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Pronunciation in Wikipedia is indicated using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For ease of understanding, fairly broad IPA transcriptions are usually used.
See also
- IPA chart for English and the more detailed International Phonetic Alphabet for English — a good place for English-speakers to start learning IPA
- Pronunciation respelling for English — compare IPA with other pronunciation transcription systems found in English dictionaries
- International Phonetic Alphabet#Types of transcription — explains phonemic/phonetic/morphological and broad/narrow transcriptions
Other transcription systems
Some articles have in the past used SAMPA (or X-SAMPA), which is a way of indicating IPA without using the special IPA characters. The need for SAMPA has essentially disappeared since the introduction of Template:IPA (see below), which works around the broken display of IPA text in Internet Explorer. SAMPA is generally much less familiar to potential readers, and current practice is to replace it with IPA where possible.
Pronunciation transcriptions based on traditional English spelling are deprecated. Forms such as pro-NUN-see-AY-shun may be misinterpreted by people whose first language isn't English. They can however be used in addition to the IPA version so that it's easy for people who don't know the IPA to understand them. It may also be helpful to add comments such as "rhymes with..." or "stress on the first syllable".
If a language is not normally written using the Latin alphabet, an official Romanisation may exist. For example pinyin for Mandarin Chinese or the Royal Thai General System of Transcription. In that case both this romanisation and the IPA rendering may be given.
IPA style
When using IPA provide an explanation, for instance by using Template:IPA notice, or just by linking to one of the articles describing the IPA codes, for instance:
Which yields:
Don't link the IPA text, because the link underlining may make IPA characters difficult to read.
IPA style recommends the use of square brackets around pronunciations. The use of slashes is permitted in cases where the pronunciation represents only phonemes. Slashes should only be used if the distinction between phonemes and phones is important. For example the English word pull would normally be shown in a phonetic transcription as , but if a more detailed phonetic transcription is also included, such as , emphasing the aspirated allophone of and the "dark" allophone of , then the phonemic transcription could be .
Distinction between British, American and Australian pronunciation
- (This is currently being discussed at International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English#Pronunciation_guides_in_Wikipedia_articles.)
Foreign names
When transcribing foreign names, you may write two transcriptions: the native pronunciation and English pronunciation. The English transcription must always be first. If the native name is different than the English name, the native transcription must be after the native name.For example:
which gives:
(IPA: ; Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela, IPA: )
Notice that, in the case of there being two different standards for a single language, you should choose the most appropriate. E.g., write , according to Latin-American Spanish, not , that is European standard pronunciation.
Technical issues
Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows doesn't automatically use a font that contains specialized IPA characters. Passages of IPA text should be placed into Template:IPA, which tells Explorer to choose the correct font. More detailed documentation is at IPA.
An example, placing a phonetic rendering of the word characters in Template:IPA:
In your browser:
| without template:IPA: | * |
| with template:IPA: |
You should not see a difference between the two, unless you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows, or you have a custom stylesheet for IPA.
See also
"Wikipedia:Manual of Style/(pronunciation)"