Help talk:IPA/Nepali

New IPA Page

Hi everyone, I just thought I'd create this page because there are a couple of Wikipedia pages with IPA's for Nepali pronunciations (e.g. Darjeeling and Kathmandu), so I believe this guide will help more with Nepali pronunciations across relevant Wikipedia articles. However, since I don't speak it, it would be very helpful if anyone fluent in the language or is a linguist can look at this as there may still be a few mistakes with this so if there are any errors present, please correct it, thank you. Broman178 (talk) 20:55, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Corrections

@Austronesier, Nardog, Broman178, John of Reading, Bruce1ee, Tspielberg, Aeusoes1, and Sol505000: For the monophthong "d", I prefer retaining the "the" as an approximation but changing "deal" to "derriere".-1Firang (talk) 03:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA "d͡z ", I prefer using "jazz" and "budge" as approximations what is there already.-1Firang (talk) 03:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA " d͡zʱ ", I prefer using "hedgehog" as an approximation what is there already.-1Firang (talk) 03:51, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA "k", I prefer using "skip" as an approximation (instead of the present "scan") as it will be the same alphabet.--1Firang (talk) 03:55, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA " kʰ ", I prefer using "derrickhand" and "Khanate" as approximations.--1Firang (talk) 04:00, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA " ɳ", I prefer using "under" as an approximation.--1Firang (talk) 04:03, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA "ŋ", the approximation mentioned is "sing" with "ng" in bold but I prefer it to be "sing" with only "n" in bold.-1Firang (talk) 04:07, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA " pʰ", I prefer using "Clapham" as an approximation.--1Firang (talk) 04:11, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA " ɾ", I prefer using "arise" as an approximation instead of the present "atom".--1Firang (talk) 04:14, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA " t", I prefer replacing "stick" as an approximation with "three" but retaining the "birth" mentioned there.--1Firang (talk) 04:19, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA "tʰ", I prefer replacing "tell" as an approximation with "thought" but retaining the "think" mentioned there at present.--1Firang (talk) 04:26, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA "ʈʰ", I prefer replacing "partake" as an approximation with "anthill".-1Firang (talk) 04:35, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

For the IPA (diphthong) "ai̯", I prefer replacing "my" as an approximation with "naive".--1Firang (talk) 04:42, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Tspielberg: Please self revert this edit - I know that this difference exists for sure.-1Firang (talk) 05:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

If ईनार sounds too similar to इनाम please replace it with ईश्वरिय "eeshwariya" or ईश्वर "eeshwar".-1Firang (talk) 05:25, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

the difference doesnot exist see Nepali phonology - Wikipedia Tspielberg (talk) 08:41, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Tspielberg: As per Nepali_phonology#Vowels, "i", "ĩ", "u" and "ũ" all exist, so why are you removing the same in this Nepali IPA help page?-1Firang (talk) 08:49, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Just because you can't tell the difference in the spoken form, it doesn't mean that there is no difference in the written form!-1Firang (talk) 09:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Most of your suggestions belie a misunderstanding of English phonology as it is spoken by most speakers. I have gone through and removed the "Indian English" suggestions, as this is not as helpful for a generalized pronunciation guide, since most English speakers are not familiar enough with Indian English for this to be helpful. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:08, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: Please provide a diff of what you did - I can't see anything.-1Firang (talk) 16:44, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh, you know, I forgot to hit save. You can see them now. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 20:16, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

@1Firang I am okay with most of your listed changes except the ones for [d͡z], [d͡zʱ], [ŋ] and [ɾ]. This is because most English speakers will perceive [d͡z] to be similar to the sound in words like dads, [d͡zʱ] to be similar to dad's house (words like budge & hedgehog would only occur under the [dʒ] phoneme which is not listed either here or in Nepali phonology, so if you believe [dʒ] occurs in Nepali, you need to add it with a reliable source in the Nepali phonology page), [ŋ] as sing is correct (it would only be sing, in dialects without Ng-coalescence such as Scouse in England) while [ɾ] is most recognisable as the sound in better or atom for many English speakers (especially from North America). So we need to be consistent with all that, especially as most other IPA Help pages use these approximations for the most part.

Regarding the dental stop approximations [d, dʱ, t, tʰ], the reason I chose to use Indian English approximations is because I got the idea from the approximations for Help:IPA/Irish which has Irish English approximations for that and also because speakers of Indian English would likely read these pages a lot given that WP:INDICSCRIPT discourages Indic scripts from being added into the leads or infoboxes of India-related articles and so encourages IPA transcriptions to be used instead. However, if we are not to use Indian English for the approximations, given that Aeusoes1 removed them, then I am fine with Th-stopping being featured as an alternative. But since articles like Help:IPA/Spanish use approximations like today for [d] and stand for [t] even though they are also dental like in Nepali, then I think we should be consistent with that too (in other words have one approximation with th-stopping and a usual approximation that would be used for the alveolar stop to maintain the consistency). Broman178 (talk) 10:44, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

@Broman178: The objection to Indian English was by Aeusoes1 not me. [d͡z], [d͡zʱ], [ŋ] and [ɾ] are pronounced differently in Nepali, as compared to Hindi and Urdu. Dad's is pronounced [ˈdædz] according to this and not [ˈdædzʱ]. [ɾ] in Nepali is र so I feel "arose" is a better approximation (just my 2 cents).-1Firang (talk) 18:00, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

At Help:IPA also, [d͡z] mentions "adds" as an approximation and [ɾ] also mentions "borrow" as an approximation (and I now have borrowed "borrow" as an approximation here in this Nepali IPA help page)-1Firang (talk) 18:12, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Most of the IPA transcriptions on this page are based on the information in Nepali phonology so if you feel [d͡z], [d͡zʱ], [ŋ] and [ɾ] are pronounced differently (or as different phonemes to the current symbols) in Nepali, then you need to provide this information in the Nepali phonology page first with a reliable source if available otherwise it'll border on original research (see WP:OR). Also, I would probably point that you need to read comments more carefully because I did not state anywhere in my comment that Dad's is pronounced as [ˈdædzʱ] (I mentioned that dad's house is an approximation for [d͡zʱ]).

Regarding [ɾ], there is a footnote in this IPA page which mentions that it is pronounced as as a tap [ɾ] intervocalically and as a trill [r] (which is featured as a transcription here) elseware so you need to take that into account. And regarding borrow, if you want to keep that approximation, I would probably add Scottish English instead of American English because there is no tap [ɾ] in that word for American English (in American English it would be pronounced as an approximant [ɹ̠], while the tap [ɾ] occurs in better or atom for American English) whereas in Scottish English that is more common. Broman178 (talk) 09:21, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

At Nepali_phonology#Consonants, it mentions d͡z ⟨ज) and d͡zʱ ⟨झ⟩ and here in this Nepali IPA help page, someone has typed, "dad's" as an approximation for the former and "dad's house as an approximation for the letter (I didn't add those approximations here). You may add better approximations if you like but I feel, what we have at this IPA help page (Help:IPA/Nepali) is acceptable now.-1Firang (talk) 10:32, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

IPA for ञ, श, and ष

The page on Nepali phonology* says the graphemes ञ, श and ष correspond to the phonemes n, s, and s respectively. This help page does not list the corresponding phones. AFAICT, a predominant number of Nepali speakers use the phones [n], [s], and [s] for all occurrences of the respective graphemes. I was trying to add IPA to some articles containing Nepali-language text and ran into these characters. A few possible solutions came to mind:

1. Since these graphemes are only used in Sanskrit loan-words, we could add a note to this help page to the effect that editors must use the IPA-sa template for those words instead of the IPA-ne template.
2. Alternately, add these graphemes and phones to this help page.
3. Alternately, add these graphemes and their Sanskrit phones to this help page.

* As of the moment of posting, the current version of the phonology page is version 1166183304.

— Fractaloid (talk) 15:57, 20 July 2023 (UTC)