Help:IPA/Conventions for English: Difference between revisions

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==Alternative pronunciations==

When dictionaries give alternative pronunciations, they may mean that people disagree. For example, some people pronounce ''[[bath]]'' {{IPA|/bæθ/}}, with the vowel of ''bat'', while others with the same accent pronounce it {{IPA|/bɑːθ/}}, with the vowel of ''[[bra]]''. This is the kind of difference celebrated in "[[Let's Call the Whole Thing Off|You like to-may-toes; I like to-mah-toes]]". On Wikipedia, we would normally need to transcribe both, unless only one is considered correct, as may be the case for personal and place names.

However, often variant transcriptions reflect distinctions between accents, and these we do not need to transcribe, since our IPA key already covers such distinctions. For example, Merriam-Webster transcribes ''merry'' as "{{IPA|/ˈmɛri/}}" and ''marry'' as "{{IPA|/ˈmɛri, ˈmæri/}}". The two transcriptions of ''marry'' are meant to show that some people pronounce it the same as ''merry;'' it does ''not'' mean that there are two pronunciations of ''marry'' among those who either do or do not make this distinction (see [[Mary–marry–merry merger|''Mary–marry–merry'' merger]]). It would not be possible to have the song lyric "You say ''marry'' and I say ''merry''", because only those people who say those words differently would be able to sing it. Therefore on Wikipedia we would only have one transcription for each: ''merry'' {{IPAc-en|ˈ|m|ɛr|i}}, ''marry'' {{IPAc-en|ˈ|m|ær|i}}. Since the IPA key defines the orthographic conventions of {{IPAc-en|ɛr}} and {{IPAc-en|ær}} according to basic English words, readers who do not make the ''marry–merry'' distinction will see {{IPAc-en|ɛr}} and {{IPAc-en|ær}} as being equivalent, much as the spelling pronunciations ''YOU-clid'' and ''EWE-clid'' for "Euclid" would be seen as equivalent.