Wikipedia:Simple pronunciation markup guide

Introduction

In the course of creating and editing articles, there have been times when a simple Wikipedia guide to indicating pronunciation was sorely needed. I'm not alone in noticing this.

Opponents of this view point to IPA and SAMPA as alternatives, but they are much more difficult to use for both writers and readers. They have their place in language studies, but for ordinary use Wikipedia should use a simple guide, in my view, as do many reference works. Details of my proposal are at:

Draft guide: Wikipedia:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American)

Arguments: Wikipedia_talk:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American)

The page you are reading is where we vote and debate policy. Those who wish to discuss the technical details or assist with development of the Simple Guide itself should go to this talk page.

Originated by NathanHawking 04:52, 2004 Nov 3 (UTC)

Oppose

• I strongly oppose. IPA is an international standard and I see no reason to develop an alternative to it. Also, there is none so far. The easiest way to put the names down is an "English language" approximation, that is putting the name "Warszawa" as [vahrshava]. However, this way is both inaccurate and ambiguous. I bet most of English speakers already know how would they pronounce the name. What they want to know is how do locals pronounce it or how the guy pronounced his surname.

Also, if the new system is just an approximation - it would be inconsistent. If it is consistent though, one would also have to learn it. If this would be the case, then why not just learn the system used by the rest of the world, from South Africa to Iceland and from Canada to Russia? IPA is the way to go here. [[User:Halibutt|Halibutt]] 23:48, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose: A system designed for WP is the worst possible choice, regardless of its possible systematic merits. We have IPA for exact phonetics, and we have the much simpler subset International Phonetic Alphabet for English. It is very hard to get a large number of editors use any standard at all, but it would be impossible to enforce a WP-only non-standard! dab 16:56, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. I've given my arguments in detail on the talk page. In a nutshell: incomplete, intuitivity is subjective, no clear definition for phoneme symbols; IPA is already used by tens of millions of people -- why not use something well-defined and well-known rather than inventing an ad-hoc solution? (On the talk page, Nohat, Jallan, and jguk also offer strong arguments in opposition.) Pnot 04:58, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• Oppose. WP should focus on the written word, supplemented by graphics, and for niche needs like Ayn Rand, Richard Wagner, & umlaut., make do for now with ad hoc common sense expedients. (No SAMPA or IPA, thank you. I took enough of an interest in IPA, many decades ago, to internalize some of its distinctions & recognize the name, but have never bothered to keep a reference on it, let alone learn it; if a logophile like me does neither, specialist stds have no place here.) I support the idea of en:WikiPronunciation, a multi-standard, multi-dialect, & potentially audio-serving site that could be linked from WP and Wiktionary, but the resources for doing the pronunciations problem right neither can be afforded out of WP's resources, nor should be limited by the 'Pedia's scope, since the value of doing it right is greater as a free-standing capability. --Jerzy(t) 18:37, 2004 Nov 10 (UTC)

• Oppose. I have articulated my reasoning at length at Wikipedia talk:Pronunciation (simple guide to markup, American). I'm just adding my name to this list where it might count for something if this ever gets anywhere as a policy discussion. More usefully, perhaps a counter-proposal FOR the use of IPA when required as an official or semi-official policy could be started. I don't know how one goes about doing that. Graham 22:10, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose. We are not a standards body.

On the other hand, I think in many cases it is important to mention both the correct pronunciation and the recommended English pronunciation (either the best possible approximation allowed by the English sounds or a pronunciation commonly accepted by English speakers). I propose finding some open software that can convert IPA into sounds and adding a new kind of link (just as there are RFC and ISBN links) to link to sounds generated on the run. Lev 20:42, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• Oppose. In those cases where we need to indicate pronunciation it would often be sufficient to say "rhymes with ..." or "accent on the first syllable." If a more exact transcription is needed, use IPA, but in the case of English words maybe allow British and American variants, where they differ. Yes IPA is a bit tedious to type, but each word will be written once and hopefully read many times, so the convenience of the reader is more important. By the way it's currently important to use the IPA template, as otherwise the IPA symbols will not show up correctly on certain most commonly used browsers. I note that a few articles already have a link to a sound file, which might be the obvious long-term solution rossb 15:14, 9 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Undecided

Personally, I prefer IPA; it's scientific, unambiguous and it's an international standard. However, I am aware that some readers are not able to read IPA characters due to technical constraints. For this and other reasons simple pronuncation markup schemes are and will be used. That means that we do need a standardized "Simple Guide". And that readers should be able to learn it (it's supposed to be intuitive, but no scheme will be obvious for all, especially not for non-native English speakers). -- Kpalion 17:08, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

(I vote "undecided" becase I think a "Simple Guide" might be useful as long as there are people who want to use simplified schemes instead of IPA/SAMPA. However, I won't cry for it -- I'm still convinced that IPA is the best way to show pronunciation. -- Kpalion 00:00, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC))

IPA poses multiple problems. Not only is it unfamiliar to dozens of casual readers (who of course could look it up), and does not display properly on all software or on machines without appropriate fonts installed, but for me the worst part of using IPA is that it is nigh impossible to edit without having a table of characters open or by your side, and as such is intimidating to contributors. It is also too precise: it encourages people to reproduce non-rhotic and other variant pronunciations, and as such it can actually mislead readers. SAMPA has most of the flaws of IPA, and sacrifices readability at the expense of typing.

On the other hand, I tried to create a phonetic spelling system (Wikipedia:English phonetic spelling) that strove for a neutral representation of English sounds, based generally on the international values of the letters of the Latin alphabet, or using relatively familiar digraphs, that would not necessarily require ampersand codes or other non-intuitive factors. I tried using it on a number of articles (see the history of metathesis for an example) but it did not go over well, so I have done no further work on the project. I continue to think that a dialect-neutral representation of "ur-English" (i.e. ignoring rule-bound dialect features such as non-rhoticity, broad A, or cot-caught merger) might be a good idea. I am no longer optimistic that any such plan could be devised, or gain acceptance. Smerdis of Tlön 02:38, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)