Template talk:IPAc-en

For the discussion of the choice of symbols and the organization of diaphonemes, see Help:IPA/English and its talk page.

Some tooltips could be improved

Some thoughts I had:

/ɡ/: 'g' in 'guy' -> 'g' in 'guy'

• It's unnecessary and inconsistent to show both the IPA and the letter when these are identical (the current pattern is <'b' in 'buy'> but </j/: 'y' in 'yes'>).

'spheroidal' -> 'hero', 'coir' -> 'employer'

• 'spheroidal' and 'coir' are quite rare words. I'd suggest replacing them with more common ones like 'hero' (or 'zero', 'period', 'cereal', 'material' etc.) and 'employer' (or 'destroyer', 'voyeur' etc.)

/ʔ/: the catch in 'uh-oh' -> /ʔ/: '-' in 'uh-oh'

• "catch" might not be familiar in this sense to those learning English, and "-" is more consistent with the rest of the tooltip system.

/ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in 'nurse' -> [removed]

• /ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in 'nurse' really shouldn't exist because the diaphoneme system works on the principle that rhoticity is defined, but can be ignored. 'fur' already does the job so there's no need for an "r-less 'ur'". There are no vowels in the NURSE lexical set that don't have <r> in (at least, to my knowledge).

/ʊər/: 'our' in 'tour' -> /ʊər/: 'our' in 'cure'

• 'tour' isn't the best choice for /ʊər/, because 'tour' is normally one of the words which is changed in accents which only partially have the pour-poor merger. 'cure' is a better choice because it tends to be conserved where CURE is a present but declining set.[1]

For some reason /juː/ and /jʊər/ are buried at the bottom of the table in the doc. They should probably be moved up (at least above the punctuation, but I'd suggest near "goose" and "tour [sic]" ). ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 15:14, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

I suspect /ɡ/ was left in because it's written with a different character (U+0261) than 'g' (U+0067) and may display differently depending on your fonts. Though, it's questionable if there's any value in using U+0261 instead of U+0067 in the first place. 'Spheroidal' is used for the input codes where the /r/ begins a stressed syllable, which wouldn't be used in transcription of 'hero' or any other words you suggested. No idea if there's any allophonic variation worth preserving, but that's why it is that. The /ɜː/ is a marginal phoneme that, just like /ʔ/ or /x/, doesn't exist in normal words. Sometimes given a separate symbol /œ/, sometimes pronounced with an intrusive /r/. Consider the proper name /ˈɡɜːtə/ 'Goethe'. See also the previous discussions of ɔɪər and ɜː. The codes juː and jʊər are at the bottom because they exist for compatibility only and you shouldn't use them. (Yes, I agree, it could be more explicit than that.) – MwGamera (talk) 01:35, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

What MwGamera said, except Goethe should be transcribed with /ɜːr/ since it is pronounced with the NURSE vowel in rhotic accents too (hence Möbius in the key).

/ɔɪər/ represents the rare situation in which a word has /ɔɪə/ in RP and /ɔɪr/ in GA, so employer wouldn't do (and voyeur is /vwɑːˈjɜːr, vɔɪˈɜːr/).

cure is a terrible example because lots of people will interpret it as /jʊər/ rather than /ʊər/. Tour being "one of the words which is changed in accents which only partially have the pour-poor merger" is a good thing because that's what the diaphoneme /ʊər/ represents ("/ʊər/ or /ɔːr/"). And /ʊər/ being more likely to be unmerged after /Cj/ than elsewhere isn't even true globally; in Singapore it's the opposite. Nardog (talk) 03:14, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

In my defense, dictionaries say Goethe can also be pronounced with a non-rhotic vowel even by rhotic speakers. CEPD17 says exactly what I wrote (except that I skipped the syllable division) and implies the American pronunciation is the same by not respelling it with /ɝ:/ like it does for Goering. After reviewing H:IPA/EN, I'm not sure anymore how to interpret M-W and AHD's \œ\. It might not be a single phoneme, but I'd expect this to mean something else than the actual NURSE, esp. when M-W lists the pronunciation with \ər\ separately here. – MwGamera (talk) 06:10, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

As explained in the note, /ɜː/ can only be used for non-rhotic accents (so of course American dictionaries' Template:Angbr doesn't mean NURSE), and we have no way of converting a transcription with Template:Angbr in those dictionaries to our diaphonemic system. Some dictionaries include non-English pronunciations using their symbols for English supplemented with Template:Angbr etc. (without distinguishing them from pronunciations English speakers actually use). Editors have found it best not to include those, to err on the descriptive side and since we have keys for other languages. Nardog (talk) 08:18, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments! I have amended my proposals accordingly:

/ʔ/: the catch in 'uh-oh' -> /ʔ/: '-' in 'uh-oh'

• "catch" might not be familiar in this sense to those learning English, and "-" is more consistent with the rest of the tooltip system.

/ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in 'nurse' -> /ɜː/: r-less 'ur' 'oe' in 'Goethe'

• "nurse" clearly isn't an example of the marginal phoneme we're talking about.
• If we say that this is a marginal phoneme then it must necessarily be found in some rhotic accents, otherwise it would simply be part of NURSE.

^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 18:12, 2 December 2025 (UTC)

/ɜː/ doesn't have a single counterpart in rhotic accents. In möbius it's /ɛ/ or /oʊ/, in föhn it's /eɪ/, in pho it's /ʌ/, and so on. So it cannot be illustrated with a word that actually would be transcribed with /ɜː/. Nardog (talk) 13:20, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

If I've understood correctly, there does exist an extra phoneme in some rhotic accents (1 2), but it also has lots of other inconsistent pronunciations. We want to indicate this phoneme, so we use the analogy of 'nurse' without the 'r'.

With that said, I still think that the current wording is needlessly confusing because it can easily be read (and I did) as 'the 'ur' in nurse that we all know has no r in'.

/ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in 'nurse' -> /ɜː/: like 'ur' in 'nurse' without the 'r' sound

It doesn't seem like anyone has any problems with the "catch" proposal, but I would of course welcome thoughts there too if anyone has any.

I'm grateful for you for explaining why most of my original proposals would not have improved the article, but hopefully we can get some value out of this discussion nevertheless. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 15:12, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

/ɜː/ is not "'ur' without the 'r'". That would be /ʌ/.

/ʔ/ is vanishingly rare, so it's kind of neither here nor there, but the glottal stop is often considered obligatory at the beginning of "uh-oh", not just before "oh", so I find the current wording better. Nardog (talk) 02:34, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

/ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in 'nurse' -> /ɜː/: like /ɜːr/ 'ur' in 'nurse' without the 'r' sound

• I meant specifically the /ɜːr/ 'ur' in 'nurse'. A description of removing the 'r' from that 'ur' indicates /ɜː/ for nearly all speakers (rhotic or not, as non-rhotic speakers don't have an 'r' to remove), which is what we want. You're right to suggest that spelling alone is a bad indicator, so let's also include the 'nurse' IPA so there's no ambiguity (on top of the fact that we're not using language that suggests the 'ur' in 'nurse' is 'r-less', as currently).
• Scottish English speakers who have /ʌr/ for FUR will interpret both of these descriptions as /ʌ/ so don't factor into this discussion, but at least by detailing the IPA carefully we give them more of a hint that the sound described has the quality of merged NURSE, rather than their unmerged FUR. If we want a truly universal description, then maybe something like "like /əː/, a longer version of the 'a' in 'about'" is preferable.

/ʔ/: the catch in 'uh-oh' -> /ʔ/: '-' in 'uh-oh'

• I'd say the fact that 'uh-oh' uses two glottal stops is slightly irrelevant because we only need one for people unfamiliar with IPA to make the connection. If we used the word 'considerable' to indicate schwa, we could detail both 'o' and 'e', but only indicating one is necessary. In the same way, we only need to indicate one of the glottal stops, and since only one is actually indicated in spelling ('-', the other being unwritten) it makes sense to use that one alone, rather than introduce language that the reader may not be familiar with. This template is ultimately meant to provide a quick aide to parsing IPA for those who can't read it, so we should tend towards practicality rather than linguistic satisfaction. Indicating both glottal stops is unnecessary and more confusing that it needs to be. Using a section of the spelling provided ('-') is simpler and better.

^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 14:39, 7 December 2025 (UTC)

You've persuaded me about the glottal stop. But it doesn't strike me as worthwhile to try to evoke /ɜː/ for rhotic speakers. For them, /ɜː/ doesn't exist without /r/. So it makes little sense to say /ɜː/ without the /r/, especially for those whose NURSE is [ɚ], like most North Americans, for whom clipped NURSE is still [ɚ]. They're also likely to have some familiarity with what NURSE sounds like in RP-like accents, and "r-less" (which predates "non-rhotic") serves as a tidy, less technical shorthand for it. Nardog (talk) 11:26, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

You make a good point, but I still think that "r-less" is potentially confusing because it doesn't actually imply that an RP-like accent is being indicated ("[ɚ] without the 'r'" is still the natural reading for most North American speakers). I think that the best solution would be to somehow specify the accent that's being evoked by writing something like "/ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in RP 'nurse'". This is of course not perfect as RP itself may not be a comprehensible term, but it will still give an indication even for those who don't understand it that it refers to some specific accent. If we're willing to be slightly vague with the description, I think that something like "prestige England English" would refer to RP for most lay-people without requiring them to look up any new terminology, and thereby unambiguously indicate the 'right' pronunciation (though it is a bit clunky). I'm undecided on this really, but surely giving an indication of the accent is better than not at all? Even writing "r-less 'ur' in non-rhotic 'nurse'" would be an improvement. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 13:42, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

I would wager that "r-less" is a more recognizable term than "non-rhotic" or "RP", especially for rhotic speakers. "Rhotic" is a recent coinage arising from the fact "r-ful" sounds like awful in non-rhotic accents, which means it didn't need replacing for rhotic speakers. Nardog (talk) 05:21, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

Completely agree: let's keep /ɜː/ as is. Thanks for entertaining my suggestions anyhow.

Do you think you'd be able to make the edit to /ʔ/ in the source and the doc (I'm not a template editor)? Thanks again! ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 13:13, 10 December 2025 (UTC)

If I've understood correctly, there does exist an extra phoneme in some rhotic accents

I'm not sure that the approximation of [ø] counts as a phoneme since it's only used in a few loanwords. I think there's a technical term for that – maybe "loan pronunciation"?

You two are both non-rhotic, right? I wanted to chime in as a rhotic speaker (Canadian). FWIW, I pronounce Goethe as ['gø̞̈.tə], "mobius" as /ˈmoʊbiəs/, Goering as /ˈɡərɪŋ/, and pho as /fʌ/ or /foʊ/. I've never heard of foehn before. — W.andrea (talk) 13:53, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

As Help:IPA/English explains, it's a marginal segment. Nardog (talk) 14:39, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! So why isn't it worth listing there? I've read through the above and I didn't see anything specific. Is it just too marginal (i.e. rare)? — W.andrea (talk) 17:15, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

As a U.S. American, I perfectly align with your pronunciations of Goethe (though also often /ˈɡɜːrtə/ [ˈgəɹtə]), Mobius, Goering, pho, plus not knowing foehn. But what's the "it" you're wanting to list? Wolfdog (talk) 17:39, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Right, I was unclear. I meant the equivalent of /ɜː/ in rhotic accents, which for me and in those clips is around [ø ~ œ ~ ə:]. — W.andrea (talk) 17:42, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

It's so variable from word to word that it presumably has not been considered worth it so far. Articles on specific topics can have their specific pronunciations, like we current see at Pho. Wolfdog (talk) 20:05, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Dictionaries of English include transcriptions that are not widely attested in speakers of the language but are meant to provide guidance for how the term is pronounced in the source language. Like ones with Template:Angbr. We don't include them because we have IPA keys for other languages (see Help talk:IPA/English/Archive 25#General American pronunciations of loanwords for instance).

Also Template:Double slash represents a situation in which it is /ɜː/ in RP/non-rhotic and some other vowel in GA/rhotic. Nardog (talk) 15:31, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

[bug] /aɪə/ becomes /aɪər/ when describing "client, diet, science, sliest" in "English orthography"

"English orthography" uses {{IPAc-en|aɪə}} to describe the /aɪə/ sound in "client, diet, science, sliest", but it becomes /aɪər/ after rendering: /aɪər/. Jhcarl0814 (talk) 21:43, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

You should change them to /aɪə/ ({{IPAc-en|aɪ|ə}}). The phonemes are separate and are part of two different syllables. Indefatigable (talk) 21:57, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you! I've changed it as you suggested. Jhcarl0814 (talk) 01:35, 6 February 2026 (UTC)

labeling for similar templates

Can someone extend support for the special first value to {{IPAc-hu}} to allow for the template to implement labels? I just noticed it to be missing, and someone asked about it at Template talk:IPAc-hu#default introductory phrase is needed fifteen years ago. --Joy (talk) 11:36, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Error message links to Help:IPA/English, but that doesn't help for all errors

If I input a label that doesn't exist, like say "uk also" instead of "ukalso", I get an error: //. The problem is it links to Help:IPA/English, which doesn't mention the pronunciation label codes.

The same problem exists for unrecognized aliases, like say "th" instead of "T" /θ/ (by analogy with "sh" for "S" /ʃ/): //. Help:IPA/English doesn't cover aliases.

The error should instead link to Template:IPAc-en/doc § Pronunciation and IPA link codes, unless there's some reason I'm missing.

Thanks — W.andrea (talk) 14:47, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Tooltips table footnotes

1. The secondary-stress /ɪəˌr/, /ɛəˌr/, and /ʊəˌr/ tooltips use the same examples as the primary-stress (spheroidal, thereof, plurality). Obviously, these are, strictly speaking, incorrect. Was this done advisedly?
   • If so, then the justification should be stated in a footnote to the table; along the lines of "although these are, strictly speaking, incorrect, they are close enough for the purposes of a tooltip where the fine detail need not trouble the reader".
   • If not, then they need to be replaced. "ear as in two-year-old", "aer as in aerobicization", "ur as in bureaucratization" are the best I could come up with.

   Incidentally, I suggest hereafter and aerobic are less obscure examples than spheroidal and thereof for /ɪəˈr/ and /ɛəˈr/

2. As stated above (Yes, I agree, it could be more explicit than that), the table needs a footnote that /juː/ and /jʊər/ are deprecated and only kept for compatibility.

jnestorius^(talk) 11:46, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

See Pronunciation of English /r/ ~ oklopfer (💬) 11:49, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

OK... read it... not helpful. Anybody else? jnestorius^(talk) 11:54, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

If it was not clear, my comment was made as an editor reading Template:IPAc-en/doc, not as a reader reading Help:IPA/English, which has its own Talk: page. jnestorius^(talk) 11:58, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

My point in sharing that article was that there is such a variety of realizations of /r/ in English that really the only thing they share in common is typically being considered rhotic (though [ʋ] somewhat challenges this still). Phonologists typically use /r/ as the catch-all/blanket symbol. (dia)phonemes don't actually need to perfectly align with their phonetic values, since they are psychological rather than physical. One could use /c/ instead of /tʃ/ for [tʃ] (as many in fact do) and it would not be considered incorrect.

(My objection to non-rhotic /ɜː/ in foreign words being singled out as its own diaphoneme as mentioned below is similar to this; it is aiming for a value far too narrow for its wider distribution and in a scope that ignores how that same overarching sound occurs cross-dialectically; I feel we should instead be using the broader symbol which captures all dialects, even if most do not realize /œ/ as [œ]. It is better to use a blanket symbol which suggests a broader category with many possible realizations. But that's enough of me bringing that dispute across talk pages, better to be had over there. Just trying to make a comparison to /r/ here.) ~ oklopfer (💬) 13:03, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't see how any of that specifically relates to q1 (or q2) above? If you have a more general point about rhotic transcriptions then I think it belongs maybe at Help talk:IPA, or if on this page then not in this section. jnestorius^(talk) 15:05, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

@Jnestorius I apologize; I think I completely misread your original question or was otherwise seeing things fueled by not enough sleep, and then just kept running with it. I could have sworn you were asking why /r/ is used in this template. I'm going to strike my replies as irrelevant. ~ oklopfer (💬) 15:24, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

A third item in my list: "/ɜː/: r-less 'ur' in 'nurse'" should have a note that it is only relevant to non-rhotic accents, and a different transcription needs to be provided for rhotic accents—linking to the relevant Help:IPA footnote and an example such as at Möbius strip. Possibly other rows should likewise cross-reference the Help:IPA page. jnestorius^(talk) 12:03, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

There's currently a discussion going on at Help talk:IPA/English#⟨œ⟩ in American dictionaries and correspondence in English accents that I opened about exactly this actually. I find its inclusion quite problematic to begin with. ~ oklopfer (💬) 12:46, 31 March 2026 (UTC)