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Thanks for creating this! I assume it's ok that Afrikaans links here as well?

Dutch , , are never aspirated (or so I have read), so maybe non-aspirated English examples would be better too? Lfh (talk) 17:06, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I assembled this from what information I could cobble together from the rest of WP, which is sorely lacking in info on Afrikaans. I think Afrikaans has a very similar phonological system (though the particular phonetic values may differ), but I wasn't confident enough in what I could gather to explicitly include Afrikaans. Eventually we might need to do a two- or three-column setup to show how certain phonemes differ in the northern, southern (Flemish?), and Afrikaans standard languages (along the lines of IPA chart for English dialects, but much simpler).

Regarding your comment on my talk page: I'm actually quite terrible at doing example words. I tend to only think of cognates, and for the life of me I don't know what English sound best approximates a voiced velar fricative—and that's only the beginning of it. But if you're right and Dutch doesn't aspirate the plosives, examples from consonant clusters would probably be better. Cheers! — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 19:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, it says at Aspiration that "French, Dutch and Latvian are examples of languages that do not have aspirated consonants." This was also recently a topic at John C. Wells's blog, and there are sound files at Dutch phonology (though your ear may be better than mine for that).

As for approximations, I don't think one would be expected (or possible) for voiced velar fricative, but there are other sounds that are much closer to English despite having exotic symbols, e.g. ʃ. But you're right, examples are hard (and often controversial).

Anyway, keep up the good work. Lfh (talk) 19:40, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Presentation of diaphones

Are we doing a pan-dialectal representation like we do with English? Either way, it seems kind of confusing right now to list ɣ and ʝ separately for what is, essentially, the same phoneme. The same goes for w and ʋ, as well as ç and x. We could do something like this:

Or we could do this

I'm just sort of thinking off the top of my head. What do you guys think? — Ƶ§œš¹ 23:59, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I had a vague notion of figuring out how to do something like that, especially the last one (it looks so clean), until I got lazy and just submitted the thing. I was especially skittish about many of the Afrikaans phones (especially the vowels). I really wish there was a dedicated page for Afrikaans phonology, but the best we've got is this. — ˈzɪzɨvə (talk) 00:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Let's see, according to Boersma (1997), Low German /ɣ/ stayed the same in most Low Franconian dialects though it is /ɦ/ in West Flemish, /x/ in most Low Saxon dialects, /χ/ in Holland Dutch and Afrikaans. Lass (1984) says that Dutch and correspond to Afrikaans and , respectively (p76). He also lists the vowels of Afrikaans to be (p 93) as well as a diphthong (as in hout, 'wood') though the list of diphthongs may not be exhaustive. Afrikaans shares Dutch's checked and free vowel system (that is, only long vowels and diphthongs can occur in stressed syllables with zero coda).

There's also this gem.

Is that helpful?— Ƶ§œš¹ 00:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Might be helpful

Happy to see you guys working on this! At some point in the past I tried to create this . I'm not sure if it's all correct but maybe it could be helpful for you. --Hooiwind (talk) 19:14, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

zone

"zone" is given as an example for , AND - presumably needs to be fixed? Lfh (talk) 11:14, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I see they've been removed. So, would heer, deur and voor, respectively, work for these vowels? Lfh (talk) 17:35, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Suriname

I added a separate column for Suriname since Dutch is the official language and a first language for about two thirds of its inhabitants. Pronunciation differs considerably from European Dutch, both for <g> and <ch>, <r>, <w>, etc, and for the vowels, which are pronounced way more sharply. --Hooiwind (talk) 17:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

What we're trying to do is have as few different systems as we need. When you added a separate column, the only difference between Flemish indicated for the consonants was the merger of <ch> and <g>, which doesn't seem different enough to call for a separate transcription. What are the other different pronunciations? — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:22, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

nasal ɑ̃ in Afrikaans

A nasal appears in the pronunciation given at Afrikaans - should it be included here? Lfh (talk) 15:29, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

We should indicate a nasalization diacritic rather than list any vowel that can be nasalized (I think it's all of them, but I'm not sure). — Ƶ§œš¹ 16:35, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Well, if we're not sure, let's wait until we have a source. Lfh (talk) 15:46, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Jean-Luc Dehaene

I don't know Dutch, but when I listen to the recording of his name, I hear and not , which is what's transcribed. Which is correct? 86.205.30.114 (talk) 01:18, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

If the orthography is any indicator, it should be as I've corrected it. Is his first name really pronounced with a nasal a as in French? — Ƶ§œš¹ 05:00, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

His name is pronounced a couple of times in this video: . It sounds like a nasal vowel. 86.205.30.114 (talk) 19:03, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

It does indeed. Perhaps we should put nasal a in the marginal vowels table. — Ƶ§œš¹ 23:30, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Confusing examples

I think the English examples are rather confusing because they do not indicate which of the three possibile pronunciations they represent. For example the w in the Dutch/Afrikaans word wang is given the English approximation wing but that must be one of the Dutch dialects, because in Afrikaans it is like v in English violet. It's especially bad when it comes to the vowels, as they are mostly different. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.72.129 (talk) 22:29, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

There's a problem with the fiets, ver, hawe examples because it is contradictory. The Dutch IPA sounds v and f are only sometimes merged together as f in Afrikaans. This is the case with words that are spelt with a /v/ or /f/ in Afrikaans, eg the fiets and ver examples. However in other cases there isn't a merging and the IPA v is preserved. In that case the word is spelt with a /w/ in Afrikaans, for example hawe. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.72.129 (talk) 10:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)

Another confusing example is that of the English equivalent for the vowel in môre, which is given as ɔː. The English equivalent given is "God (but longer)", which in my dialect would yield the father vowel. Wouldn't it be more appropriate to give "caught" as the example? 76.168.105.6 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:27, 31 October 2010 (UTC).

To add to what I wrote above, if the vowel in diep does not have the length of the one in deep, then wouldn't the vowel on the end of treaty be more appropriate? Also, for the Afrikaans pronunciation of the vowel in beet, why is "fear" given? For speakers who have the feet-feat merger but lack the chair-cheer merger, wouldn't this be confusing? It seems to me that "bear" would be better.76.168.105.6 (talk) 03:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what dialect that is but I've never heard an English dialect that pronounces "bear" with a sound like the ee vowel of Afrikaans. To me, the vowel in "bear" sounds like the vowel in the Afrikaans word "hê" (to have), which sounds like the English word "hair".

I'm not a Dutch speaker, but as far as I know, the vowel ɛi is not pronounced as in the English "May". It's much closer to "my", I think. Kbk (talk) 23:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

In Afrikaans this sound is pronounced pretty much exactly as in the English "May": the Afrikaans words "my" (me/my) and "Mei" (the month of May) sound the same as they English words May (the month) and may.

A few things missing?

There seem to be a few things missing, unless they are considered combinations of vowels we have represented already. I'll give them highlighted in their Afrikaans words: kraai (crow), baie (many, much, very), sê (say, tell), sneeu (snow), koei (cow), boikot (boycott), nooit (never). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.32.72.129 (talk) 10:25, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

That's right - we've got to work on that.--Hooiwind (talk) 22:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

Diep - Deep

The dutch Diep isn't pronounced the same as the english Deep. The dutch ie is shorter than the english ee. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.163.197.169 (talk) 11:17, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

It's the closest approximation. — Ƶ§œš¹ 12:21, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

How about the `ie' in `series' for a slightly better approximation, or even better, the second `i' in `critique'? More serious is the approximations of `eu', `ij' (and `ei' (same sound)), and `ui'. These don't sound like `boy', `more' or `May' at all (in Dutch, don't know about Afrikaans), or like anything I know of in English. Also, the `oe' in `hoed' is similarly short, so I'll at least fix `boot' to `good'. MarSch (talk) 12:33, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Deep, series, and critique all have the same vowel for me.

I think nurse would be better than more, but otherwise I can't think of better examples. Got any ideas? — Ƶ§œš¹ 12:41, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Dutch-Flemish-Afrikaans

Hi, could this article be called IPA for Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans? :) In Belgium Dutch is commonly called Vlaams (Flemish) instead of Southern Dutch :) Jaume87 (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

No rather not, as Dutch is the official language of Belgium. "Flemish" is not used in any official nor linguistic context, especially within Belgium itself. (You cannot compare it to the situation of "Valencian", which is Catalan in all but its name.) --Hooiwind (talk) 17:30, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I'd say no, but for the opposite reason that Hooiwind states. Flemish is often considered a form of Dutch (whether it's more or less similar to other varieties than Valencian and Catalan isn't that important). Thus, even though we encode for it, it's encapsulated in the "Dutch" part of the title. — Ƶ§œš¹ 18:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Afrikaans IPA

I'm familiar with IPA, but I'm not sure if I can clearly describe the sounds in IPA, I'm willing to record some words/sounds if someone can transcribe them into IPA, would be very helpfull. An error I've already corrected was for sê (this is supposed to be , or something similar). Servien (talk) 18:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

R and pre-R vowels

The R is not pronounced rolling everywhere. In Belgium, a more French-like R somewhere in the throat is very common as well, and in Holland a more English-like R seems to be used when the R is followed by another consonant. And I've heard Dutchmen use a throat-R as well. I think the vowel modification in 'deur', 'heer' en 'voor' due to the R, is solely a Northern Dutch feature (probably caused by the English-like R they use). There may be some dialects in Belgium where an R influences a preceding vowel, but certainly not in the way described in the table. As far as I know, we (Flemings) normally just pronounce those vowels the same way as in 'deuk', 'heel' en 'voogd'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.190.253.146 (talk) 11:52, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary notes

I am taking attention to reducing the number of footnotes in some of these IPA for X pages. These pronunciation keys are designed primarily for readers wanting to understand the language-specific IPA transcriptions they encounter in Misplaced Pages articles. We shouldn't swamp them with irrelevant details. Because this information may still be pertinent to the project, I have duplicated the notes below rather than try to find a place for them. This is irrespective of whether I think these claims are true or whether they are sourced. I will leave it to other editors to move the information to the appropriate article space or check that it already is. — Ƶ§œš¹ 01:59, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

• The lateral /l/ is velarized to postvocalically (and may even be vocalized by certain speakers).
• /eː/, /oː/, and /øː/ are pronounced as long monophthongs in Belgium, and as narrow closing diphthongs , , in the Netherlands.

Raf Simons

Can someone check whether the vowel is i or ɪ. There is a pronunciation of Forvo.

It is /i/. In Dutch, the letter i is always pronounced /i/ in an open syllable. And as the name Simons can be broken down into the two syllables si and mons, the former is an open syllable and therefore pronounced /si/. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 10:03, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Afrikaans vowel "o"

Would someone please re-check the Afrikaans vowel pronunciation for "o", because it's in the table as , while it's in both of these articles, Afrikaans and Comparison of Afrikaans and Dutch. Thanks. --Mahmudmasri (talk) 12:21, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Reversion

I undid quite a few of these changes, because:
- according to both the OED and Merriam-Webster, the u in curriculum is pronounced . This is not an approximation of Dutch or Afrikaans ;
- the pronunciation of Eng feud does not quite approximate Dutch fuut. The former is pronounced and the latter ;
- the vowel in Eng foot is not the same as the vowel in Dutch voet. The former is a near-close near-back vowel while the latter is a close back rounded vowel. The previous example boot (pronounced ) was therefore much better. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 13:07, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

These "Between vowel x and vowel y" attempts aren't helpful to readers, since people aren't normally able to approximate vowel space like that. The approximations aren't equivalents, so they're not going to be perfect. If those aren't close enough, we could simply say "no English equivalent" but if we can do it for German and French, we can do it for Dutch.

I'm somewhat neutral to the boot/foot issue, since there isn't a perfect equivalent for the Dutch vowel. It's short, like the vowel of foot but it's closer to the quality of boot. — Ƶ§œš¹ 13:28, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that descriptions such as "between feed and food" will not be of much use to many readers, but I think attempting to 'solve' this by adding examples like "feud" is the wrong way to go at it. The eu sound in feud is quite unlike the u sound in fuut; saying that the approximation is "not perfect" is quite the understatement. The sound in "feud" is much more like the sound in the Dutch word "sjoelen" than the sound in "fuut". I'd rather go with your suggestion of saying that there's no English equivalent. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 09:42, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

What if we said "roughly like"? — Ƶ§œš¹ 12:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Dutch transcriptions on Misplaced Pages are messed up

Hello. We want to do something with the pronunciations in here. The recordings on articles are often far from "standard Dutch", and yet any additional transcriptions are being DELETED as non-standard. Wait a second, if the transcription of the audio file is non-standard, then the file should be deleted as well. Re-record the standard Dutch version of it or don't complain about two transcriptions.

For instance, we've got an article Nijmegen. There's a standard Dutch transcription there Template:IPA-nl. And then, we've got a recording on the right, which CLEARLY is non-standard. It has IJ with a lowered onset, a clear diphthong in ME, and a voiceless uvular fricative in G Template:IPA-nl.

We've got also this guy constantly deleting anything that doesn't look standard Dutch, but doesn't bother at all about checking whether the recording matches the transcription. In most cases (not many, most) it does not.

Is it really what we want here? Confusion? I thought this was all about clarity.

We need to add Polder Dutch diphthongs to this article. We've already got these for EE EU and OO , but we also need the ones for AU/OU , EI/IJ and UI or perhaps to show that the onset is rounded. We also should allow to transcribe both /ɣ/ and /x/ as .

The best would be to have it like this: Standard Dutch | Belgian Dutch | Polder Dutch | Afrikaans. Since Standard Dutch and Belgian Dutch are very similar, in many places they would share the same vowels. We'd also add monophthongal pronunciations of AU/OU , EI/IJ and UI . Last but not least, we need people to stop deleting the regional pronunciations from the articles. ESPECIALLY if they match the recordings! It's insane. They're linked anyway to IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans, and people confused by regional pronunciations can match the vowels with the standard ones. Or we can transcribe both standard and regional forms. By saying regional I mean the most common (but non-standard) Polder and Belgian realisations, the ones above.

Not to mention that if that guy were editing Portuguese articles with his philosophy, he'd be kicked out from Misplaced Pages within seconds. I think "Neither Dutch variant is preferred over the other at Misplaced Pages except in cases where a local pronunciation is clearly more relevant, such as a place in Netherlands or a Belgian artist." must be added here. And transcribing both standard and polder pronunciations, especially if there's a recording of the second one, but the best would be "always", must be possible. Otherwise we're massively missing the point, and causing a lot of confusion.

Let's finally bring clarity to Dutch pronunciation and recordings here. It's a bloody mess now. Thanks for reading.

--89.79.88.109 (talk) 20:21, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about adding Polder Dutch. We've got three varieties based more-or-less on three separate nations with their own standards. This seems like an adequate criteria for inclusion, not whether a dialect exists.

For the time being, the best idea is to have these "non standard" transcriptions of Dutch placed beside the standard ones. For example, Template:IPA-nl local pronunciation: . Note that I've corrected the transcriptions to remove unnecessary diacritics that aren't explained here and shouldn't be in our Dutch transcriptions. — Ƶ§œš¹ 20:39, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, but we've already got a half-polder Netherlandic collumn. There used to be a note, something along the lines of "Transcription is non-standard and is used here for the sake of clarity" Well, is non-standard also, and could as well be used for the sake of clarity, since it's "South" collumn which is at the moment closer to the standard pronunciation. Maybe excluding , but this (or perhaps it's better to transcribe it as ) is also used in the Netherlandic "Posh" Dutch. And the thing is, in Nijmegen noone would pronounce it like I transcribed it. That's the thing. They would produce something like Template:IPA-nl, if I remember correctly. The vowels and the "g" are for sure like this, but I'm not sure how they go about pronouncing final /ən/. But it's the recording that pronounces a Polder variant Template:IPA-nl. It would be the best to have a native standard Dutch speaker, who has dialect-neutral (non-regional, standard, whatever you want to call it) in his vowel inventory to pronounce Dutch names here. But that guy who pronounces Nijmegen has done a massive work on pronouncing Dutch on Misplaced Pages. It would suck big time to replace all of this. Yes, I know it's irrelevant here. But I'm saying it anyway. Not to mention how much work it would cost to do it. One thing's for sure - what's present now causes one hell of a confusion for many Dutch learners.--89.79.88.109 (talk) 21:25, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I think adding a separate column for 'Polder Dutch' would be a very bad idea indeed. It assumes that 'Polder Dutch' has a certain notability amongst Dutch accents, which it doesn't have. The fact that recordings of word pronunciations often have a nonstandard pronunciation may be unfortunate, but it's not a reason to introduce nonstandard pronunciations into this table. Neither is the argument that it's confusing for learners of the Dutch language: Misplaced Pages is not a language learning website. - TaalVerbeteraar (talk) 22:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Then the pronunciations need to be re-recorded by standard Dutch speakers. It's not only often, it's very often. Whenever a word contains a stressed EE EU OO EI/IJ AU/OU UI you can be almost sure it won't be pronounced standard way in here. You say that it would be a bad idea to introduce a new column. Ok, but there are already Polder Dutch diphthongs for EE EU OO. Do you know any speaker that diphthongizes EE EU OO, but leaves AU/OU EI/IJ UI untouched (meaning: pronounces it exactly as in standard Dutch)? That would be a very strange accent, because these diphthongs would simply be too close to each other. What's presented now is confusing. Not to mention those recordings. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 22:44, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a serious problem to have recordings that grossly mismatch the transcriptions in ways that are both perceivable by readers and salient in regards to dialectal or sociolectal differences. I'm in favor of removing such recordings from the template that links here, possibly even entirely from articles. However, something like that can be pretty contentious so we would need to get a broader consensus than is available here. Perhaps one of the Wikiprojects related to the Netherlands? — Ƶ§œš¹ 23:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Yeah if we can get more people to discuss this it would be perfect. However I don't know which project exactly would that be. You're a lot longer on Misplaced Pages than me, so feel free to post the most important parts of my message(s) whenever you feel is the best.

Still - what should we do about in this article? It's only partially right. If one diphthongizes /eː/ /oː/ /øː/ one also MUST change the quality of /ɛi/ /ʌu/ /œy/. Whether it's changing by lowering the onset, removing the second vowel (monophthongization), or both. There's no dialect that has - it's plain impossible. Those are too close to each other.--89.79.88.109 (talk) 23:56, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Dutch phonology says that /eː/ /oː/ /øː/ "behave phonologically like the other simple vowels." That leads me to believe that the monophthongal pronunciations are the way to go. — Ƶ§œš¹ 00:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Now that the guide is changed, the hard work comes in checking all the transcriptions to make sure they conform. — Ƶ§œš¹ 15:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Should we use /ɫ/ and /./ or not? And I don't know what to do about assimilations. V and Z are "weak", which means they themselves are always devoiced (both in standard language and (almost?) all dialects) when preceeded by a voiceless consonant. For example Hoek van Holland is pronounced Hoek fan Holland, but when it's pronounced Hoek (pause) van (pause) Holland, the "v" is voiced again. It's just like lenition in Spanish. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 16:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Since we only have /l/, we should turn any instance of to . It's non-contrastive, right?

Other style guides only use the period (.) to mark a vowel hiatus. This means we don't need to mark diphthongs with any awkward diacritics. I say that's how we should do it here.

I trust your judgment with voicing assimilation. — Ƶ§œš¹ 17:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks for the help. I'll try to fix at least some of the pronunciations. But what about those recordings? We need to sort them out soon too, but of course not without agreement with more users than us two. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 17:13, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

This guy, who calls himself an admin, has obvious problems to convert letters and symbols into any meaning in his head, nevermind check them where he should. He was reverting my IPA fix on this page (check the revision history since 15 August 2012) about 2 weeks ago, and now he uses my argument - IPA must match WP:IPA for Dutch, when I have fixed it to be so! Because now it does not match. There's /ən/ while it should be /ə(n)/ (pronouncing both and for /ən/ is perfectly acceptable in standard Dutch, it's just that most dialects don't pronounce the /n/ and some do), */h/ while it should be /ɦ/ (it does exist in Dutch, but in the standard variant just as allophone of /ɦ/ after voiceless consonants, and both /ə/ and /n/ are voiced), and */uː/ which doesn't exist anywhere in Dutch, but before /r/, as an allophone of /u/ (in which case it can be a centering diphthong instead). Not to mention him removing my transcription of "Antonie van". I've never seen such an abuse of admin power. This guy should be deprived from his rights, he's ruining this site. This is plain insane. He was also telling me before to "source the IPA", but the current IPA is not sourced either. It's plain wrong and DOESN'T match the bloody WP:IPA for Dutch and Afrikaans, as he started to claim yesterday. I've already reported him (click here), if anyone wants to help, I'd be grateful. --89.79.88.109 (talk) 11:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Shame on you both for edit warring instead of bringing the issue up here sooner. I can get behind the ə(n) format, though I want to be clear about something: if any final /n/ is optionally/dialectally deleted or if the deletion is otherwise the result of an easy-to-apply phonological rule, then I'd say keep out the parentheses with an explanatory note here. That's how we deal with final r in English. — Ƶ§œš¹ 19:09, 28 August 2012 (UTC)