phonemic system of the majority of more-or-less mainstream varieties of Dutch. That means, specifically, that regardless of where you go, the language has the same set of phonemes, even if they are pronounced differently in different areas. See w:Dutch phonology for more details. Many Wiktionary entries currently give the different regional pronunciations as phonemes (with / /) as if the phonemic system is somehow different between Belgian and Netherlandic. But it's not of course, /ç/ and /x/ are really the same thing, so we should not write them differently if we are writing the phonemes, which concern only the underlying structure of the word (that is, which distinguishing sound-pieces is it made of).

Hi Codecat, I never said there are Dutch pronounciation "standards", I did refer to pronounciation "recommendations", which de facto exist, which differ between the regions, and which are the closest Dutch has to pronounciation standards. Not entirely certain where you are heading towards, but it's common practice to recognize pronounciation differences in IPA, see for example English military or mandatory. Equally, the English language appendix on this makes note of the differences in pronounciation between the varieties: Appendix:English pronunciation. Opting for one IPA-recognition, and preferring the Nothern-Dutch variant, constitutes a pov. Indeed if we opt for one IPA-transliteration, we could opt for the Southern-Dutch variant as well (which to be clear, is not my suggestion either).

I'm not preferring any variant. There is no such thing as "northern Dutch", "southern Dutch", "Netherlands Dutch" or "Belgian Dutch" to begin with. There are just different regional varieties, and choosing a single particular variety as "the" standard for either the Netherlands or Belgium, like you are suggesting, would be POV. Recommended pronunciations can be included of course, that's not a problem. But what I disagree with is labelling them simply "Netherlands" and such. That's just wrong, but moreover it horribly skews the picture that readers might get. Contrasting "Netherlands" versus "Belgium" gives the impression that the national border is a linguistic border separating these two varieties, which is not true of course. But contrasting "north" and "south" is not much better. What about northwest versus northeast? Or southwest versus southeast? There are big differences in pronunciation there too. We shouldn't be using labels that give an overly simplistic picture of things.

That said, the one thing that all these varieties generally do share, is that they have the same set of phonemes. Whether someone says /ç/, /x/ or /χ/ doesn't matter, anyone anywhere in the Dutch language area would understand them as being the same. Maybe the article w:Diaphoneme would be useful to you.

Hi CodeCat, then you would not mind removing the Northern variants and keeping the Southern ones? I do not believe normal users would read the IPA in terms of phonemes - this is certainly not the common practice on Wiktionary - see for example cancer. Hence, most/all people would read this as what are the common and standard ways of pronounciation, and hence excluding the Southern pronounciations remains a pov. To reply on your other point: as you likely know, there is not an official American pronounciation, and in the UK, RP is a recognized practice, rather than a standard. That does not stop contributors from labelling certain IPA's as UK or US. I am equally open to be more precise. But again, let us keep the different IPA's... I also highly recommend not to continue removing IPA's - this is not constructive as long as we do not have a consensus. If need be, we can consult some of the contributors to the English IPA page.

I'm not sure why you think I'm excluding southern pronunciations. I'm not including or excluding any pronunciations at all, I'm just removing misleading information and using a single common phonemic system for Dutch. As I said, labelling pronunciations as "Netherlands" is misleading and POV, especially when they contain features that are only found in a relatively small amount of speakers. We shouldn't be labelling pronunciations unless the label is accurate and neutral. I will continue to remove the labels "Netherlands" and "Belgium" as these are not correct.