User talk:Peter238

Entry format

I fixed the entry inside jobom for you. Can you please do the same with the others? —CodeCat 15:39, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, but now that page contains a bug I tried to avoid: it links to inside and jobom as if they were Polish words, and they are not - not even in colloquial language. We only say "inside job" as a colloquial way of reffering to "robota wewnętrzna" or "operacja wewnętrzna", mostly in cases of the alternative explanations of 9/11 or 7/7 attacks. Peter238 (talk) 15:43, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

You can use the head= parameter to override what is displayed. So if you use {{head|pl|noun forms|head=inside jobom}} then it won't be linked. I did this to inside job too. —CodeCat 15:45, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Done, thanks. Peter238 (talk) 16:04, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

RP

Peter, if you want to add a ‘RP’ pronunciation, you can do so in addition to any general UK pronunciation given. The phonetics that you have deleted from many entries accords with the standard used by OED and Oxford Dictionaries and is designed to reflect a more up to date pronunciation than traditional RP. Ƿidsiþ 14:23, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

The standard used by these dictionaries is the same as RP, only some symbols might differ. Peter238 (talk) 14:59, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

In which case please don't delete them. The decision to use /a/ instead of /æ/ is quite deliberate and reflects the change in British pronunciation as compared to US /æ/. And the same goes for many other differences. Ƿidsiþ 03:28, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

We need a consensus to either change our system and use /a/ instead of /æ/ in RP transcriptions, or to use both of these systems (which I'm strongly opposed to - people who'd support that don't understand what a phonemic transcription is). Peter238 (talk) 14:20, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, we already distinguish between different phones used in US versus UK pronunciations, as with /oʊ/ versus /əʊ/ for example. It's just a matter of deciding which phonemes you want for a given dialect. You're probably right, standardisation would be preferable – but this has been discussed quite a lot, with no consensus, so in the meantime it's politic not to remove existing content (unless it's wrong, not just different). The two IPA standards for UK English are currently supported by Oxford on the one side and Cambridge on the other, both publishing dictionaries using their own systems, so it's somewhat of a partisan matter for some people. The Cambridge system has the advantage of being older and more familiar, though it has the disadvantage of being less accurate for the way people now speak. Ƿidsiþ 14:26, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

I know. I'll keep that in mind, but a consensus would be more than useful. Peter238 (talk) 22:13, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

"not an RP pronunciation"

Hmm... They were glossed UK, not RP. Not everyone in the UK speaks RP. The /r/ is pronounced e.g. in Somerset. Equinox ◑ 17:55, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Then again, I suppose there's not much use just putting "UK", since the vowels can vary quite a lot too. Equinox ◑ 17:59, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Wiktionary:About English#Pronunciation says that UK English pronunciations should give the Received Pronunciation of the entry. Peter238 (talk) 22:12, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Yeah…again, this is something that has been discussed a lot without getting any consensus. We have generally tended to mark entries ‘UK’ rather than ‘RP’ just to emphasise that we are not using [r] or terminal [-ɪ] (as with the Wiktionary logo for example). Ƿidsiþ 08:48, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

I doubt what you're saying, that there's no consensus about that. Most people who can read IPA expect "UK" and "US" before the pronunciations to mean "prescriptive UK pronunciation" (=Received Pronunciation) and "prescriptive US pronunciation" (=General American). They don't expect "UK" to mean "Somerset" or "Scotland", nor do they expect "US" to mean "traditional New York accent" or "Mexican American English". I was told that the "UK" and "US" labels shouldn't even be used, and should be replaced by "RP" and "GA" in every place, and that's what I'll be doing from now on (that is, if I choose to correct more entries). Peter238 (talk) 13:50, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I agree on what people expect it to mean; the lack of consensus is only over what to call it. Ƿidsiþ 13:52, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

General American is not equivalent to Received Pronunciation. It is controversially called that (as mentioned in Wikipedia's article) but it is not actually equivalent to it by any means. Tharthan (talk) 16:30, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

When did we call GA equivalent to RP? Peter238 (talk) 04:28, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. However, I must note.

/ɛ/ is a different phoneme from /e/, and [ɛə] would be different from [eə] as well, if we're talking literal transcriptions vs. broad transcriptions. The /ɹ/ does not actually change the quality of the preceding vowel unless you speak a dialect with the merry, Mary, marry merger. As someone who speaks a dialect which doesn't have said merger, I ought to know. Tharthan (talk) 16:28, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

No problem. /ɛ/ is a different phoneme from /e/ only if what you're transcribing /e/ is the vowel that is more often transcribed /eɪ/ - otherwise they're not different phonemes. Yes, but it's the issue of slashes vs brackets. You didn't write [ɛə] and [eə], but /ɛə/ and /eə/. I'm not sure what you mean, at least in RP, [ɛə] (or, actually, [ɛː] for many people my age and younger) is phonemically /eɪ/ when followed by /r/ within the same syllable (at least that's a possible, historically acurrate analysis). Such analysis is still possible in words such as square, which you could pretty convincingly transcribe /skweɪr/ (we don't do that on Wiktionary). Peter238 (talk) 04:27, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and upload literal pronunciations of [skwɛr], [skweɪr] and /skwɛər/ to show the difference. Hold on. Tharthan (talk) 16:46, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

[skwɛr] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mmmm-square.ogg

[skweɪr] & /skwɛər/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Squarepronunciations2.ogg Tharthan (talk) 16:56, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, but I was talking specifically about RP. I'm not sure whether [skweɪr] is even a possible US/Canadian pronunciation, we'd need a citation for that. Dutch, for example, doesn't allow closing diphthongs before /r/ within the same syllable. Peter238 (talk) 17:19, 26 February 2016 (UTC)