Sammy (friend of foxes)Feb 21, 2023

Very smart #linguistics folx, your attention please 🙏

Given the #IPA həˈləʊ, is there or is there not only "one way" of that being pronounced?
If so, by extension, correct in assuming the phoneme ə can again only be "pronounced" one way?

Why then does the ə on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/General_phonetics#Vowels not sound like the ə in the word hello (represented as həˈləʊ)???

General phonetics - Wikimedia Commons

Show threadErgative Absolutive
@theresnotime There's a difference between broad transcription and narrow transcription. Broad transcription is almost phonemic, not phonetic, and tends to use the same symbol for the phonemes in a language, irrespective of (some) allophonic variation across contrasts. As a result, a single symbol can do quite a lot of heavy lifting, as long as it's not crossing phoneme boundaries, and the same phoneme won't sound the same in all contexts.
Feb 21, 2023 at 7:56pmWeb
Show threadErgative AbsolutiveFeb 21, 2023
@theresnotime So the symbol /u/ will sound very different in California English vs. Japanese vs. French, even though in all three languages it's used in broad transcription because it's close enough to the high(ish) back(ish) rounded(ish) vowel in those languages' vowel inventories.
Show threadErgative AbsolutiveFeb 21, 2023
@theresnotime If you really want IPA to give you a pronunciation that will be relatively stable across languages and contexts, then you enter narrow transcription land. For that, you're going to have to make HEAVY use of diacritics, and those are such an almighty pain to type that people tend to use broad transcription unless they know for sure that they're talking to a highly trained phonetic audience that will know what to do with the diacritics.
Show threadSammy (friend of foxes)Feb 21, 2023
@ergative I appreciate the explanations — so the concept of taking a broad transcription and say, putting it through a text-to-speech engine (even one well-trained on IPA) is going to give mixed-to-poor results?
Show threadErgative AbsolutiveFeb 21, 2023

@theresnotime Right. If the text-to-speech engine is only trained on IPA, then it will sound terrible. There is SO MUCH more detail in English than can be captured by broad phonetic transcription.

One reason we leave the detail out of broad transcription is because much of it is predictable from context. But if the engine is not trained on the English-specific contextual effects, than no matter how well trained it is on IPA-proper, it's not going to sound like English.

Show threadSammy (friend of foxes)Feb 21, 2023

@ergative 🙃 *quiet sobbing*

Thank you for taking the time to explain this, I really appreciate it :)

Show threadErgative AbsolutiveFeb 21, 2023
@theresnotime And even with the narrowest of narrow phonetic transcriptions, the IPA isn't really sensitive enough to capture the nuance of pronunciation variation. It's a discrete system trying to capture a highly gradient phenomenon. So in contexts where the narrowest of narrow phonetic transcriptions is necessary, these days phoneticians will use spectrograms in their written articles, and upload audio recordings in their supplemental materials, rather than provide narrow transcriptions.
Show threadErgative AbsolutiveFeb 21, 2023
@theresnotime tl;dr: there is not 'only one' way of pronouncing an IPA symbol. It's an imperfect system that's useful but limited; and it only ever had a hope of being even imperfectly universal and invariant in the days before better technology made describing phonetics more accurate and detailed than the IPA could ever hope to be.