Wikipedia talk:IPA for Spanish

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Orignal Source : es:Transcripción fonética del español con el IPA

Please tell me if this page is worth translating. I translated the first few lines quickly, and im not sure if this page is needed. I looked at IPA and this seems to be the spanish equivalent page.

It was requested that this page be translated at : Wikipedia:Translation_into_English/Spanish#International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_Spanish

Please give me info on if this page is useful, if it is'nt I can stop translating and save myself the effort of doing the whole page.

Bearingbreaker92 03:16, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

This page is useful, but right now it favors one dialect (not sure which). I think that it can mimic IPA chart for English in its presentation of alternate dialects. I think some of the examples would be incorrect for Castilian Spanish (like the uvular fricative in hijo). Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:56, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Contents 1 Sound files 2 too many minor details 3 New world Spanish pronunciation 4 [ia] or [ja] 5 Reloj 6 Diphthongs 7 arrangement 8 inconsistancies 9 ñ versus "canyon"

[edit] Sound files

This page originally had sound files of lists of words, which made it difficult to add or remove words from the list. I've removed the sound files and revamped the page. I think newer sound files would be very helpful though, and if a Standard Spanish speaker would like to contribute, I think it's best to make sound files of individual words rather than lists of words. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:16, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] too many minor details

IMO, [ɱ] is too much phonetic detail. We don't give that kind of detail for the vowels, which aren't limited to [a e i o u] (i.e. tanque is [ã]), so why should we have it in the consonants?

If we're not going to distinguish [ʝ] from [j], do we really want to distinguish it from [ɟʝ]? Again, way too much detail, and too dialect specific. This is meant to be a guide for someone unfamiliar with Spanish; anyone who gets in deep enough to appreciate these points won't be coming to this key anyway.

[x, χ, ɴ] - again, too much. This would be better relegated to a footnote. The only reason I think [ŋ] should be left is that it's intuitive for an English speaker. The rest of this, though, is only going to be confusing for many of the people which come here. kwami (talk) 21:49, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, one way to look at this is to start from a phonemic representation and make allowances towards indicating phonetic aspects. Some phonological processes we should represent

1. intervocalic lenition of /b d g/
2. distinction between [r] and [ɾ] even where they are in complementary distribution
3. desyllabification of /i/ and /u/ to [j] and [w] to the onset (this is arguably a phonological process but note that I'm not advocating we do the same for when these sounds appear in the coda
4. Similarly, the phonemic distinction between [ʝ] and [j] is arguable, though we ought to indicate it, especially since the former is [ʒ] in some dialects
5. diphthongs formed from sequences of vowels in hiatus wherein one becomes non-syllabic (as in poeta)
6. fusing of identical vowels in hiatus
7. Nasal assimilation to velars.

I agree that indicating lenition (or affrication) of y might be too much, and although I think [ɱ] ought to be allowed I can see how it might be too confusing for English speakers.

Should we keep the dental markers on t and d?

BTW, I haven't found any information that talks about vowel allophony. For the purposes of our article on Spanish phonology, do you have any sources talking about this? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely with keeping 1–7. The dental diacritics, not really. Anyone who goes to the phonology article will see it; here I think we should just have the basics. (As it is, we don't bother with the lowering diacritics on the approximants except in a footnote.) As for vowels, I haven't seen much. There was something in a small pub I have buried somewhere, but it was fairly intuitive. Spanish vowels are pretty boring. kwami (talk) 04:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, the Irish pub; home of phonetic information. So should we just represent instances of [ɱ] as [m]? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:45, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

That's probably best. We don't bother with it for English. The IPA's rather odd in even having a symbol for it, rather than using a diacritic [m̪]. kwami (talk) 06:50, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay, here you go: Antonio Quilis, 1997. Principios do fonología y fonética españolas. Arco/Libros,S.L. The vowels are nasal between nasal stops, and at the beginning of an IU before a nasal stop. So the first two are nasal in mañana, and the first in entren said in citation. Nothing I can see on other allophones, though of course they exist. kwami (talk) 07:11, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh, we still describe y as a "stop" after /#, l, n/, but no longer have a corresponding entry for the corresponding affricate allophone. I didn't want to delete it altogether without some discussion. kwami (talk) 07:25, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

It's good to still have an accurate description in the footnote so that native speakers can understand that we're representing it as <ʝ> even in places that we know it's an affricate. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New world Spanish pronunciation

This all started with the article Mexico, which has a sound file, and an IPA entry. Those two contradict each other in that the IPA entry suggests a spelling of ['mexiko], while the sound file makes it sound more like ['mehiko] or ['meçiko]. After some digging around, I found this page: Toponymy of Mexico, which states: "In present-day Spanish, México is pronounced ['mexiko] or ['mehiko], the latter pronunciation used mostly in dialects of the Caribbean and some places in South America where /x/ has become a voiceless glottal fricative (/h/)." Now, while the sound does not sound like a pure [h] to my ears, I'm by no means an expert. However, it seems that neither [h] nor [ç] are mentioned in the IPA table for Spanish. Is this an oversight, or a deliberate decision? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.130.57.186 (talk) 20:52, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

While we're trying to have a pan-dialectal representation of Spanish, depending on circumstances, a dialect-specific transcription (i.e. one that differs from this help page) is acceptable. In Mexican Spanish, /x/ is [h]. Before /i/ this is probably a voiceless [j] which sounds a lot like [ç]. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:05, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Which leads me to the the question: should I then still use the IPAes template, or just a generic IPA template? I can't really decide. It's Spanish alright, but it contains a letter that is not listed on this page (that the IPAes template links to). So the generic IPA template might be more applicable. I just don't know whether there's any precedent that following would be wise. --134.130.57.186 (talk) 00:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Probably the best thing to do is use the IPA-es template when this help page can address all sounds represented so that a reader who knows nothing of Spanish phonology or of the IPA can click on the link and, with some careful study, understand what is being represented on a particular page. Otherwise, I suppose using {{IPA-all}} might be a better idea. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:30, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, I went ahead and edited the page accordingly. Thanks for your input! I think the procedure of when to use which template is a lot clearer to me now. --Flosch (talk) 11:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] [ia] or [ja]

This Spanish [i] is a weak vowel and [a] is a strong vowel, therefore 'ia' is pronounced [ia] not [ja] (I believe) Xorothal (talk) 13:02, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

While ia is phonetically [i̯a], we are using [ja] for a number of reasons, the most compelling of which is that it helps distinguish between [i̯a], and [ˈi.a] (as well as [ʝ̞a]}}. As far as I know, the i of ia is no different than that of io or ie. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:47, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reloj

Is reloj really pronounced /reˈlox/? I thought the j was silent in this word and it was pronounced as if spelled reló. —Angr 18:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps in less formal varieties or in rapid speech. I've never heard of speakers deleting final /x/, though. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 18:46, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm. I thought it was a phonological rule of Spanish that only coronal consonants are allowed to end a word. If reloj is /reˈlox/, it would be the only Spanish word I know of (not counting proper names and recent loanwords like esnob) that ends in a noncoronal consonant. —Angr 20:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

In fact, Robert M. Hammond in The Sounds of Spanish: Analysis and Application (Cascadilla Press, ISBN 1-57473-018-5) writes (p. 226), "word-final /h/ is systematically deleted from this word [viz. reloj] in unaffected speech". (He uses /h/ as a cover symbol for all the /x/ - /χ/ - /h/ varieties this sound has across Spanish accents.) —Angr 20:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

J. I. Hualde says reloj is pronounced /re'lo/ "by many speakers" (thus implying that many others do say /re'lox/), and points also to a few rarer words like boj and carcaj. —Angr 20:51, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Ahh, nice sources. I think for our purposes as a transcription guide that we should include final /x/ even if it's deleted by some/many speakers. If relojes is more consistently pronounced with an [x], then there's no doubt that it's present underlyingly. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:01, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, although it might be worth adding a footnote pointing out that the /x/ is often not pronounced in this word. —Angr 21:20, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I think it's worth mentioning that final 'j' is indeed pronounced in some Spanish vernaculars, but the number of speakers who delete the sound is probably quite larger. I've never found any source about which varieties delete the sound and which ones don't. --Jotamar (talk) 16:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

What we've got here is informative enough. Greater detail should go at Spanish phonology. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Diphthongs

I propose that the pairings listed as diphthongs (ja, je, jo, ju, and wa, we, wi, wo) are not actually diphthongs and should not be listed here. Diphthongs are a pairing of two vowels acting as vowels. i and u are semi-vowels and, in these cases, are acting as consonants--not vowels--and therefore do not constitute a diphthong, but rather a syllable of a consonant and a vowel. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Antigravity711 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

While that's true for French and Romanian, sources that I've found say otherwise for Spanish. If it were the case that the high vowels act completely outside of the syllable nucleus in these instances, then exceptions to their formation would include complex onsets. In From hiatus to diphthong by Chitoran and Hualde (2007) it is said of Spanish that exceptions to diphthongization (and therefore occurrences of hiatus) happen across morpheme boundaries (boquiancho) or if the word is "paradigmatically related to another word where the stress falls on the high vowel" (liamos). There's also a tendency for hiatus when it would otherwise create a diphthong in the first syllable of a word (biólogo) and a "preference for hiatus in stressed or pretonic iV sequences" (diálogo, dialogo). There is no mention of complex onsets as being a factor in barring diphthongization. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:40, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] arrangement

Per the recent reverts, which philosophy should we follow for the arrangement of the non-Latin symbols, such as ɣ? Anyone who knows that ɡ~ɣ are allophones probably won't be coming to this page anyway; in fact, I doubt that many people who know that ɣ is a velar fric would come here. Wouldn't it make sense therefore to order it with graphically similar letters like v and y? kwami (talk) 21:15, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think you have to know that ɣ is an allophone of g or that it's a velar fricative. You just have to know it's a gamma, and probably anyone who took advanced mathematics or physics, or was a member of a fraternity or sorority, knows that. And once you know it's a gamma, you're probably going to look for it near "g". (I'd also put θ after t rather than treat it as a kind of o.) +Angr 21:49, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not adverse to having it in both places. We might get some people removing the duplicates at first, but it would be to help both readers familiar and unfamiliar with the non-Latin characters, not avoid edit conflicts. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:34, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] inconsistancies

I've been redirecting 'IPA2' and 'pronunciation' templates to IPA-es, and there are several very common inconsistencies that AWB could replace automatically: downtacks under the frics and mid vowels, and ɰ for gamma. Also, a lot of articles on American places lack θ and ʎ, but that would require a more considered review, as well as agreement as to when we should have an American transcription. (In Argentinian articles some have ʃ for /x/, but maybe those should stay?) kwami (talk) 07:51, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Removing undertacks and ɰ automatically sounds sensible, though we may need to take θ and ʎ on a case by case basis and, if need be, formulate a more abstract policy on when to have an American transcription. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 08:37, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ñ versus "canyon"

English speakers tend to make the mistake of equating "ñ" with "ny". This article acts as if they are identical. The problem is that the sound simply doesn't exist in English. Any ideas here? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mavasher (talk • contribs) 18:44, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

What if, instead of "English equivalent" the column is labeled "English approximation" — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:17, 29 June 2009 (UTC)