User talk:Orcaguy

Danish IPA
Please be more careful next time, your transcription was very flawed:. Thank you. --87.63.114.210 12:37, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Species Hypernyms
Thanks for working on taxonomic names.

For species in genera with no taxa between the ranks of genus and species, there's usually not much benefit to having a Hypernyms section: the headword contains the genus name and the structured definition almost always has the family. If there is a subfamily, tribe, or subtribe, then such a section adds useful information. DCDuring (talk) 02:53, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Italics in taxonomic names
Only names of genus rank or lower should appear in italics. defaults to italics so the wikitext has to reverse the default by enclosing it in "" - "". DCDuring (talk) 10:59, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Norwegian Nynorsk IPA
Hi! I see you are adding IPA transcriptions to Norwegian Nynorsk words. Great! It seems to me there aren't that many of us who have been doing that. (I am mainly staying clear of Bokmål, as I am not a Bokmål user.) I've been wondering about jotting down an outline for some basic guidelines for how to write IPA for Nynorsk, but haven't gotten around to it. It seems useful to me to agree on some sort of outline of how we write IPA for Nynorsk, so that there is some consistency, and I hope you agree. I have been using, and linking to, this guideline (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Norwegian_pronunciation), and indeed, I edited it quite a bit as well to bring it in line with the Wikipedia article on Norwegian phonology. As there is no fixed standard, several pronunciations will often be acceptable, and it shouldn't be a problem to include several different ones. I certainly don't want to imply that my way of doing things is the only right one, but I notice a couple of points where we seem to disagree, and which it is probably best to come to an agreement on (and with other users who might add pronunciation for Norwegian Nynorsk as well):

It seems clear to me that IPA for Nynorsk should reflect the pronunciation of the preponderance of Nynorsk users. So words that are the same in Bokmål or Nynorsk should not necessarily have the same IPA-transcription. So for instance, vaskebjørn, which you have transcribed - I would transcribe. In your [brackets] you specify a reflexive pronunciation with [ɳ], which I'm sure may be used by a few Nynorsk users, but not by the vast majority. This is an example of where I think the Nynorsk and Bokmål IPA-transcriptions should clearly be different.

I think it is best to stick to phonemic transcription, as that will include a greater variety of all the different pronunciations that are out there. For instance, whether the /r/ is realized as [r], [ɾ], [ʀ] or [ʁ] need not be specified.

We need to include the toneme. I have been doing it the way it is done in the Wikipedia article on Norwegian phonology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_phonology) with ˈ or ² as stress marks.

And I strongly feel stress and length should be included in the phonemic transcription as well, as they quite clearly create minimal pairs in Norwegian.

The /ɑ/ or /a/ phoneme is of course the same, so it should always be written the same - I've seen both, and I use /ɑ/, as that is what I have mostly seen in the literature, and again, what is used in the Wikipedia-article. The same goes for several other symbols as well - e.g. you use /v/ whereas most others I've seen here use /ʋ/. The important thing is to agree on a set, and use those. I try to be consistent in using the ones in (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Norwegian_pronunciation).

I hope you don't mind me bringing this up, but I think consistency is probably reasonably important. Please feel free to tell me where you think my approach is totally wrong, and hopefully we can end up with a common standard. (If you think this conversation is best had on some other talk page, please feel free to move it.) --Barend (talk) 08:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * To some degree, I agree with the sentiment that Nynorsk should use the pronunciaiton of the people that actually write it. However, the Norwegian language isn't just one dialect, and a word may have countless ways to be pronounced. I mostly only add one transcription to Bokmål and Nynorsk (broad and narrow), that being the Oslo dialect, because that's the only dialect I have any experience transcribing (this applies mostly to /r/ and the retroflex phonemes), so more transcriptions are always welcome on both written standards.


 * The broad transcriptions I give are mostly just to give a general pronunciation guide, not a perfect recreation of the sound it makes. As in the example, I didn't give any stress markers, unlike my narrow transcription . Though if you feel this is essential, I may edit some of my previous transcriptions.


 * The reason I don't add tonemes are mostly because my dialect doesn't have them, but from what I understand, they're for the most part not important, except in certain words (?)


 * I use /a/ in broad transcription, because it's not really important to distinguish from /ɑ/, considering they aren't seperate phonemes in any Norwegian dialect. The same goes for /v/ and /ʋ/. This probably extends to other vowel pairs like /e/ and /ɛ/, /i/ and /ɪ/, etc. Though I have nothing against using the more "precise" pronunciation.


 * In other languages with standards, there is some merit to consistency, but in Norwegian, both Bokmål and Nynorsk, I personally don't believe there is much except for the most spoken dialects. Though, if you want to replace or add a transcription, then go ahead; as I said earlier, there isn't really a standard. If you decide to add a transcription then I would recommend you specify that they're dialectal (and maybe also specify that the original ones are Oslo based, now that I think about it)


 * Orcaguy (talk) 13:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I certainly don't mind the Oslo dialect being one of the versions given, also for Nynorsk. As you say, there is no standard pronunciation. I suppose a "live and let live" attitude to adding variant pronunciations will work fine.
 * As for the /a/ and /ɑ/ - issue, I may not have expressed myself clearly. Indeed, they are not separate phonemes, therefore my point was that for consistency, it is probably best to use either /a/ or /ɑ/ to express this phoneme in all instances. To avoid giving the impression that they are different. And if someone clicks the "key" link, they will only find the to the /ɑ/-phoneme, no /a/. The same would go for /v/ and /ʋ/. But since both versions are in use already, it may be too much to work to seek out and standardize all instances. Maybe it's not a big deal.
 * Tonemes are important - there are plenty of instances where they form minimal pairs (e.g. one of my most recent edits taka). And also where they don't form minimal pairs, foreigners would need to know the toneme to perfect their pronunciation. But if you don't have them in your dialect, I understand it can be hard to work them out. As long as you don't object to others adding them to your transcriptions.
 * I suppose we'll just continue editing away, and if we hit specific snags where we disagree on something, we'll bring them up as they arise?--Barend (talk) 14:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

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