Talk:tear

Is /tæːɻ/ correct? I, at least, pronounce it as /teː(ɹ)/. Vladisdead 06:29, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I would say /tɛə(r)/ or /teə(r)/ for "rip", and /tɪə(r)/ for "teardrop". First rhymes with "hair", second rhymes with "here". This should cover British and Australian pronunciation but I'm hesitant to guess at US pronunciation but dictionary.com gives "târ" and "tîr". — Hippietrail 06:59, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

ɹ/ɻ shouldn't be used in phonemic transcriptions, at least, as they aren't distinguished. They seem to have been used in a lot of articles, tho'. --Vladisdead 07:08, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I agree and fought against their use here for a long time. Their proponents seem to have moved to other language Wiktionaries or left altogether now. — Hippietrail 07:12, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The reason I used them was to distinguish the almost non-existant/inaudible r-sound in English from the r-sound in other languages. I'm not an expert on IPA though. I only started to get interested in it because of Wiktionary. Now, I think IPA is great, but it's not perfect. I noticed that the same IPA-symbols stand for different sounds in different languages, which is truly a pity. Especially the -r- as it is written in different languages is pronounced very differently according to the language and probably even to the word it is in. The fact that this cannot be represented in IPA, is a major weakness which makes it no good for the purpose I had hoped to use it for: having the computer pronounce words based on it. And it also doesn't serve for finding homophones or almost homophones across languages, which is something that interests me a lot. Even more than words that happen to be spelled the same across languages.

Please start using whatever symbol is most appropriate for the English r-sounds. I will try to learn from it, but I cannot guarantee I'll get it right next time I try to enter a transcription. Polyglot 11:11, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

You were right that ɻ is the most appropriate sound for English r - but unless a language distinguishes multiple r-sounds, its generally convenient to just use r. If its necessary, IPA is capable of distinguishing the sounds in every known language, and many sounds that aren't even used in any language (like [ʭ], produced by slamming your teeth together, and [p͇], produced by placing your bottom lip behind your teeth:-)

However.... considering this is a multilingual thing, it would be nice to compare pronunciations between languages. Two problems here:

• in different dialects of English, the pronunciations are different. For example, /r/ can be [ɹ], [ɻ], [r] or [ɾ] (I think).
• you'd need to detail the minor points of pronunciation, like aspiration and nasalization, which vary from speaker to speaker, and even the same speaker doesn't always pronounce a word the same.

Any ideas? --Vladisdead 11:39, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

(written at the same time as Vlad's reply) Actually, while IPA is certainly not perfect, it can represent most of the common r-sounds (Czech r-hacek is a real exception). The thing is that most languages have one or two usual ways in which they use IPA for dictionaries - this is the "broad transcription". A "narrow transcription" is also possible to various degrees of exactitude but they are not what dictionaries need. A broad transcription represents phonemes whereas a narrow transcription represents the word more ponetically.

I read in one phonetics book that there is a principle of "romanicness" in choosing more roman-alphabet-looking symbols for broad/phonemic transcriptions as much as possible. — Hippietrail 11:46, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear that I managed to select the technically correct symbol for the English r-sound. I'm also glad to hear that most sounds are possible to be transcribed with IPA. I understand that with the narrow transcriptions more transcriptions are needed because of local variations in the pronunciation. Maybe we need to indicate whether we are giving a narrow IPA-transcription or a broad one. I don't think that because other dictionaries limit themselves to the broad transcriptions we have to do the same here, but if we decide to also cover the narrow transcriptions we need a way to flag this.

I would love to see those narrow transcriptions as well, but since I won't be capable of entering them, it's going to depend on the English native speakers to decide whether this is desirable. Polyglot 12:04, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Well, dog already has four different pronunciations - it might be useful to have a table of different narrow transcriptions in different areas/mergers, at least for words where there's a distinct variation. Or.. It might be better to have an appendix describing the way the phonemes are realized in different dialects. I think I'd be sufficiently knowledgable to do Australian English. --Vladisdead 12:23, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Narrow transcriptions just have too many variables. Anybody reading this discussion should really spend some time reading about these issues in linguistics books or on the internet so you can understand them. Narrow transcriptions can be arbitrarily narrow, they will be influenced by dialect, accent, speed of speech, semantic context, phonological context, etc. Dictionaries don't use IPA the way they do out of ignorance, they do it this way because that's what works best for dictionaries. — Hippietrail 12:39, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)