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I would like to submit a petition regarding the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet, abbreviated as the “IPA”.

I have observed that the Manual of Style prefers a plain text format of the IPA pronunciation of the subject’s title, which is beneficial for clarity and accessibility, however, those who may not be familiar or knowledgeable about the IPA may find the plain text format be cluttering the page.

Although there is a Footnote section on the IPA subpage that addresses highly technical and multiple IPA pronunciations, it does not extend to suggesting that main pronunciations also be footnoted.

I suggest that all pronunciations—whether they are common, uncommon, or multiple variants—be moved to footnotes. This approach maintains an uncluttered lead section with the detailed IPA information accessible via a footnote for those who seek further clarity.

This change balances the need for a clean, readable article while also providing detailed phonetic information for those interested. I welcome feedback on this proposal and am particularly interested in hearing about potential drawbacks or alternative solutions that might preserve both accessibility and readability. WorldClassChampion (talk) 10:25, 20 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I second that petition, the IPA is cryptic and likely only readable by a minor fraction of visitors, while taking a top spot in the article. Though rather than a footnote (which are often cluttered), maybe having it moved to the info box for main pronunciation, and a subsection for the variants? Wkyx (talk) 07:28, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. A single IPA pronunciation is good to have, especially for names and foreign words where the pronunciation is often not obvious. It's also not hard to learn. Therefore it's fine for the first sentence in such cases, though in more complicated ones (such as with several possible pronunciations), a note may be more appropriate. Gawaon (talk) 08:18, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IPA is usually considered very hard to learn. The number of symbols alone is a barrier, and TBH even in the linguistics field, it's not that easy: many of the pronunciations can require months of training with tutoring. And if your ears were never trained at a young age, you may never be able to get them right.

If wikipedia was primarily about linguistics, then yes, it would make sense to have IPA up there in a prime spot, otherwise english pronunciation respelling is more practical (it's accessible to all visitors). Wkyx (talk) 08:39, 10 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IPA is not harder to learn than any alphabet that seeks cover all sounds in all languages in the world would be, which naturally requires a lot of symbols - there is nothing hard when you are only trying to learn the symbols for those languages that concern you, which is what most people do. It can only be difficult for you if any new alphabet or spelling system different from the English one is difficult for you. If anyone 'in the linguistics field' finds it difficult, it is probably because they are just bad at languages in general and shouldn't have got into linguistics in the first place.--Anonymous44 (talk) 23:15, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While US dictionaries normally don't use IPA, UK dictionaries normally do. So the fraction of visitors who can read it may be greater than you think.

Anyway, we often do have both pronunciation respelling and IPA, and in some cases they're even both relegated to a footnote or the infobox (e.g. technetium, Łódź). The trouble is that there are some words where respelling doesn't work very well (because English spelling is messy enough that there's no unambiguous way to write a vowel), and of course it doesn't work at all when it's specifically a foreign-language pronunciation that is being presented. Double sharp (talk) 09:04, 10 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I am not a native English speaker and I was taught English at school using IPA, just as all of my English dictionaries used it. That said, the current ridiculous interdialectal transcription of English in use on Wikipedia seems to be the phonetic transcription of the accent of a highly mediocre non-native teacher of English, so I would gladly see it gone and it is the IPA for languages other than English that I would primarily defend.--Anonymous44 (talk) 23:15, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree, too. IPA is only 'hard to learn' for most native English speakers inasmuch as everything foreign is 'hard to learn' for most native English speakers. It is not at all hard to learn for people who actually do have some interest in and experience of foreign languages, who just happen to be unusually few in English-speaking countries, probably because English speakers expect everyone else to speak their language instead. The English Wikipedia is far from being used only by native English speakers, English is a global lingua franca and many non-native English speakers, including myself, have been taught English with IPA. BTW, the proposal seems to have been implemented already in recent years before anyone was asked about it - I keep opening an article expecting to see information about the pronunciation and see it relegated to a footnote (at best), when it used to be in the lede years ago.--Anonymous44 (talk) 23:15, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just revisiting a discussion from a few years back (Archive 10#References): what are your thoughts on adding a small references section to this guide as a reminder of WP:Verifiability? Something along the lines of this:

Where they appear in an article, pronunciation transcriptions should be verified by a reliable source. Wikipedia has a selection of dictionary source templates that may be useful in formatting inline citations to reliable secondary sources. Appropriate primary sources for a pronunciation transcription include footage of a person pronouncing their own name and material officially released by a relevant authority, such as an organization documenting their name's pronunciation.

--Muchness (talk) 04:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to propose just the opposite. IPA transcriptions are virtually impossible to reference (go ahead: try to find references for a few random ones), and thus, unsurprisingly, almost all IPA transcriptions on Wikipedia are unreferenced. If we required what you suggest, almost all IPA transcriptions would disappear from Wikipedia eventually. Would that be a good thing?

I should mention that I have recently been involved in a discussion on this matter with some other users, one of whom objected to my insertion of a transcription into an article that he had created. I got the impression that some of the participants were not exactly conversant with language matters, and I think it's important to get input from some users who are.

As I see it, a word's or a name's pronunciation is a matter of language (I am a "language person"; that’s what I studied at university, and I speak several languages), just like spelling, grammar, usage and punctuation. We do not require references for edits dealing with those things. For instance, if some user writes:

He done never seen them there results cuz he done croaked afore they come out.

Nobody – and I mean nobody – would demand a reference if another user changed this to read:

He never saw those results because he died before they were published.

We trust Wikipedia users to know the language that they are writing in all its aspects. Yes, some are a bit untrustworthy that way, and that's why anybody can edit Wikipedia. If somebody encounters a language matter in an article, they can deal with it. We trust Wikipedians to use the right words, the right constructions, the right formatting, without the need to insert references to a dictionary, a grammar or some tome on good writing skills.

Why, therefore, should IPA transcriptions (or any other kind of pronunciation text) need a reference? Since we rely on Wikipedians themselves to provide language for the article text, image captions and other things that involve language from their own knowledge of such things, can we rely on them to furnish phonetic transcriptions, also based on their knowledge of such things as a word's or a name's pronunciation and the language that it comes from (and IPA script)? I say yes, why not? It seems to me that a broad exception is already made for language, and even that a kind of consensus already exists for leaving IPA transcriptions unreferenced, as the Wikipedians who do this are legion.

I would like a serious discussion about this, preferably with a good number of users who are knowledgeable in language, as I believe that blindly following the rules on the point of phonetic transcriptions would lead to Wikipedia becoming a less informative source. Kelisi (talk) 05:10, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

​ "IPA transcriptions are virtually impossible to reference." Why? I've used Collins and Cambridge online dictionaries as well as J. C. Wells's Longman Pronunciation Dictionary to source numerous IPA transcriptions. In addition other sources give pronunciations that can easily be rendered in IPA in the spirit of WP:CALC. Along with editor transcription of audio sources (which is admittedly on shakier ground in terms of reliability), quite a number of pronunciations can be sourced and should be when idiosyncratic or counterintuitive (e.g. with Ray vs. Dave Davies). ~2025-32911-10 (talk) 08:58, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just added a sourced pronunciation here with minimal effort. It can be done. —  AjaxSmack  15:38, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]