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)???
@theresnotime Exactly, there is NOT only one way of pronouncing any given IPA transcription, for multiple reasons.
The simplest reason is that both tongue height and tongue place are continua, and whenever you divide a continuum you get granularity. It's like saying that 5'4" is not just one height.
There are also other dimensions that can be heard, but are not typically transcribed! #linguistics #phonetics
https://grieve-smith.com/blog/2015/12/levels-of-phonetic-description/
When I first studied phonetic transcription I learned about broad and narrow transcription, where narrow transcription contains much more detail, like the presence of aspiration on consonants and fine distinctions of tongue height. Of course it makes sense that you wouldn't always want to go into s
@theresnotime The ə symbol is more difficult than others, because it's used in at least 3 conflicting ways.
Some people use it to indicate a universal middle-center tongue position, as in that audio file.
Other people use ə to indicate the specific tongue/lip configuration most commonly used for reduced vowels. But e.g. the /ə/ for English is very different from the /ə/ for French.
Still others use ə for an *underspecified* reduced vowel - it doesn't matter where someone puts their tongue!
@theresnotime Exactly! The IPA is great for specialists to communicate more detail about speech, more consistently than we can do with writing. It's not your fault that they oversold it!
In general, without knowing anything about this project, as someone who's developed automatic language generation systems, I recommend being careful about what you're using technology for, and who it benefits!
@grvsmth for what it's worth, the project in question is https://w.wiki/6Mds — in summary, a MediaWiki (Wikipedia) extension which allows people to click on the IPA shown on a lot of Wikipedia articles and hear the generated audio...
In a lot of cases, audio recordings of the word represented by the IPA already exist on Wikimedia Commons, so ideally the extension will use that if present and "fall back" to generating audio via the IPA (as a human voice is always going to sound better than generated audio, regardless of the IPA)
@theresnotime "However, because only very few people on the planet read this notation, it is practically impossible for folks to discern how to pronounce something purely based on IPA notation."
It's an interesting idea, but it sounds like "Only very few people can read molecular formulas, so we'll create automated 3D renderings of the substance depicted by the formulas"!
In both cases it's an interesting idea, but the systems are not consistent or complete enough to bypass expert judgment!
@theresnotime I agree with the comment by [Modest Genius] from January 31, 2022, and I disagree with [Andy Mabbett]. Sometimes it is better to have no pronunciation than to have every word reinforcing an arbitrary bias!
'Even so, better to have "every word in (say) a mid-Atlantic accent" than no audio pronunciation at all.'
I've seen so many people point even to vague dictionary transcriptions as "the right way to pronounce this." I can imagine what they'd do here!
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2022/Reading/IPA_audio_renderer
Sammy (friend of foxes)
Dr. Angus Andrea Grieve-Smith