Help talk:IPA/Galician

[ɐ, ɪ, ʊ]

IMO the usage of [ɐ, ɪ, ʊ] here and in Astur-Leonese is problematic for several reasons. — Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 00:42, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to list them then. I can't guess it... Mr KEBAB (talk) 01:14, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I'll try to guess:

- Non-linguists will have a harder time putting [ɐ, ɪ, ʊ] where they should occur due to their unexpected appearance in some cases. Because of the unstressed nature of these sounds, using these symbols correctly may be difficult even for native speakers.

- Regueira (2010) transcribes them [a̝, e̝, o̝]; due to IPA principles, it is acceptable to drop the "raised" diacritic in more broad transcriptions.

Am I getting there? Or is there something else? Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:36, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Yes, you are, but there are other reasons:

1. Final /e, o/ are mostly pronounced as [e̠, o̟] (IMO they can be raised, but they're closer to close mid vowels than to near-close vowels in most modern accents, including the standard variety used in the media), and final /a/ is not associated with [ə] as in other languages (compare Valencian which transcribes [ɐ] as "a" and Central Catalan which transcribes [ə] as "ə/ɐ" or German /ər/ → [ɐ]).
2. Other Romance varieties have closer allophones to near-close vowels but we ignore this, so I think we should reach a consensus on how to transcribe them. IMO we could use [ɐ, ɪ, ʊ] here and improve the note, however if we do that we should modify the transcriptions of Portuguese (esp. BP), Catalan and other languages and it might be a bit complicated.

— Jɑuмe ^(dis-me) 16:04, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. I think you can remove them with no problem... unless someone disagrees? Mr KEBAB (talk) 16:42, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

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Galician doesn't have the [ʊ] phoneme

Have a look at the second chart displayed on the official site of the Galician Culture Council.

--Jack Redfield (talk) 17:36, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

As I said on my talk page, [ʊ] is an allophone, not a phoneme. — Eru·tuon 17:55, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@Erutuon: More accurately, it's the product of the neutralization of the close–mid distinction in unstressed final syllables; it's a vowel in-between the stressed /u/ and /o/ (just as [ɪ] is a vowel that is in-between /i/ and /e/). Actually, I can see how both [ʊ] and [ɪ] (and [ɐ], too!) can be seen as unstressed-only vocalic phonemes as they can appear word-internally, as in termonuclear [ˌtɛɾmʊnukleˈaɾ] (notice that [ʊ] is right next to unstressed [u]), which definitely could be transcribed /ˌtɛɾmʊnukleˈaɾ/ if one followed my logic. But the phonemicity of the centralized vowels is something we should cover on Galician phonology, not here - and only using reputable sources. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 18:20, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

For future reference, this came up in reference to this transcription in Voiceless dental fricative. — Eru·tuon 18:54, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Yeísmo in Galician (Dialectal consonants)

In Galician, yeísmo is a widespread phenomenon that makes the traditional [ʎ] sound become [ɟ] (not [ʝ], as it's shown currently in this article). It is well documented in articles such as El yeísmo y el fortalecimiento de /j/ en Galicia.

Quoting from page 6:

Como sucedía con el castellano [de Galicia], la realización más común o prototípica de yeísmo en gallego, incluso en posición intervocálica, es la oclusiva palatal sonora.

Similarly to Spanish [spoken in Galicia], the most common or archetypical realization of yeísmo is the voiced palatal plosive, even in intervocallic position.

There is even some dialectal variation to this: a few places pronounce it closer to [d͡ʑ], [ʝ] or even [j], however the most common by far is still [ɟ].

At the end of the article, Dubert goes on to say:

En el gallego existen a este respecto tres variedades lingüísticas:

una variedad no yeísta, que mantiene el segmento lateral palatal;

una variedad yeísta, que opone el segmento oclusivo palatal sonoro, históricamente descendiente del segmento lateral palatal en palabras como [ˈkaɟo] ‘callo’, a un segmento aproximante palatal en palabras como [ˈkajo] ‘caio’;

y un sistema que ha desfonologizado esta última oposición, fundamentalmente, a favor de las realizaciones obstruyentes [es decir, callo → [ˈkaɟo] ← caio].

In Galician there is in this respect three linguistic varieties:

a non-yeísta variety, which keeps the lateral palatal segment;

a yeísta variety which opposes the voiced palatal plosive, (historically descending from the lateral palatal segment in words such as [ˈkaɟo] ‘callo’) to a palatal aproximant segment in words like [ˈkajo] ‘caio’;

and a system that dephonologized the latter opposition, mostly in favor of obstruent realizations [that is to say, callo → [ˈkaɟo] ← caio].

In fact, the [ɟ] pronuntiation is, at the very least, as prevalent as the [ʎ] pronunciation (as maps from the ALGa (Galician Linguistic Atlas) show) and, at most, the most prevalent pronunciation nowadays in Galicia (as Francisco Dubert, Carballo Calero, Porto Dapena and Constantino García state, all of them referenced by Dubert in his article).

To sum up, I think that the consonant that now appears as [ʝ] in the dialectal consonants section of this article should definitely be changed to [ɟ]. We may even consider placing this sound in the main chart due to [ɟ] being widespread and standard in the formal register (unlike [ħ], frowned upon in formal registers]. In any case, the correct phoneme is [ɟ]. Navarretedf (talk) 11:47, 30 April 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for raising this. I could confirm your assertion in English sources (sorry, they're just what I can personally easily assess the reliability of, nothing against sources in other languages) like Regueira (1996) and Martínez-Gil (2022). Given their descriptions, I think we should just replace ⟨ʎ⟩ with ⟨ɟ⟩ and remove ⟨ʝ⟩.

You seem to have misunderstood what this help page is though. As the banner at the top says, it is a pronunciation key whose whole purpose is to explain what each symbol means for those who clicked a transcription in an article, which is why undiscussed changes are proscribed by MOS:PRON#Other languages and I directed you here. It is not an encyclopedic article itself (Galician phonology is, and you're welcome to update it as long as you comply with the core content policies). Nardog (talk) 00:36, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh ok, I understand now, I guess it isn't an easy task to revise all the transcriptions in every article about Galician and these things can't be changed inmediately here. Sorry for the mix-up. Navarretedf (talk) 07:08, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

There actually aren't that many articles with transcriptions of Galician with ⟨ʎ⟩. You're okay with replacing all of them with ⟨ɟ⟩, right? Nardog (talk) 15:22, 1 May 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion yes, I think it's the choice that best describes reality. The only problem might be that the RAG is a little bit prescriptively in denial about this and still recommends ⟨ʎ⟩, despite themselves acknowledging that the most extended pronunciation is in fact ⟨ɟ⟩ and not ⟨ʎ⟩. Their recommendation is written in Galician, but says on page 15:

A different case is that of the lateral palatal [ʎ], which was substituted for a voiced palatal plosive [ɟ] in the language of the great majority of speakers [...] Despite very few speakers conserving the lateral palatal (only part of the oldest generations and some others [...]) the criterion of preference for conservative solutions along with the supicion that there might be influence from Spanish [...] makes this unrecommendable [...] for the standard language.

Personally, I lean towards descriptivism and there's plenty of evidence about ⟨ɟ⟩ being majoritary, so... It's a yes for me. Navarretedf (talk) 17:54, 1 May 2023 (UTC)