• HOME
  • Publications
  • BLOG
  • English Phonetics and Phonology
  • The English Pronouncing Dictionary
  • RESOURCES
  Peter Roach

Audible vowels

12/2/2015

0 Comments

 
Audible vowels

On some Wikipedia pages you can find “click and listen” buttons associated with some vowels. If you look at Cardinal vowels you can see the familiar chart and underneath it a table listing all the vowels. Each entry in this table takes you to a separate WP article on that vowel (you may feel that one article per vowel is a bit excessive), and in the “info-box” at upper right on each page is a button that gives you the audio. I do not know who recorded these vowels, nor even if they were all recorded by the same person. At this stage I prefer not to comment on the quality. If you go to IPA vowel chart with audio you can hear the same recordings (I think) just by clicking the appropriate place on the chart. However, there are now additional vowel symbols on the chart: these are vowels which are not included in the IPA’s version of the Cardinal Vowel chart, but which WP seems keen to include. Some of these vowels are ones which I don’t think I have ever attempted in my life – not in public, anyway. These “off-piste” vowels do sound very strange to my ears. On the Talk page corresponding to this topic I have already complained about adding extra vowels to the IPA vowel chart, and got a reasonably sympathetic response. I notice on that page that “ … the article on the near-close central rounded vowel [ʊ̈] or [ʉ̞] doesn't have a recording yet”. Now there’s a challenge for someone to take up!

There’s a lot more to say on this subject, and I’ll return to it. After that, there’s a lot to say about the article IPA non-pulmonic consonant chart with audio

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    A blog that discusses problems in Wikipedia's coverage of Phonetics

    Peter Roach

    Emeritus Professor of Phonetics,
    ​University of Reading, UK

    uArchives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    March 2019
    April 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    July 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.