ThePhonetician

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Again, welcome! --EncycloPetey 22:40, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Rhymes

I wanted to know also... just how many Rhymes pages are there that use the rightside-up /r/? Surely if enough people worked on it, it could be corrected? ThePhonetician 22:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

There are a lot of them. The user who set the pages up initially tried to do a comprehensive run on the English language. --EncycloPetey 22:40, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

So, what you're saying is that we shouldn't even bother? :( ThePhonetician 22:42, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Not without the skill of writing and running code that will do this automatically or semi-automatically. Otherwise, it will take months or years to complete. I went through this when we made a significant change to the way we label Spanish verbs (also a lot of entries). That had to be done by hand, and only involved changing one page for each modification. For the Rhymes, it requires renaming the pages and changing all links to that page from within the Rhymes listings as awell as on individual pages. --EncycloPetey 22:50, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Ah, yeah. I can see how that would not be worth our time when we could be doing other things instead. Are you aware of any issues with the pronunciation sections of English words? I feel as if my just going to random pages is a bit... unorganized. ThePhonetician 22:57, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

Hah! there are lots of issues. The page User:Robert Ullmann/Pronunciation exceptions indexes some of the problems, as located by a bot, but that means there's a wide variety of problems there, and some things that may not be related to pronunciation (such as mismatched brackets). Offhand, I notice links saying "AHD", which is a name we used to use for the phnetic system now called enPR on Wiktionary. I see missing templates, missing brackets, and all manner of things. There is also Category:Requests for pronunciation (English), but someone has already cleared out the accumulated requests there. If you have the ability to record audio files as .ogg, there are also requests for those, and plenty of pages that lack them. If you can work in other languages, then there are similar problems and request pages for those. --EncycloPetey 23:05, 14 June 2010 (UTC)

controversies

Two more points: (1) The pronunciation section should always precede the definitions sections. It comes immediately after Etymology, when that section is present. (2) We don't use optional ligature characters like ʧ, as these cause a number of technical problems. We use the separate characters tʃ instead. Obviously that doesn't apply to /æ/ or /œ/, since a separation there would mean a different sound altigether, but those do not cause technical problems as the optional ligatures do. --EncycloPetey 19:24, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes that sort of change is marked, but often not. That's one area that hasn't been decided as far as I know. I will say that (as someone who has always lived in the States), I've not heard /ʧ/ used in the pronunciation. It may be a regional variation (or not), but I've not noticed it in the various parts of the country where I've lived. It sounds natural to me, but isn't a pronunciation I've used. --EncycloPetey 19:36, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

Terribly sorry about the optional ligature characters that I've probably been using then :( I'll be sure to remember that in the future. I'll also make sure to put the pronunciation section before the definition section. As for the affrication topic, I've heard people from Alaska, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Georgia, California, and Florida use the aforementioned phones. I'm sure there are speakers who don't affricate the sounds, as I've met at least one who doesn't, but I'm unsure of where he grew up. Would it be ok then to just add, "or [example] in some dialects"? ThePhonetician 19:51, 15 June 2010 (UTC)

You could just give is as a second pronunciation within the same template. It's always understood that variation exists. --EncycloPetey 19:56, 15 June 2010 (UTC)