Talk:IPA in Unicode

I've added a table for the consonants I put together a while ago - I believe the old table is incorrect in a number of places, though it does resemble the "official" IPA layout more closely. Maybe it'd be best to change my table to conform to the official table again (i.e. unshade some areas, and possibly remove the epiglottal consonants again, depending on what exactly pulmonic actually means)?

Uhm, there's another table at Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet, and another one at eo:SAMPA.

Prumpf 17:42, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I just cleaned up and merged the pulmonic consonants tables (but I had forgotten to log in: User:68.228.229.210 is me ;).

Prumpf: pulmonic consonants are those that involve exhalation, as opposed to the clicks (no breath) and implosives (inhalation). No idea about ejectives :/ —Tkinias 19:42, 8 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure I wasn't happier with my table layout, to be honest. My original plan was to have wiki links for all the sounds (well, at least those that actually occur), including the ones without symbols, at some point, and having two of them in the same table entry still strikes me as a bad idea (particularly since we currently fail to black out the voiced glottal stop).

Prumpf 01:18, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I've reverted to putting the epiglottals where they belong, in the regular consonant chart. The official IPA chart doesn't have them there because they're relatively new symbols, and it was decided that adding a new column would create too many difficulties with typesetting the table. Plus at first there was some debate about whether any languages used them distinctively (they do), and therefore they were put in the "other" table provisionally while being debated. However, they're perfectly ordinary pulmonary consonants, and leaving them off the chart just causes confusion. There's no need for it on a web site, where we have room for another column or three. It would make more sense phonetically to put the postalveolars (which are not simply postalveolar) or the glottals (which often don't behave like consonants) in the "other" table than to have the epiglottals there. kwami 09:01, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

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I added some CSS statements that allow this page to appear correctly in my IE. I assume this is a good thing, although a hacky solution at best. Sorry for donig it in so many separate edits. -Chinasaur 22:29, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Thank you for this page 2 Other symbols 3 Link Individual Phonemes 4 Move Page Contents? 5 Spurious contrast between Latin and IPA 6 Collation 7 unfamiliar symbols 8 Suffixes for comparatives and superlatives 9 Accent transcription 10 Non-standard IPA table 10.1 changing presentation 10.2 unicode chart vs. graphics 11 History

Thank you for this page

A big thank you to all who contributed to this page! I use it very often and it already saved me lots of time. - Mark Dingemanse (talk) 11:14, 28 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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Should the {IPA} notice be included on this page, since it refers people to this same page if they have display problems?? (Perhaps a manual copy of the template notice, minus the self-reference, and a manual inclusion in the proper category....) [[User:CatherineMunro|Catherine\^talk]] 18:08, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Other symbols

The above shows 2 placements of the tide character as seen in the "Other symbols" section. We are using number 2.

It's a combining double inverted breve.

Number 1 looks much better than the right number2, but the right number2 seems to be the standard (I've checked the Unicode char. table). Which should we adopt??

(I've taken the liberty of restructuring your query: do you mean the tie character?) I say go with the one that actually appears to work, which is number 1. That character is described as "COMBINING DOUBLE INVERTED BREVE" which kind of implies that it combines with maybe two preceding characters, although that might just be my brain exploding. --Phil | Talk 18:06, Jan 7, 2005 (UTC)

[I took the liberty of removing the ins/del formatting above]

I think the problem is that some fonts render double-width combining diacritics in the wrong place, but they can render them correctly if put in the wrong place. —Michael Z. 20:56, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

A selection of double-combining modifiers, set in your default font:

• 1. letter-letter-modifier
  • kp͝
  • kp͞
  • kp͟
  • kp͠
  • kp͡
  • kp͢
• 2. letter-modifier-letter
  • k͝p
  • k͞p
  • k͟p
  • k͠p
  • k͡p
  • k͢p

The following are formatted so that if you don't have the named font installed, then the text will show up in Courier New or Courier.

Arial Unicode MS

Lucida Sans Unicode

Lucida Grande

Code2000

Gentium

On my machine (both Safari 1.2.4 and Firefox 1.0, on Mac OS X 10.3.7)

• #1 is rendered correctly by Arial Unicode MS
• #2 is rendered correctly by Courier New, Lucida Grande, Code2000 and Gentium.

In MSIE/Mac 5.2.3, they all show up as question marks.

In a stock Windows XP installation and MSIE/Win 6.0, they all show up as box characters. Lucida Sans Unicode comes on this machine, but I guess it doesn't include these characters.

I don't actually know which is supposed to be correct, but most of my Unicode fonts seem to like #2 (letter-modifier-letter). —Michael Z. 21:18, 2005 Jan 7 (UTC)

Judging by the way the double combining modifiers are illustrated in the Unicode Chart (PDF, page 2) (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf), Arial Unicode MS is rendering these incorrectly. The correct way to code these is #2: "letter-modifier-letter". —Michael Z. 05:39, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)

On Windows XP+Firefox 1.0 all #2's are unbalanced; the #1's look fine. On Windows XP+IE6.0.29 (SP2), only the Arial part is working, but again, #2 is bad, #1 looks fine. So for my configuration, it seems that letter-letter-modifier would be best. — mark ✎ 08:38, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It sounds like Arial Unicode MS is the only one of these Unicode fonts that you have installed, and Lucida Sans Unicode doesn't include these characters. Do you know if you downloaded Arial Unicode, or if it came with some software? To bad it's buggy and can't display these glyphs correctly. —Michael Z. 22:06, 2005 Jan 8 (UTC)

Link Individual Phonemes

Shouldn't the individual phonemes in the tables be linked to their articles (and possibly also directly to their sound files)?

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley (c) (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Joeblakesley)(t) 03:33, 2004 Dec 24 (UTC)

Does anyone have objection to linking the individual sounds to their respective article? Peter Isotalo 22:10, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

I linked all the sounds of the main chart to the articles for those sounds to see how it works. Peter Isotalo 20:34, Apr 18, 2005 (UTC)

Move Page Contents?

Shouldn't the stuff on here be moved to International Phonetic Alphabet?

This is not specifically about Unicode at all (as I thought) but just happens to be written in the character set. All OSs and browsers worth talking about now support Unicode. It is the de facto and official standard for WWW pages now. There seems no reason to not move the stuff here to International Phonetic Alphabet.

In fact I found it very annoying going to International Phonetic Alphabet and finding images (that didn't tell me much, that I couldn't search in or copy from &c, that took time to download, &c). It is the images that sould be removed from International Phonetic Alphabet and moved somewhere else (if they are really nessecary).

--Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley (c) (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Joeblakesley)(t) 03:48, 2004 Dec 24 (UTC)

Spurious contrast between Latin and IPA

In my browser, the characters in the table that happen to be in the Latin character set appear in an ordinary weight, while the ones that are unique to IPA are heavier, as if they were bold. The contrast is quite distracting. This is probably due to a misconfiguration in my browser (which is Firefox). Does anyone else see this contrast? What can be done about it?

ACW 21:25, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

IPA is probably handled by a different font, unless your main Latin font happens to be a huge one containing IPA (Arial Unicode MS, Gentium, or similar). This second font is apparently heavier. One way to fix it is to set the font for the IPA range to one that closer resembles your normal font (if Firefox has this option at all), another is to change your normal font to a larger one. User:Anárion/sig 22:29, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Collation

Is there a standard collation sequence for IPA Unicode?

(In other words: if you have phonetic transcriptions from multiple languages stored in a database system, and you want to sort them, what symbol comes first?)

I suspect it's just by code point. IPA itself doesn't have a "native" collation order. — Gwalla | Talk 05:46, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Unicode has collation charts (http://www.unicode.org/charts/collation/), but they don't include IPA. Going by code point is probably not useful, because that would sort all of the plain-Latin characters before the specialized IPA ones, instead of putting related characters together.

If the context permits, I would collate according to the original text that was transcribed into IPA. I don't know if the Unicode collation charts indicate how to deal mixed writing systems, though. —Michael Z. 2005-02-20 06:40 Z

unfamiliar symbols

What does these Unicode-IPA-symbols relate to?...

• - U+0269;
• - U+0275;
• - U+0277;
• - U+027C;
• - U+027F;
• - U+0285;
• - U+0286;
• - U+0287;
• - U+0293;
• - U+0295;
• - U+0296;
• - U+0297;
• - U+029E;
• - U+02A0;
• - U+02AC;
• - U+02AD

Some I could guess what they should mean, but why aren't they included in the official IPA-chart?... Are they older symbols that have been removed, because they weren't useful?... Are they in use although they are not mentioned?... Or does this depend on a disaccord between the IPA and the Unicode Consortium?...

I'm working on the chart de:IPA in Unicode, where I want to list all Unicode-IPA-characters with their description... Someone who knows anything about that?... --Primordial 10:42, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Some are older symbols that were removed. Others are symbols for "disordered speech" (like lisping), which aren't in the basic IPA chart. — Gwalla | Talk 01:13, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thx for that!... Do you know any sources (URLs, books) to find out exactly what these symbols are/were standing for, or rather could you tell me which symbols you know the description of?... --Primordial 10:42, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've seen user to describe "щ" in Russian phonetics (the final sound in borscht. I've inquired as to its validity at the talkpage, but have received no answer thus far. Does anyone know if this is used in modern Russian phonologies? If not, what IPA characters correspond to it? Peter Isotalo 13:01, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

I don't know russian so well, but polish... To me the final sound in "borscht" sounds exactly like the /ś/ in polish, which in IPA is transcribed as ... --Primordial 14:49, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I think that character is an obsolete IPA palatalized consonant (as are a few others with a curl at the bottom). It is equivalent to . —Michael Z. 2005-04-27 22:08 Z

Going by the Unicode code chart (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0250.pdf) (PDF) here:

• - Latin small letter iota, semi-high front rounded vowel, obsoleted in 1989 in favor of (latin small capital I)
• - small barred O, rounded mid-central vowel/rounded schwa
• - Latin small closed omega, semi-high back rounded vowel, obsoleted in 1989 in favor of (latin small upsilon)
• - latin small R with long leg, voiced strident apico-alveolar trill (Czech ř), obsoleted in favor of (r with raised diacritic)
• - latin small reversed R with fishhook/long leg turned iota, apical dental vowel, used by Sinologists (not standard IPA), IPA spelling (z with syllabic diacritic)
• - latin small squat reversed esh (actually with retroflex leg), apical retroflex vowel used by Sinologists, (syllabic )
• - latin small esh with curl, palatalized voiceless postalveolar fricative, normally spelled
• - obsolete symbol for dental click
• - latin small ezh with curl, palatalized voiced postalveolar fricative ()
• - pharyngeal voiced fricative (this is on the chart, under "phar.")
• - obsolete symbol for lateral click
• - obsolete symbol for alveolar or palatal click
• - proposed symbol for velar click, withdrawn by the IPA in 1970 (velar clicks being judged impossible)
• - voiceless uvular implosive (I suspect you'd use for this)
• - bilabial percussive (smacking lips)
• - dental percussive (gnashing teeth)

Some other uncommon IPA symbols are found in the combining diacritics block (http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0300.pdf) (PDF). — Gwalla | Talk 01:35, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much indeed!... That was exactly what I wanted to know!... --Primordial 16:29, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Suffixes for comparatives and superlatives

common -> commoner -> commonest? sounds wrong to my non-native english speaker ears... I thought it'd be common -> more common -> most common? (clem 18:49, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC))

The rule is that -er and -est can only be added to words that have a single metrical foot. Common is a single foot, and the American Heritage Dictionary gives commoner, commonest [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/61/29/C0512900.html). Nohat 04:11, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can but don't have to be. More/most common are also acceptable, and quite ... er, common. Monosyllables generally take -er/-est, except for fun, which for some reason a lot of people use exclusively with more/most. kwami 02:03, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

Accent transcription

I know that Unicode currently does not support proper tone and accent notation, but I was wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on what to use instead. I want to make fairly narrow phonetic notation of the Swedish grave and acute accents (also known as simply accent 1 and accent 2). This is not just a matter of secondary stress as in English, but rather of a different type of word accent that stresses syllables in two distinct manners. In certain minimal pairs most variants of Swedish differentiates between the two accents that are not merely a shift of the stress from one syllable to another, but rather of the actual phonetic pattern. Swedish phonologies transcribe this with the characters for high and low tones, but this doesn't seem to work for all types of IPA characters, and Swedish has quite a lot of vowels that have to be written with IPA.

Any suggestions on how to solve the problem? Peter Isotalo 14:26, May 1, 2005 (UTC)

Do you wish to use tone diacritics such as acute and grave? If so, the problem isn't with Unicode, but with font support. Unicode would require thousands of extra letters for all the possible vowel+tone+phonation+nasalization possibilities. Instead, a decision was taken to rely upon combining diacritic marks, which a properly designed OpenType font would render properly. Unfortunately, there are very few OpenType IPA fonts. One's on sale online for $100, but I don't know how good it is. Non-OT fonts like Arial Unicode do a half-assed job, but are better than nothing. The other option is to design your own font. FontCreator can't handle OT, but you can put the combinations you want in the Private Use area. FontLab will create OT fonts, but is quite expensive. Neither of these will work online, but are great if you're printing something. kwami 02:34, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

I don't know wherein the problem lies, but the tone diacritics work fine when they are used in a table that sets the same fonts as the IPA template. See Template talk:IPA for further discussion.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:36, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Non-standard IPA table

changing presentation

Adding an extra column for epi-glottal fricatives seems like a fairly reasonable idea, but I am very skeptical of double notation for some of them as approximants. This is not what this article is for and it does not seem to be supported by how the IPA structures it tables. It's certainly relevant to point this out in the articles for the individual sounds, but please consider not adding double notations of this sort to a standard table. It's really just supposed to be a text rendition of the PDF-files that are officially sanctioned by the IPA.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:41, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe we could put them in parentheses? Usually when you use a symbol for something other than its cardinal value, you need a diacritic. Voiceless nasals, for example, require the ring. However, the IPA specifically sanctions the use of voiced fricative symbols for approximants without any diacritic at all. Since no known language distinguishes them in the dorsal region, you will frequently see dorsal fricative symbols used this way, in Spanish and Arabic, for example. Most people looking up something in this chart aren't going to read all the fine print. They would simply see the symbol in the fricative row and wrongly conclude that it's a fricative. This causes a lot of confusion, and I don't know any other simple way of dealing with it than making it overt in the chart itself. And as far as I know, this is the only case where symbols of one cell are used to represent other cells without modification, so it's not like the chart will fill up with duplicate notations. kwami 20:00, 2005 May 29 (UTC)

I don't think this is what the article was intended for. We're not here to brush up on perceived errors of the IPA, but only to describe their terms. If we start making these kinds of adjustmens to the tables, we're not being encyclopedic anymore.

It's not a perceived error of the IPA, just something that isn't obvious from their chart. The IPA intentionally made the symbols ambiguous. Since this is official IPA usage, we should cover it here. That's exactly what an encyclopedia is for. For example, in the 1999 edition of the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, the IPA chart for Hebrew has two pharyngeals, a fricative , and an approximant . The is precisely in the cell where it has parentheses around it in this article. It officially belongs there. kwami 04:51, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

Oh, just noticed: is defined as "Reversed glottal stop: Voiced pharyngeal fricative or approximant". kwami

I'm really starting to wonder whether this really is an encyclopedic article. As far as I can tell it's merely a convenient way of rendering the IPA-tables in text format for those who need it. I have myself have had much practical use for it, but Wikipedia is not a usage guide. I think we should consider simply merging this article with International Phonetic Alphabet and include both the text tables.

Peter ^Isotalo 20:26, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this article is exactly that. Several people have suggested merging the two articles, but others have said that would be a mess. I don't much care either way, but I don't see a problem with having two pages, depending on whether or not your browser supports the IPA. It's duplicated by design, not disorder. And if it helps Wikipedians write and edit their articles, isn't that of value? What's the point of merging the articles, if that ends up hindering the expansion of Wikipedia? (If it would hinder it.) kwami 04:51, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

I strongly disagree about any ideas of expansion for its own sake. Any expansion should be qualified and follow our policies. That's what the "Not a general knowledge base"-policy is all about, and that goes for all the other restrictions and demands of quality. If it's only intended to be useful to editors, it can be set up at Wikipedia:WikiProject Phonetics or some place like that. Our normal set of articles should not be meta-tools for editors. Keep in mind that the vast majority of our users are merely passive readers.

That makes sense. kwami

As for your modifications of the IPA-table, I think you need to show some sources that support your claims. You still seem to be refering to actual applied usage of IPA on actual languages, not the symbols themselves. If this is just your own extrapolations (even if they are reasonable) and you want to comment the individual sounds, you can do this in their respective articles. Just click on the links in the table. This article, however, is not the appropriate place for it.

Peter ^Isotalo 14:10, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

My source is the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge University Press, 1999. It's probably on the shelf of nearly every phonetician in the English-speaking world, and I'd assume it's published in other languages as well. Although there may be other more detailed documents, this is pretty much taken to be the defining document of how to use the IPA. And of course applied usage belongs in an encyclopedia article. If the IPA defines as being either a fricative or an approximant, people shouldn't have to dig through the individual articles to find that out. Hardly anyone will, because they won't see any reason in our main article to do so. And if our table shows it as only a fricative, then the table is in disagreement with IPA usage and needs to be amended. The table put out by the IPA is inteded for phoneticians, and so can afford to be incomplete or ambiguous where someone with the proper training doesn't need the details. But our audience will not usually have such a background, and we need to be more explicit. If all we're going to do is replicate the published IPA charts, then there's no need for a Wikipedia article at all — we can just provide a link to the IPA website. kwami 19:27, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

I'm well aware of the contents of the IPA handbook and I know that it does not contain the tables you're proposing now. If you're using it to extrapolate your own versions of the IPA tables, you're dabbling in original research alternatively writing a usage guide; both are contrary to policy. If you want to describe the uses of IPA, please make contributions to one of our many phonology articles or one of the many article for individual sounds, but please don't start making new tables just because you feel they are more "correct". Not even if you were a real phonetician (I'm an amateur myself) would I accept it because this is simply beyond the scope of Wikipedia. I'm going to suggest that this article be merged with International Phonetic Alphabet. I frankly don't think the fears of alleged messiness are all that well-motivated.

Peter ^Isotalo 21:22, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not following you. Which new tables am I proposing? I've added some Ext-IPA symbols, and have started adding historical charts, but I'm not sure what you're objecting to. kwami 22:20, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

Rereading this, I think I understand. I'm not doing original research. What I've done comes out of the IPA Handbook. But there's no reason to slavishly follow the layout of the official tables, when those were designed for hardcopy and compromises were made in order to keep everything legible. Online, we can adjust the size of our fonts and scroll around, so there's no reason to relegate normal pulmonic consonants to the "other" table, especially when the ones so relegated are there because they aren't important to European-language speakers. So I moved the epiglottals and the lateral flap home. These leaves only the doubly articulated consonants and the alveolo-palatals in the "other" table. I've contemplated moving the alveolo-palatals, but that would require a double row for post-alveolar fricatives, since adding another column (as they did in older IPA charts) would be misleading.

As for duplicating the dorsal voiced fricatives in the approximant row, that ambiguity is stated specifically for the pharyngeal fricative/approximant on p 177 of the Handbook. Peter Ladefoged, who's on the IPA Committee, says the same is true for the other dorsal voiced fricatives. Hardly original on my part. And on p 20 of the Handbook it states that the pharyngeal is usually perceived as an approximant, not a fricative! kwami 08:33, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

You know, the legibility characteristics of text don't really change just because it's not printed. If a table is confusing in HTML, it's just as confusing on paper. You're not following the IPA handbook, but rather reading the texts on how to apply them and superimposing that information on the table and adding a lot of superfluous information intended merely for phoneticians. Please keep the tables the way the IPA intended them. Again, make these comments in in the articles of the individual sounds.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:48, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

Adding an extra column to a hard-copy page of fixed width may require reducing the font size to get it to fit. Adding an extra column to a web page may just mean that a scroll bar will appear. So yes, the legibility does change when you change the medium.

Secondly, it's silly to clone the Handbook when we have a different audience. Putting ordinary pulmonic consonants under "other" is confusing. Putting approximants in the fricative row is confusing. You're a phonetician, so perhaps you take it for granted. But for a general audience, we need greater clarity than the standard charts provide. People often aren't going to go to the articles for the individual sounds, and even when they do, they'll forget what they read and will need a straightforward summary on the chart. But if you have specific complaints about something I've done that makes the article more confusing, please let us know. kwami 10:30, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

I am not a phonetician and neither are you. That's exactly why I deem it inappropriate for either of us to start fiddling with the standards. I'm not trying to assume what peoeple need or needn't know about these tables, but by what the IPA has recommended and I believe it to be a lack of editorial humility to do otherwise.

And I have made specific complaints; making double entries of some of the fricatives in the approximant row is confusing, adding comments that belong in individual articles is confusing and simply adding extrapolated comments is confusing. Very minor comments of a technical nature is acceptable, but not using alternative terms and the likes. Can't you just add a disclaimer saying that details of the characteristics of the individual sounds are more complex than they might appear and that they will be described in detail in their respective articles? I'm sure you can do a very good job of describing the phonetic subtleties there rather than just piling minor comments in this article.

Peter ^Isotalo 12:16, Jun 5, 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it's a lack of humility to take information from the IPA and present it to the public. And I think it's irresponsible not to address our audience. The IPA charts were made for phoneticians, and that does not include our audience. The IPA placed in the fricative row for historical reasons, but now specify that it is to be used for both fricative and approximant. Phoneticians understand this. The general public does not. Someone just learning the IPA will be bewildered when the chart says one thing, but common usage is something else. It is our job to clarify such hidden assumptions. If we only parrot info from existing web sites, why bother writing an article at all? Why not just supply a link to the IPA website?

However, I see your point about the comments. I'll see about referring people to the specific articles. kwami 19:02, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

hi. I like the new additions. The charts are now displayed in a more logical layout. The current IPA chart that appears in various publications is a result of various political & historical issues. Presentations in general phonetic textbooks make their own phonetic charts, modifying IPA's layout (actually they are not really departing from IPA's layout but rather a common practice layout).

I am especially glad that the extIPA is being expanded (maybe we can then add the VoQS chart, too). I also note that there is no general article on phonetic notation. Maybe more advanced issues can be indicated there (and also alternatives to the IPA can be introduced). peace — ishwar  (SPEAK)

Hi Ishwar. What do you think about puting the alveolo-palatals in the main chart? They really belong there, but since both the alveolo-palatals and the palato-alveolars are post-alveolar in place, this would require placing four symbols (two rows) in one cell. Would this (with an explanatory note) be more confusing than leaving them in the "other" chart, as if they were somehow unusual? After all, the only reason they're there is because they aren't common in Western Europe, where the IPA started. The IPA chart even had a separate alveolo-palatal column for several decades, but that I find confusing, as it suggests one is further back in the mouth than the other. (At least the retroflexes are further back for a few languages, such as Tamil, so a separate column is more easily justified.) If we move the alveolo-palatals, the only consonants left in "other" will be the doubly-articulated approximants and that odd Swedish fricative, which truly belong there. kwami 23:58, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)

Putting them on the main chart makes more sense to me. And other people do this too. (of course, some would argue that they dont really need to be there since they may not exactly be a unique place of articulation). I note that some, for instance Catford, do describe these as being slightly behind the post-alveolar region. Catford calls them, alternately, dorso-prepalatal or lamino-prepalatal, where his artic. place order is (from front to back): alveolar, post-alveolar, pre-palatal, palatal, etc. But, then Ladefoged & Maddieson call them palatalized lamino-post-alveolar (vs. the domed apico/lamino-post-alveolar, i.e. palato-alveolar). To give a specific language example, Akamatsu's (1997) manual on Japanese phonetics describes a voiceless laminodorso-alveolopalatal fricative where his alveolopalatal region corresponds to both of Catford's post-alveolar and pre-palatal regions (maybe Akamatsu is more in agreement with Ladefoged & Maddieson's palatalized except than Akamatsu does not suggest that the palatalized component is secondary).

But at any rate, if we can consider retroflex a distinct place of artic., why cant we call alveolo-palatal a distinct place of artic. as well — they are both perhaps marginal "places". (I wouldnt recommend leaving them off the chart since many would miss them.)

So what is my answer? I guess that having two rows in a cell may be confusing to some who think of (traditional) places of articulation as unitary things rather than an interaction between an active & passive articulator. Putting alveolo-palatal in a separate place of articulation, although perhaps somewhat misleading, may be easier & less jarring to the IPA's standardized layout. And, as noted above, some descriptions consider them to be between post-alveolar & palatal. So maybe following the older IPA is better (?). — ishwar  (SPEAK) 19:31, 2005 Jun 7 (UTC)

I must say that I found the old system to be very confusing, so my first instinct is to avoid a separate alveolo-palatal column. But my confustion was probably due to the lack of clarification for the rather useless labels. I'll put them in, with a note that it is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes [s, ʃ, ɕ, ʂ]. kwami 07:10, 2005 Jun 8 (UTC)

unicode chart vs. graphics

The Unicode page is easier to amend than the graphical charts, and I notice it already has a few differences from them. Perhaps the Unicode tables should be put in the main article, and the graphics can be linked as an alternative version of the tables. On the other hand, the vowel table doesn't replicate all of the features of the graphic. Can that be done using MathML or something? —Michael Z. 2005-05-30 21:27 Z

I agree. I don't think we can redo the vowel table with MathML though (and probably shouldn't anyway, since MathML support is rare). Instead, we should just use an image of the vowel chart alongside the text version. — Gwalla | Talk 22:54, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

I thought Wikipedia offered most browsers a GIF rendering of the equation. If possible, this would probably still make it more flexible than an image file.

Ah, you mean TeX, not MathML. MathML is one of the ways MediaWiki can render TeX equations in <math>...</math> markup, as is PNG (not GIF). AIUI there is a MediaWiki extention for rendering TeX IPA, but I don't think it's capable of doing arbitrary layouts, and at any rate it's not installed on Wikipedia. — Gwalla | Talk 02:28, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Another possibilty is to format the table with CSS, and give it the slanted lines as a background image. This would be the best of both worlds; Unicode text in a table that looks like the original image. One of these days I'll try messing around with that. —Michael Z. 2005-05-30 23:29 Z

I've asked the person who objected to the merger in the main article to join this discussion. Personally I think the articles should be merged. But another problem is with the tone markings. Since not a single standard font has Unicode support for contour-tone diacritics or tone letters, that jpg is all any of us have to go on. (If anyone knows where to get a truly Unicode-compatible IPA font, please let us know where to get it!) kwami 08:33, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

Might I suggest you visit here (http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex_IPA) and test the MediaWiki extension WikiTeX which includes TIPA support? --Phil | Talk 15:59, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

History

Started adding charts from 1887 and 1932. It'll take a couple days. kwami 07:35, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

hi. will be very cool additions (you beat me to it!). peace — ishwar  (SPEAK) 07:55, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

Okay, I know the 1932 vowel chart looks bad, but at least it's up. I'll get back to it and the diacritics soon. (It's not exactly the published chart, since I integrated some of the vowels that were left for footnotes in the original.) kwami 06:07, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)