Talk:Danish phonology/Archive 2

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What is "lenis"?

In trying to answer this question, I found this article's phonetic description of the plosives quite useless. AFAIK "lenis" is not a term that has an agreed-upon set of phonetic correlates. Presenting [b̥ʰ, d̥ˢʰ, ɡ̊ʰ] as a more precise transcription compared to [pʰ, tˢ, kʰ] is meaningless without explicitly explaining what the difference is, because the IPA defines each symbol in terms of broad categories (Principles ¶ 2). ⟨b̥, d̥, ɡ̊⟩ usually imply partially voiced, as the OP of the SE question surmised, but obviously that's not the case here. Do either Grønnum or Krech et al. define "lenis" phonetically? If so, how?

So how are the plosives articulated, exactly? Mortensen & Tøndering (2013) confirm the difference is measurable in VOT, but also say "The aspiration distinction is present only in syllable initial position before vowels and sonorant consonants. In medial position the stops are often pronounced as weakly voiced [b d g]", citing Fischer-Jørgensen & Hutters (1981). This, IMHO, is a piece of information worth including in our article, but "weakly voiced" needs clarification. Does it mean the voiced plosives have a non-modal type of phonation? (Francis et al. 2003 suggest so.) Are they voiced partially or throughout? And how often is "often"? Is there other literature available on intervocalic realization of Danish (phonetic) plosives? Nardog (talk) 12:03, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

All good questions, which I'd like the answers to too. See above about getting rid of the overly precise or perhaps even spurious transcription [b̥ʰ, d̥ˢʰ, ɡ̊ʰ]. — kwami (talk) 23:14, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Found in Goblirsch (2018:134–5):

Voice is generally absent in the unaspirated stops, but they may be weakly voiced, especially medially in a voiced environment. See Jespersen 1906: 62–64; Hansen 1956: 46–50; Fischer-Jørgensen 1960 and 1966; and Andersen 1954a: 341–42. Only on Bornholm is full voice often present, but this reflects dialect conditions closer to South Swedish and southwestern Norwegian than to island Danish. The medial voicing in most variants of Standard Danish must be seen as owing to assimilation, depending on the individual and speech tempo. Instrumental studies by Eli Fischer-Jørgensen (1952) and Henrik Abrahams (1949: 116–21, 228–30) show that voicing depends primarily on the preceding vowel and is partial. Abrahams noted that only the implosion phase could become voiced, with the closure always remaining voiceless. Fischer-Jørgensen registered rare voicing of Danish p, t, k.

I couldn't access any of the sources cited (which are conspicuously old), but it's useful information. I could, however, access Fischer-Jørgensen (1954), in which she says (44):

The difference in aspiration is accompanied by a difference in the duration of the closure. This is relatively shorter for p t k than for b d ɡ. The differences are small ... but very stable, and statistically reliable.

These seem to be the only differences between the two groups of sounds. Both are completely voiceless after a pause and after a voiceless sound, and partly voiced by assimilation after a voiced sound (B D G [non-initial phonetic stops] are often completely voiced after a voiced sound).

She goes on to say (44–5):

There does not seem to be any regular correspondence in intensity either: k has normally a stronger explosion than ɡ; on the other hand d always has a stronger explosion than t, and p-b do not show any constant differences. There is no physiological evidence either for a stronger tension of p t k. Muscular feeling goes in the opposite direction, particularly for t-d, and palatograms show identity of contact, or slightly more contact, for d and ɡ. But there seems to be a difference in the manner of explosion, p t k being released by the air current, b d ɡ by active movements of lips and tongue.

It is in many ways interesting to note that we have here a case where strong aspiration is combined with weak articulation and short closure.

So maybe this is what Grønnum and Krech et al. are referring to when they say the Danish stops are all "lenis"—which would go without saying if we simply stated that the difference lies only in the duration of aspiration. Nardog (talk) 18:10, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Ledefoged speaks of active and passive voicelessness. In actively voiceless consonants, as for example in Polynesia, the glottis is held open, and they are not allophonically voiced intervocalically. In passively voiceless consonants, as for example in Australia, the glottis is more lax, and they do tend to be voiced intervocalically. Danish sounds like the passive version. It might be quite useful actually to use ⟨p t k⟩ for actively voiceless consonants as in Polynesia, and ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩ for passively voiceless consonants as in Australia. But AFAICT that is not conventional IPA usage and certainly isn't how we transcribe other languages here on WP. I wouldn't be opposed to using such a convention on WP if we could do it reasonably consistently. We'd need to consider slack voice, but I suspect that there may not prove to be a meaningful distinction between 'slack voice' and what has been called 'lenis' for Danish, though the slightly breathy quality of slack voice may be an issue. I wonder if we could transcribe them as slightly breathy instead. — kwami (talk) 00:24, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Voiceless voiced plosives

Danish is commonly transcribed with [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊] for [p t k], e.g. in Basbøll 2005, but there is no distinction being made here. This is an inheritance from Dania transcription, where p t k are IPA [pʰ tʰ kʰ], b d g are IPA [p t k], and b d g are IPA [b d ɡ]. To keep the IPA closer to Dania transcription and Danish orthography, many authors use the compromise [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊] -- but that makes no sense for us here on WP, where we try to use the same IPA conventions for all languages. — kwami (talk) 07:41, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm pinging @Fdom5997: because they ignored the link I gave to them. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 23:21, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2 I say we just transcribe them as [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊]. End of discussion. Fdom5997 (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fdom5997: I suggest that you read WP:OWNERSHIP and take a closer look at Basbøll (2005). He clearly calls the [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊] voiceless unaspirated, not "partially voiced". The reason scholars write [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊] and not [p t k] is because ⟨p t k⟩ are already used for the aspirated series in phonemic transcription (which is a bad choice in my view). We don't have to follow that. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fdom5997: Also, please watch what you're doing when you're reverting. It's the second time you failed to turn all instances of ⟨p t k⟩ into ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩ (see [1] and [2]), which makes me question whether you even know what you're doing. These represent the same sounds and aren't differentiated in most sources. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:46, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: There's hardly any need to write /b, d, ɡ/ in phonemic transcription. Phonemic transcription always uses /p, t, k/ for the aspirated series, so by adding the "aspirated" diacritic we're already not adhering to that convention. What we could do is to replace the superscript s with a plain aspiration diacritic. There are no phonemic affricates in Danish and [tˢ] is the main allophone of /tʰ/. That would align our transcription of Danish with those of Icelandic and Faroese. But then the same should be done on Help:IPA/Danish and, naturally, in transcriptions linking to that guide. The aspirated series should be written with /pʰ, tʰ, kʰ/ and the unaspirated series with /p, t, k/. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 00:06, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Actually, it's better to write the main allophone of /tʰ/ with ⟨tsʰ⟩ in phonetic transcription if we want to write ⟨tɕ⟩ instead of ⟨tʰj⟩ in phonetic tr. (the latter would be inconsistent with writing /sj/ with ⟨ɕ⟩ in phonetic tr.). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 00:25, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

I think I agree with you. I didn't do that because it would've been a more drastic change and my primary concern was getting rid of the confusing notation ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩.

On the other hand, /b d g/ have voiced approximant allophones too, so transcribing them ⟨b d g⟩ is not unreasonable. I guess I don't care much either way. But yeah, we'd need to coordinate with the key for IPA-da, and that would mean changing all of our Danish IPA transcriptions. I could do that with AWB, but it would be a bit involved and I'd rather not do it for nothing. Do we distinguish the major allophones among the consonants? If so, what do we do with the vowels, since the letters used for phonemic transcription are inaccurate phonetically? It would be weird to use phonetically accurate allophonic transcription for consonants but conventionalized transcription for vowels. But if we use phonetically accurate transcription for vowels, it will cause a lot of confusion for people working from the conventional transcription, which almost everyone will be. We'll end up with a mix, where people won't be able to rely on any of our Danish IPA transcriptions, because many of the vowel letters have conflicting values in the two systems. — kwami (talk) 01:41, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: Which is a correct move anyway because ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩ aren't used in phonemic transcription.

Yes, and /d/ can be flapped in nordisk and Vil du med?, but so can both /t/ and /d/ or just /t/ in English in butter and ladder. Using a "voiceless" letter in phonemic transcription doesn't mean that one of the allophones of that phoneme can't be voiced (and vice versa when it comes to vowels, e.g. schwa in Russian can be both voiced and voiceless, depending on the environment)

Help:IPA/Danish already uses that set of symbols and so do transcriptions linking to it (save for ⟨tsʰ⟩ for the aspirated alveolar plosive - that we write with ⟨tˢ⟩, which is slightly inconsistent with the marginal phone [tɕ] [this, by the way, can't be written with ⟨tɕʰ⟩, as the fricative element is /j/ that was influenced by both aspiration and affrication). I agree that using narrow transcription for plosives but broad (actually, very broad when you take a look at the long [ɛː œː ɔː æː ɶː ɒː] and also at [ɛ æ a ɑ ɑː]) for vowels is inconsistent.

See Help:IPA/Danish#Comparison_with_other_transcription_schemes. Sources themselves don't agree with each other on how to transcribe Danish into IPA. The Basbøll-Wagner type of transcription (the one used here, in Den Danske Ordbog and in Grønnum (2005)) is, I would argue, non-IPA. When someone uses ⟨ʌ⟩ for a rounded vowel in the ⟦ɒ⟧ region because ⟨ɒ⟩ is already used for an open-mid ⟦ɔ⟧, which is transcribed with ⟨ɒ⟩ because ⟨ɔ⟩ is used for a vowel that is higher and more front than cardinal [ɔ] then there's something wrong with their transcription.

See also Help talk:IPA/Danish#The set of vowel symbols we use is misleading. Last year we agreed to partially change Help:IPA/Danish. The change is still unsatisfactory in my view (note that what we transcribe here with ⟨a æ⟩ and ⟨ʌ ɒ⟩ are no longer differentiated in the guide, we write both with ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ɒ⟩ and the open central vowel with ⟨a⟩).

I suggest the following:

• We transcribe the unaspirated plosive phonemes with ⟨p t k⟩ in all types of transcription.
• The aspirated alveolar plosive will be transcribed with ⟨tʰ⟩ in phonemic transcription. Its affricate allophone will be transcribed ⟨tsʰ⟩.
• We keep transcribing ⟨i y u e ø o⟩ as such (/o/ is near-close like /e/, /e o/ just means that they're higher than /e̞ o̞/).
• Replace current ⟨ɛ œ ɔ⟩ with ⟨e̞ ø̞ o̞⟩ (⟨e̞ ø̞⟩ are used by Haberland). I prefer ⟨e̞⟩ for orthographic æ because this vowel has the same phonemic height as what we currently transcribe with ⟨œ ɔ⟩ and because it's unstable, prone to being merged with /e/ or (the long version) /æː/ (current transcription).
• Replace current ⟨æ ɶ ɒ⟩ with ⟨ɛ œ ɔ⟩ (⟨ɛ⟩ is used by Haberland, whereas ⟨œ⟩ and ⟨ɔ⟩ are used by Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen. ⟨œ⟩ is also used in Principles of the IPA.)
• Replace current ⟨a ɑ ʌ⟩ with ⟨æ a ɒ⟩ (⟨æ⟩ is used by Krech et al., whereas ⟨a⟩ is used by both them and in Principles of the IPA).

We'd end up with the following set of symbols: ⟨i y u e ø o e̞ ø̞ o̞ ɛ œ ɔ æ a ɒ⟩. ⟨æː⟩, ⟨ɑ(ː)⟩ and ⟨ʌ⟩ would then cease to be used, like ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩. We'd end up with a set of symbols radically different from the Basbøll-Wagner transcription - but that is non-IPA in many aspects. Because it'll be so different, the reader will probably immediately know that it's a different type of transcription. Help_talk:IPA/Danish and this talk pages are the places to clarify the confusion.

I'd argue that there are just as many readers that would deeply appreciate this change. In your own words, we should try to use IPA for IPA. Plus, it'd allow us not to turn Help:IPA/Danish into Danish phonology vol. 2. The Basbøll-Wagner transcription requires too much explanation to be understood. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:24, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

True, voiceless plosives can become voiced fricatives or approximants intervocalically, but it's much less common than voiced plosives doing that. That's why I don't think it's unreasonable to keep ⟨b d g⟩. The problem with that is that people tend to take word-initial allophones as fundamental, and it will probably be more confusing to suggest that voiced plosives devoice word-initially than to suggest that tenuis plosives lenite intervocallically. So I think your approach is probably better.

If we can apply this consistently to our IPA-da transcriptions, then I would support it. But I have a few concerns. I don't know Danish, mind you, I'm just going off the vowel chart in our article, from Grønnum (1998:100). If that's accurate, then I'd question one or two of your changes:

• The high mid vowels are ⟨ɛ ø o⟩. Thus it would seem that ⟨ɛ⟩ is the actual /e/. However, since there's a gap in the mid front vowels, I suppose we could keep ⟨e⟩ as it is (rather than positing /ɪ̟/) and move ⟨ɛ⟩ to /e̞/ instead, as you have done, making the paradigm more symmetrical.
• The open mid vowel is ⟨œ̞⟩, not ⟨ɶ⟩, so perhaps ⟨œ̞⟩ should be our /œ/. ⟨ɶ⟩ would stay where it is, and the near open vowels ⟨a ɶ ʌ⟩ would be our /æ ɶ ɒ/.

Thus we'd end up with ⟨i y u e (or ɪ̟) ø o e̞ (or e) ø̞ o̞ ɛ œ ɔ æ ɶ a ɒ⟩, with one more vowel than you propose. Even if the extra vowel is optional, it doesn't hurt to keep it. Easier to merge a distinction in transcription than to recover one that isn't transcribed.

BTW, I agree with transcribing the low central vowel ⟨a⟩. The IPA vowel-articulation trapezoid that claims ⟦a⟧ is a front vowel is obsolete, since everyone uses formants these days. — kwami (talk) 00:15, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: ⟦œ(ː) ɔ(ː) ɶ(ː) ɐ o̞ æ ɒ⟧ aren't phonemes. The first 4 (well, actually 7) appear only in r-contexts, ⟦o̞⟧ (phonemically /o/) is an open-syllable allophone of /o/, ⟦æ⟧ (phonemically /ɛ/, or /a/ as we currently write it) is the short counterpart of ⟦ɛː⟧ and ⟦ɒ⟧ (phonemically /o̞/, or /ɔ/ as we currently write it) is the short counterpart of ⟦o̞ː⟧.

The problem with encoding the difference between ⟦œ(ː)⟧ and ⟦ɶ(ː)⟧ is that most sources simply don't make it, and I'm not sure of the distribution of these allophones. If it's straightforward (and I bet that it is), we can encode it without any problem.

I have a better idea: let's write the vowels with ⟨i y u e̝ ø o e œ̝ ə ɔ̝ ɛ œ ɔ æ ɶ ɐ a ɒ⟩ (⟨i y u e̝ ø o e œ ə ɔ ɛ a⟩ in phonemic transcription). That way, we'd end up with just one symbol with diacritic in phonemic transcription, which would be ⟨e̝⟩. The mid ⟦œ̝ ɔ̝⟧ can be written with plain ⟨œ ɔ⟩ in phonemic transcription (as they are now) because the open-mid allophones (and the near-open ⟦ɶ⟧) don't appear outside r-contexts. Plus, the short /ɔ/ is ⟦ɒ⟧ anyway (the short ⟦ɔ̝⟧ is an allophone of /o/ in closed syllables), so the symbols ⟨œ⟩ and ⟨ɔ⟩ already cover mid, open-mid and near-open phonetic heights in phonemic transcription. I see no problem with this, especially if /tʰ/ is to cover an aspirated affricate ⟦tsʰ⟧ in onset and an unaspirated plosive ⟦t⟧ in coda. Plus, we could add the rising diacritic ⟨◌̝⟩ to Help:IPA/Danish where we explain stress, stød, etc. so that ⟦e̝ œ̝ ɔ̝⟧ would be slightly less hard to understand. This is why I object to using more than one type of relative articulation diacritic - that would make transcriptions too complicated.

[ɪ ʊ] are unstressed-only vowels and mostly correspond to /jə və/ in phonemic transcription (though [ɪ] can be /ə/ after a fronting diphthong, perhaps the same is true of [ʊ] after backing diphthongs). I wouldn't use ⟨ɪ ʊ⟩ for stressed vowels, with or without diacritics.

That way, we'd only really change the transcription of current /e ɛ a ɑ/ to ⟨e̝ e ɛ a⟩ in phonemic transcription, instead of changing /e ɛ œ ɔ a ɑ/ to ⟨e e̞ ø̞ o̞ ɛ a⟩. That's a less drastic change and would make our transcriptions slightly more accurate.

What about Help:IPA/Danish and the consensus from last year to change the guide to its current state? We should probably ask the participants of that discussion for their opinion before proceeding with any change to this article. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:25, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds good. IPA-da is specifically phonetic, but it would be nice if the phonemic-phonetic conversion were straightforward. And yes, let's get the IPA-key people involved. — kwami (talk) 23:36, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Would the change of /a/ to ⟨ɛ⟩ only apply to the long vowel (male) or also to the short vowel (kat)? Haberland—the only (?) precedent of ⟨ɛ⟩ in the lit—transcribes them in the phonetic vowel table asymmetrically as [ɛː ~ a]. –Austronesier (talk) 10:24, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: We would retranscribe all vowels that need retranscribing, which means that only ⟨i y u ø o ə ɶ ɐ⟩ would be left intact. The way I see it, the symbols ⟨e ɛ œ ɔ æ œ̞ ɒ a ʌ⟩ and perhaps ⟨ɑ⟩ are used in a non-IPA manner in this article and in the literature in general, which is why, in my opinion, it's far better to use ⟨e̝ e œ̝ ɔ̝ ɛ œ ɔ æ ɒ a⟩ for them. In phonemic transcription, the only change would be from ⟨e ɛ a ɑ⟩ to ⟨e̝ e ɛ a⟩, so that kat would be written /ˈkʰɛt/, [ˈkʰæt], rather than the current /ˈkʰat/, [ˈkʰat]. There would be difference in how we phonetically transcribe the short front variety of orthographic a vs. its long counterpart, which would be written with ⟨ɛː⟩. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 10:35, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: I agree that /ˈkʰat/, [ˈkʰat] does not reflect the acoustic facts. Uniform use of **/ɛ(:)/ (for what in contemporary Danish appears to be [ɛː ~ æ]) is certainly a possible and consistent solution, the only thing is we would need a RS that actually goes that far. –Austronesier (talk) 11:40, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: I'm not aware of any RS that uses ⟨ɛ(ː)⟩ for the front variety of orthographic a in phonemic transcription. Krech et al. use ⟨æ(ː)⟩, and that's a reasonable enough alternative. But current /ɛ(ː) e(ː)/ have to be retranscribed as ⟨e(ː) e̝(ː)⟩ in phonemic tr. if we don't want to make the article hopelessly complicated. So we might as well use ⟨ɛ(ː)⟩ instead of ⟨æ(ː)⟩ as the former is a simpler symbol. I mean... if we wrote the phonemic open-mid md series as /e œ ɔ/ then writing the phonemic open one as /ɛ a/ is just following the same logic. Take a look at Valencian - /ɛ/ in that language/variety of Catalan has the same height as /a/, so this isn't unheard of.

I now get the logic behind Kwami's proposal to encode the difference between ⟦œ⟧ and ⟦ɶ⟧: these aren't the only vowels that may or may not be differentiated in Standard Danish. For example, when you listen to the recordings in Den Danske Ordbog, you can hear that the woman responsible for them hardly ever differentiates ⟦æ⟧ from ⟦ɛ⟧ and the vowel is typically open-mid for her. The short ⟦e⟧ is also all over the place, varying from open-mid to close-mid or perhaps even higher.

(⟦ˈkʰæt⟧ is either /ˈkʰVtʰ/ or /ˈkVt/, not /ˈkʰVt/ - my mistake). But we're already transcribing the aspirated series in a non-standard manner (or at least we did before the edit war - now there's a discrepancy between this article and Help:IPA/Danish). No author I'm aware of writes them with ⟨pʰ tʰ kʰ⟩, all authors use ⟨p t k⟩. Which, strictly speaking, is not very correct as [p t k] represent the main allophones of what is commonly written with ⟨b d ɡ⟩. If we were to transcribe the first sentence of "The North Wind and the Sun" as ⟦ˈnoɐ̯ɐnˌve̝nˀn̩ ɒ ˈsoˀl̩n kʰɒm e̝ŋˈkaŋˀ i ˈstʁiðˀ ˈɒmˀ ˈvemˀ ˈæ pm̩ ta va tn̩ ˈstɛɐ̯kəstə⟧ (with simple ⟨[...]⟩, though), then, as a reader, I'd expect to see something closer to /ˈnoʁənˌve̝nˀən ɔ ˈsoːˀlən kʰɔm e̝nˈkankˀ i ˈstʁitˀ ˈɔmˀ ˈvemˀ ˈɛ təm ta va tən ˈsteʁkʰəstə/ in phonemic transcription, rather than /ˈnorənˌvenˀən ɔ ˈsoːˀlən kɔm enˈɡɑnɡˀ i ˈsdridˀ ˈɔmˀ ˈvɛmˀ ˈa dəm dɑ vɑ dən ˈsdɛrkəsdə/ (I hope I got the phonemics of the weak forms right). The latter type of phonemic transcription is, I'd argue, much further away from the narrow phonetic transcription than the former. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:43, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Haberland absolutely seems to endorse using ⟨e(ː) e̝(ː)⟩ instead of /ɛ(ː) e(ː)/ (he writes the first vowel with a lowering diacritic, which isn't needed as the vowel is close-mid in modern SD). Now, the question is whether he'd write the phonemic open front vowels with ⟨a(ː)⟩ or ⟨ɛ(ː)⟩. I'd bet on the latter, but not all of my money (:P). I'd be fine with using ⟨æ(ː)⟩, per Krech et al., who also use ⟨a(ː)⟩ for the open central vowels. There you go: OR in phonemic transcription avoided, at least as far as vowels are concerned. Let's use ⟨e̝ e æ a⟩. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:07, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Pinging @Aeusoes1, Maunus, Nardog, Schwa dk, and Thathánka Íyotake:. There's a serious discrepancy between this article and Help:IPA/Danish. The change from a year ago is unsatisfactory and we should use a much narrower transcription of vowels. Both pages use an IPA-based (so non-IPA, actually) types of transcription. ⟨e ɛ œ ɔ æ œ̞ ɒ a ɑ ʌ⟩ correspond to ⟨e̝ e œ̝ ɔ̝ ɛ œ ɔ æ a ɒ⟩ in proper IPA. The plosives should, IMO (and not only in my opinion - see above) be written with ⟨pʰ tʰ kʰ p t k⟩ in phonemic transcription and their plosive/affricate allophones with ⟨pʰ tsʰ kʰ p t k⟩ in phonetic transcription. The ⟨r⟩ should also be replaced with ⟨ʁ⟩ as using an alveolar [r] is not only non-standard but also (almost?) non-Danish. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 09:16, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

An example: reading ⟨œ œ̞ ɶ⟩ literally will make them all sound like the r-colored allophone(s) of /œ/ (many speakers perceive them [meaning the sounds transcribed by Grønnum with ⟨œ̞ ɶ⟩] as one sound), and reading ⟨ɔː ɒː⟩ literally will make them both sound like the r-colored allophone of /ɔː/. It's also quite hard to convince our readers that ⟨æ ɛ e⟩ stand for open-mid, close-mid and near-close vowels, rather than (near-)open, open-mid and close-mid or a similar (non-Danish) distinction. Also, sources that avoid using diacritics on vowels have no problem with writing the plain unaspirated [p t k] with overly complicated ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩. In ⟨e̝ e œ̝ ɔ̝ ɛ œ ɔ æ a ɒ⟩, the raising diacritic is used on 3 symbols, just like the devoicing diacritic on ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩. The latter have been used for years on Wikipedia and nobody has really ever had a problem with them. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 10:15, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm getting kind of lost with all of these vowels. Can we have, like, a list of lexical sets to help track the discussion? — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 15:40, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Yes (the long vowels are without stød, hence the final schwas):

• MIS LYT GULD (⟦i y u⟧, written as such in this article)
• LIST KAGE MAVE (⟦e̝ ɪ ʊ⟧, written with ⟨e ɪ ʊ⟩ in this article)
• LÆST KYS FOTO (⟦e ø o⟧, written with ⟨ɛ ø o⟩ in this article)
• HØNS HOPPE OST (⟦œ̝ ə ɔ̝⟧, written with ⟨œ ə ɔ⟩ in this article)
• BÆR BRYST VOR (⟦ɛ œ ɔ⟧, written with ⟨æ ɶ ɒ⟩ in this article)
• TAL GRØN LØBER OP (⟦æ ɶ ɐ ɒ⟧, written with ⟨a ɶ ɐ ʌ⟩ in this article)
• LAP (⟦a⟧, written with ⟨ɑ⟩ in this article)

If I'm reading correctly then the long near-open *⟦ɶː⟧ doesn't exist, it's a short-only vowel like its phonetic unrounded counterpart ⟦æ⟧ and the rest of phonetically near-open vowels. Only ⟦œː⟧ occurs - see Grønnum (2005:60–61). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 16:18, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@Aeusoes1: AFAICS you can just use the lexical sets for the short vowels. I've simplified the list. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 21:13, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Many of your proposed changes for the phonetic transcription are matched by the "nøjagtig" IPA in the DDO (based mostly on Basbøll). The front mid vowels are treated exactly the same way (including the long male-vowel). The open vowels are treated differently, but I can see no reason not to write the DDO's [a̝ ɑ̈] (tal, lap) as [æ a] here. With the vowel in ost and vor, it is just a slight difference in the diacritics; DDO focusses on the advanced character of the vowel in ost/låne, your transcrption on the raised character; Basbøll writes out both. The vowels in høns and bryst are not distinguished in the DDO.

Btw, is there any published source about the centralization of front vowels before soft d? It's quite obvious, but I only found something in John C. Well's blog so far. –Austronesier (talk) 10:14, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: Some of the words transcribed with ⟨œ̞⟩ (⟦œ⟧ in proper IPA) by Grønnum are transcribed with ⟨œ⟩ (⟦œ̝⟧ in proper IPA) in DDO, yet others are transcribed with ⟨ɶ⟩ (⟦œ⟧ in proper IPA) in DDO, so there is a discrepancy here. It would be, in my opinion, best solved by using the diacriticless ⟨œ⟩ in this position wherever one source writes ⟨œ⟩ and the other ⟨œ̞⟩.

Try p. 13 of this essay: [3]. AFAICS the near-close front unrounded vowel merges with the close one in that environment. Do we want to transcribe this centralization here and/or in Help:IPA/Danish? It might be an overkill in my view. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 10:49, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Thanks, that thesis is of great help. I think we don't have to apply centralization in the transcription here in the article and Help:IPA/Danish, so we can just mention it in the prose (and write it as [ë̝ ë ï]?). But we must have it somewhere, because it is very audible.

Agree about ⟨œ⟩. –Austronesier (talk) 15:58, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Section break, settling on conversions

@Kbb2 and Austronesier: This article should be cleaned up by hand, or at least proofread after a bot edit, but the IPA-da transcriptions will probably need to be automated. So far I have the conversions,

• p t k > pʰ tʰ kʰ
• b̥ d̥ ɡ̊ > p t k
• e > e̝
• ɛ > e
• æ > ɛ
• a > æ
• ɑ > a
• ɔ > ɔ̝
• ɒ > ɔ
• ʌ > ɒ
• œ > œ̝
• œ̞ > œ [assuming ɶ > œ above was a typo]

— kwami (talk) 11:40, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2 and Kwamikagami: I admit I am bit of latecomer in the discussion, and missed much of the "fun" in Help talk:IPA/Danish. I have still one question: what is the advantage of ⟨ɒ⟩ over ⟨ʌ⟩ when transcribing a "somewhat rounded, advanced lowered open-mid back vowel" (⟦ʌ˖˔˒⟧, Basbøll 2005)? It is notably much less rounded than ⟦o̝ ɔ̝ ɔ̞⟧, so I would still prefer to transcribe it with an unrounded vowel symbol. IMHO ⟨ɒ⟩ suggests a vowel that is more open and more rounded than what Basbøll describes and what I hear in the DDO examples. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Austronesier (talk • contribs) 16:15, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

AFAIK the rounding of what is transcribed ⟨ɒ⟩ can be rather minimal, whereas ⟨ʌ⟩ implies no rounding at all. The advantage I see is that ⟨ʌ⟩ implies a vowel at the same height as what we propose to transcribe as ⟨ɔ⟩, suggesting a simple rounding contrast, whereas it's quite a bit more open than ⟨ɔ⟩. — kwami (talk) 23:20, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

So ... should I make the change? Does someone else prefer to? — kwami (talk) 02:42, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

For the record, ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊ > p t k⟩, ⟨a > æ⟩, ⟨ɑ > a⟩ and ⟨ʌ > ɒ⟩ are quite correct (still not fully convinced about the last one though), but have absolutely no precedents in the lit? Just want to avoid to get trapped in OR. –Austronesier (talk) 10:04, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. Yes, the list looks mostly OK, especially in the context of this article. As far as transcriptions linking to the guide are concerned, the plosives have already been dealt with a year ago and they're written with ⟨pʰ tˢ kʰ p t k⟩. The affricated one should be written with ⟨tsʰ⟩.

Unfortunately ⟦æ⟧ and ⟦ɛ⟧ are now both transcribed with ⟨æ⟩. The same applies to ⟦ɒ⟧ and ⟦ɔ⟧, which now are written with ⟨ɒ⟩ - I'll restore the distinction manually as most of the instances of these phones are near-open (⟨ʌ⟩ is already not used in those transcriptions). But you should change the long versions to ⟨ɛː⟩ and ⟨ɔː⟩.

The open central vowel is already written with ⟨a⟩.

The most open front rounded vowel can only be open-mid when long, thus ⟨ɶː⟩ > ⟨œː⟩. The short variant can be both open-mid and near-open, but the near-open variety occurs only in the diphthong [ɶu̯] after [ʁ] and between [ʁ] and a nasal. So retain ⟨ɶ⟩ in those cases and replace it with ⟨œ⟩ in other cases.

• tˢ > tsʰ
• e > e̝
• ɛ > e
• ɔ > ɔ̝
• ɒː > ɔː
• œ > œ̝
• ɶː > œː
• æː > ɛː
• ɶ > œ when not before a nasal (there are no instances of ⟨ɶu̯⟩ in our transcriptions).

Thanks for your patience. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 07:07, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and the vowels with stød are written without the length mark in the guide, so you also need to convert those:

• ɒˀ > ɔˀ
• ɶˀ > œˀ
• æˀ > ɛˀ

Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 11:52, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Okay. I'll only do ɒ > ɔ and æ > ɛ when long or glottalized. I'm assuming the other lowish vowels are as above? Should I add a comment inside the transcription to show unchanged original *æ vs æ derived from *a > æ ? I could maybe convert them to æ<!--change to ɛ?-->, which a bot could tally for manual review later. That won't be a problem for *ɒ, assuming there really are no *ʌ left.

[Ah, looks like ɑ-a-æ have already been taken care of. Though maybe not the *a in [te volaˈpʰyk] at Greek to me. And is Brahe really [pʁaːa], not a reduced vowel at the end? Also aspiration and other a's in Andreas Maxsø, where I just changed ɑ > a.]

As for *ɶ not > œ before N, is that immediately before, or also in e.g. 'Bjørn'?

Should *tɕ > tɕʰ?

For a name like 'Christian', is the /t/ not aspirated because it's after /s/, or should that be [kʰʁæstʰjæn]?

Should we remove the 2ary stress mark? Does it mean anything more than 'this syllable occurs after primary stress and contains some vowel other than / in addition to [ɐ ə ɪ ʊ]'? — kwami (talk) 08:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Here's a test edit of the IPA-da key. — kwami (talk) 09:58, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

I did /ts/ and the remaining voiceless rings. There were about half a dozen of those in portal space etc. Danish orthography should be adjusted to match this article.

@kwami: About [tɕ], Kbb2 wrote before that it should not be ‹tɕʰ›. Btw, why ‹tsʰ›? I though it's simple affrication that occurs in place of aspiration with the alveolar fortis stop? –Austronesier (talk) 11:34, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: It doesn't occur in place of aspiration. Tre is pronounced ⟦ˈtsχeˀ⟧, with both affrication and aspiration (devoicing of the following sonorant), not ⟦ˈtsʁeˀ⟧. The alveolar affricate is aspirated. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 11:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Ah yes, got it. And in /tʰj/ [tɕ] it's the glide that devoices (=merges with [ʰ]) and then merges with the [s]-part of the affricate. Ergo, no aspiration, right? –Austronesier (talk) 12:02, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd expect them to be analogous. I'll hold off reverting until we understand that. — kwami (talk) 11:43, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Okay, reverted. — kwami (talk) 07:27, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Why are you constantly reverting my edits on the phonological symbols? There is literally nowhere where it says in Grønnum (2005:316-18) where the author transcribes the affricate(ed) unaspirated plosive /t/ [tˢ] as an actual affricate [ts]. This is clearly phonetically incorrect, and incredibly misleading. I still do not understand why we are debating the sounds of the plosives. If their phonetic transcription according to the sources is [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊], then that is the way they are. And if the unaspirated plosives are transcribed as /p t k/, then that is what they are phonemically transcribed as, and they are phonetically transcribed as [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊]. End of discussion. You are clearly stating fabricated information on the phonetic symbols like they are "not supposed" to be transcribed this way, and it is confusing and very misleading. So stop reverting everything that I provide, that is clearly cited and sourced. Fdom5997 (talk) 18:54, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Sounds like you could use acquainting yourself more with the nature and purpose of phonetic transcription in general. Any set of phonetic symbols is not an end-all-be-all way to represent the phonetic inventory of a language but merely a tool to convey information in one of a multitude of ways. Consider, for example, the second clause of the current Principles of the International Phonetic Association:

The IPA is designed to be a set of symbols for representing all the possible sounds of the world's languages. The representation of these sounds uses a set of phonetic categories which describe how each sound is made [...] The symbols of the IPA are shorthand ways of indicating certain intersections of these categories. Thus [p] is a shorthand way of designating the intersection of the categories voiceless, bilabial, and plosive; [m] is the intersection of the categories voiced, bilabial, and nasal; and so on.

So ⟨b̥⟩ is a shorthand for "voiced bilabial plosive, but voiceless", while ⟨p⟩ is a shorthand for "voiceless bilabial plosive". It is obvious which conveys the same information more efficiently. I think you could also use reading the introduction to the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, the book the Principles are reprinted in, which says at one point: The IPA does not provide a phonological analysis for a particular language, let alone a single 'correct' transcription, but rather the resources to express any analysis so that it is widely understood (p. 30). Nardog (talk) 20:39, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: So are you telling me that using the ⟨b̥⟩ symbol or the voiceless ◌̥ symbol is inaccurate? I thought that it represented more of a "midpoint" between a voiceless bilabial plosive ⟨p⟩ and a voiced bilabial plosive ⟨b⟩. In other words, somewhere in the middle between the two plosives. Fdom5997 (talk) 20:56, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fdom5997: It's not inaccurate, it's just verbose. Linguists attach the voiceless diacritic to symbols of voiced sounds for all sorts of reasons, usually to signify partial voicing or a voiceless realization of an underlyingly voiced sound. In case of Danish, it's mainly to preserve relation with Dania transcription, which in turn preserves relation with Danish orthography, as Kwami explained at the top of this section. What is often represented by ⟨b̥⟩ for Danish may in fact be a sound somewhere between some sounds often represented by ⟨p⟩ and ⟨b⟩ for other languages, but as my quotations above explain, ⟨p⟩ is defined simply as "voiceless", so it can be representing a sound tenuis, aspirated, creaky-voiced, or even partially voiced depending on language, author, etc. Again, this is all explained clearly and succinctly in the Handbook. The difference between the two series of plosives in Danish lies in the timing at which voicing starts, which is often explained using the notion of voice onset time, as the sources quoted below, such as Mortensen & Tøndering (2013), make clear. Nardog (talk) 22:26, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Fdom5997: What he said. Plus, what is an affricate if not a stop with a fricative release? A "strongly affricated" stop (Grønnum's words) is an affricate. To call the ⟨tsʰ⟩ transcription "incredibly misleading" is strange at best. The unaspirated stops belong to the /b d ɡ/ series in the syllable onset, it is the aspirated series that is written with /p t k/ in that position in those sources. Please refrain from touching Danish transcriptions in the future, you clearly have problems with this language:

- Here, you're making false distinction between ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩ and ⟨p t k⟩ - the latter set is a Wikipedia convention

- Here you forgot to change [ˈskipɐ] to [ˈsɡ̊ib̥ɐ]

- Here, you wrote [ˈlau̯d̥ʁɔp] instead [ˈlau̯d̥ʁɔb̥]

- Here, you wrote [ɡ̊ʁɔˈsteˀn] instead [ɡ̊ʁɔˈsd̥eˀn]

- Here, you wrote [pʰetɐ] instead [pʰed̥ɐ]

- Here, you wrote or at least left untouched [ˈhæt, ˈkoðˀ, ˈd̥ɔˀp, ˈtˢʰak, ˈtˢʰak, ˈfʁæsk, ˈkʰæt, ˈkæːðə, ˈɔst, ˈtˢʰyk, ˈhɒpə] instead of retranscribing them [ˈhæd̥, ˈɡ̊oðˀ, ˈd̥ɔˀb̥, ˈtˢʰaɡ̊, ˈtˢʰaɡ̊, ˈfʁæsɡ̊, ˈkʰæd̥, ˈɡ̊æːðə, ˈɔsd̥, ˈtˢʰyɡ̊, ˈhɒb̥ə].

You're not following the sources either. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 04:13, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

For the arbitrariness in the use of ⟨b̥ d̥ ɡ̊⟩, I recommend to check Zurich German (p.245) in the IPA Journal. FWIW, we're in good company in not following the Danish tradition, Zipf did the same in 1935 in his classic The Psycho-Biology Of Language[4]. Modern sources are a bit harder to find, on a quick search I have only found this MA thesis[5]. But that's not the point anyway. As long as we use ⟨p⟩ for what is plainly described as "bilabial unaspirated voiceless plosive" in our sources (e.g. Basbøll 2005), we simply do a one-to-one application of IPA definitions, and that is not OR. –Austronesier (talk) 09:39, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Phonemic analysis

As far as I can tell, both Basbøll (2005) and Grønnum (1998) acknowledge [ð, ɕ, j, w] as distinct phonemes and identify coda [p, t, k] as belonging to /b, d, ɡ/ (their notation). Being closer to the surface forms, this analysis strikes me as more straightforward than the one our article currently presents. It seems the current analysis matches the way Basbøll describes morphophonemes, but not phonemes, so we're misrepresenting at least one source. I don't know what analysis Grønnum (2005) takes, but if it adopted the analysis of [ɕ] = /sj/ etc., it could as well be because it's written for Danish-speaking readers, favoring historical phonology and orthography over synchronic phonetics. The analysis of Grønnum (1998) and Basbøll seems more suitable to present in an international, cross-linguistic context such as our article. We also might want to reconsider how we transcribe glides (coda |g, v|).

(I was about to suggest we switch ⟨p, t, k⟩ in phonemic notation back to ⟨b, d, ɡ⟩ given /d, ɡ/ are voiced in codas and ⟨t, k⟩ in phonetic transcriptions are ambiguous as to which phonemes they are realizations of, but following Basbøll and Grønnum (1998) solves these problems altogether.) Nardog (talk) 22:01, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: I've changed the phonemic transcription back to /b, d, ɡ/.

The problem with using ⟨j, w⟩ instead of ⟨i̯, u̯⟩ is that they're inconsistent with ⟨ɐ̯⟩. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 04:25, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog and Kbb2: In the choice of phoneme symbols, we're not bound to IPA standards, but still to WP standards, so it's advisable to follow the analysis from RS including their notational conventions. In the case of ⟨i̯, u̯⟩, there is no inconsistency with ⟨ɐ̯⟩ if we follow Basbøll (2005) who uses the non-syllabic vowels for the pre-juncture allophones of phonemic /j v r/.

While we're at it: what about /ɒ(:)/ and /ɐ/? On the deeper morphophoneme level, Basbøll (2005) treats them as |ɔ(:)r| and |ər| (and so it seems do we in this article), but at the phoneme level, he treats them as phonemes based on true surface contrasts like gå /gɔˀ/ vs. går /gɒˀ/. We could stick to the morphophonemic approach for vowels, but then we actually need to state more rules (at least ɐ̯-deletion after ‹ɔ› and ‹ɐ› in the current notation) than currently given in the article. I'd rather suggest to follow Basbøll and add /ɒ(:)/ and /ɐ/ to the phoneme chart, and add two lines for them in the allophone table, with necessary adjustments. –Austronesier (talk) 09:18, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

That's not what I'm currently suggesting though. If I understand correctly, both Basbøll (2005) and Grønnum (1998) regard

• not only the unaspirated plosives in onsets but also those in codas as belonging to the same phonemes, /b, d, ɡ/, thus rendering /p, t, k/ (their notation) onset-only;
• [ð] as a distinct coda-only phoneme rather than an allophone of /d/; and
• all [j] in codas as belonging to /j/ rather than /ɡ/.

And Grønnum (1998) regards

• [ɕ] as a distinct onset-only phoneme rather than /sj/, and
• [w] as a distinct coda-only phoneme rather than /v/.

I comprehend next to nothing of Danish, but glancing at Grønnum (2005), there she seems to adopt the same analysis as Basbøll (see e.g. p. 312 about "defektiv distribution"). I find their analyses, erring on the side of synchrony rather than diachrony, much more straightforward and accessible, at least for those not already with deep knowledge of the language, its orthography, or its phonological history. More importantly, the current analysis of the article is backed up by none of the sources as far as I can see. It's presenting morphophonology as phonology, which is misleading and OR.

If we followed their analysis, I don't see anything wrong with notating the unaspirated plosives as /p, t, k/, even phonemically, because then all [p, t, k] would be /p, t, k/ (and vice versa). I don't see anything wrong with using ⟨j, w⟩ either, especially if we posited /j, w/, but even if we didn't, I still see nothing wrong because [j, w] are fundamentally—phonetically—different from [ɐ̯], namely in degree of constriction (what Catford distinguished by "approximant" and "resonant"). Nardog (talk) 10:52, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: Sorry I was a bit too fast here. Yes, you are right, the current decription conflates morphphonological rules with allophony. This clearly needs to be fixed, regardless on which notational convention we eventually agree upon for the phonemes. And it further inlcudes the issue of the r-fused vowels /ɒ(:)/ and /ɐ/.

When it comes to phonemic analysis, I am mostly familiar with Basbøll (2005). His phoneme table 2.7. on p. 64 has

• aspirated /p, t, k/ onset-only
• unaspirated /b, d, g/ as [b̥ d̥ ɡ̊] in all positions
• [ɪ̯ ʊ̯ ɐ̯ ð] as coda allophones of /j v r ð/ (/ð/ is coda-only).

Identifying [-ʊ̯] with /-v/ is elegant and makes sense, since the articulatory distance between [-ʊ̯] and [ʋ] is certainly bigger as in the case of [ɪ̯] vs. [j] and [ɐ̯] vs. [ʁ̞], but not that much bigger. As for his analysis of [ɕ] as /sj/, that looks IMO halfhearted. –Austronesier (talk) 11:57, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Looking at Grønnum (1998) again, I realized she doesn't necessarily regard [ɕ] and [w] as phonemic. But given Grønnum (2005) seems to take a similar approach as Basbøll, I'm moving forward with my suggestion. So @Austronesier: Go ahead with the transition from morphophonemic to phonemic in the vowels too, as far as I'm concerned.

@Kbb2: Would you still be opposed to changing ⟨i̯, u̯⟩ to ⟨j, w⟩ in IPA-da transcriptions? I still don't find your argument convincing given both onset and coda [j] are identified as /j/ and ⟨i̯⟩ is equivalent to ⟨j⟩ in the standard IPA, especially now that we transcribe them with ⟨i̯, u̯⟩, not ⟨ɪ̯, ʊ̯⟩. Nardog (talk) 05:48, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: The back vowels need to be transcribed with ⟨ɔ̝(ː) ɔ(ː)⟩ in phonemic transcription if we want to differentiate between them (and we probably should, I agree with that), not ⟨ɔ(ː) ɒ(ː)⟩. [ɒ] is the short counterpart of /ɔ̝ː/ and [ɔ(ː)] are higher and more peripheral than [ɒ]. Using ⟨ɔ(ː) ɒ(ː)⟩ would be too confusing, like using ⟨p t k⟩ for the aspirated plosives in phonemic transcription, as ⟨ɔ(ː) ɒ⟩ would mean entirely different things in phonemic and phonetic transcription, and ⟨ɒː⟩ wouldn't be used in phonetic transcription. While we're at it, we could change ⟨æ(ː)⟩ to ⟨ɛ(ː)⟩, too.

The problem with using ⟨j⟩ and ⟨w⟩ is that they are genuinely close only after close, near-close and perhaps close-mid vowels (phonetically speaking). /aj/ is normally [ae̯], not [ai̯], so it's a genuine diphthong, just non-phonemic. But I wouldn't be very opposed to transcribing it with ⟨aj⟩ anyway. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 10:21, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog and Kbb2: Looks overall fine now. The phonemic analysis is now structurally consistent with the sources (not notationally, but ok, I drop my case about that).

About ⟨ɪ̯, ʊ̯⟩ vs. ⟨i̯, u̯⟩ vs. ⟨j, w⟩: Basbøll's ⟨ɪ̯, ʊ̯⟩ is consistent with the syllabic counterparts ⟨ɪ, ʊ⟩, in analogy to ⟨ɐ̯⟩ ~ ⟨ɐ⟩. –Austronesier (talk) 12:49, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Then isn't using ⟨i̯, u̯⟩ (or ⟨ɪ̯, ʊ̯⟩) for all offglides just as imprecise as using ⟨j, w⟩ for all offglides? If anything, it's ⟨j, w⟩ that usually connote a broader range of articulation... no?

@Austronesier: What do you mean by "the syllabic counterparts ⟨ɪ, ʊ⟩"? Nardog (talk) 13:24, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: In words like kage, mave, there is free variation between "careful" ⟨-ɪ̯ə, -ʊ̯ə⟩ and "casual" ⟨-ɪ, -ʊ⟩ (notation per Basbøll), just as there is free variation between ⟨-lə⟩ and ⟨-l̩⟩ in words like male. –Austronesier (talk) 13:41, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Those are phonemically /jə, və/, right? When it comes to a choice as subtle as [j, w] vs. [ɪ̯, ʊ̯], I don't find convincing the argument that harmony with allophonic precision should trump harmony with phonemic notation (remember, we're now analyzing all [ɪ̯] as /j/; and again, ⟨ɪ̯, ʊ̯⟩ wouldn't be that precise according to what Kbb2 just said). Also in IPA-da transcriptions switching to ⟨j, w⟩ would mean fewer symbols and diacritics for our readers to keep track of, which is almost always a plus IMHO. Nardog (talk) 14:26, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Exactly, /jə, və/. Well, for [j] this indeed gives a one-to-one match with the phoneme and some economy in the inventory. There is no way to this achieve isomorphism and economy for final /v/ → [w ~ ʊ̯], but [w] will be consistent with [j]. –Austronesier (talk) 15:51, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Unstressed [ɪ, ʊ, ə, ɐ] are not shown - why?

We should add them to both of the vowel charts. Because they're more variable than other vowels (due to their unstressed nature), there would be no harm in showing them in their canonical IPA position ([ɪ] exactly between cardinal [i ɨ e], [ʊ] between cardinal [u ʉ o], [ə] exactly mid central, [ɐ] between cardinal [ɛ ʌ a ɑ]). That way, the vowel chart on the left would contain all vowel phones we distinguish in phonetic transcription. Thoughts? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:43, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

As for [ə] and [ɐ], no objections. With [ɪ] and [ʊ], I think the canonical IPA position might not be apt here, since the Danish unstressed vowels are AFAIK not centralized at all and thus actually between [i ~ e] and [u ~ o] (Grønnum 2003 even writes them as plain [i] and [u]). The former would clash with [e̝] though. Not sure what to do here. –Austronesier (talk) 10:36, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Because they're more variable than other vowels (due to their unstressed nature), there would be no harm in showing them in their canonical IPA position makes no sense to me. Being variable sounds like compelling reason not to show them on the charts. If an RS has any of them placed on a chart, follow it and cite it. Otherwise, no. Nardog (talk) 12:14, 14 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 02:14, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Let's get rid of [œ̝], [œ̝ː] and [ɶ]

Let's get rid of them and use ⟨œ(ː)⟩ instead. The distinction between them isn't phonemic, so the diacritic isn't needed, as it is in the case of /e̝ː/ (which contrasts with lower /eː/ and higher /iː/) and /ɔ̝ː/ (which contrasts with lower /ɔː/ and higher /oː/). Also, sources disagree on the distribution of the mid front rounded vowels - according to Grønnum, the mid [œ̝ː] is used in just one (!) word høne, yet Basbøll gives [œ̝ː] as an allophone of /øː/ after /ʁ/ (which Grønnum describes as open-mid [œː]). This renders the long [œ̝ː] almost nonexistent in Grønnum's analysis (it seems to be rarer than [ɶ]!) The long [ɶː] doesn't exist in Danish, by the way.

Basbøll mentions that there's variation in the height of the short open-mid allophone [œ], which according to Grønnum is near-open between /ʁ/ and /v/ (where it's analyzed as an allophone of /ø/) as well as between /ʁ/ and nasals, where it is analyzed as a positional variant of /œ/. Grønnum gives very straightforward rules for the height of front rounded vowels that are more open than close-mid: they're mid when not in contact with /ʁ/ (where they're unambiguously phonemicized as /œ/ and /œː/) and open-mid or (only when short) near-open when in contact with /ʁ/. In her analysis, /œː/ is almost always open-mid (as it occurs only before /ʁ/, save for one word), so using ⟨œ̝(ː)⟩ in phonemic transcription is absurd (or do we really want to write the short variant with /œ̝/ and the long one with /œː/?)

Clearly, the exact height of /œ/ (including the low allophone of /ø/ between /ʁ/ and /v/) and especially /œː/ is something we should mention in prose, rather than encode in our transcriptions (and especially not in Help:IPA/Danish). By doing that we'd follow Haberland and Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen who recognize only [ø, øː, œ, œː] in their systems (however they write them). This is parallel to transcribing [ɒj] as such rather than writing it [ɞe̯] (/ɒ/ is fully central before /j/ in the standard described in Kontrastive Phonologie des Deutschen und Dänischen; /j/ is also more open following non-close vowels within the same syllable, forming genuine phonetic dipthongs). I think that we can get over not showing the exact height of the non-r-colored /œ/ (all sources agree that it's mid, not open-mid) just like we could get over writing the open central vowels with ⟨a(ː)⟩, whose canonical IPA values are front, rather than central.

Also, search for "fourth ø" here. There's a reason [ɶ] (as distinct from the open-mid [œ]) is not encoded in many transcription systems.

One more thing: Kontrastive Phonologie des Deutschen und Dänischen mentions that the most typical short mid front rounded vowel in Danish is the close-mid /ø/. This begs the question: how often would we have the opportunity to use ⟨œ̝⟩ anyway? Not that often, I think. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 02:14, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. But would the vowels in grynt and grøn be differentiated? It seems they should be somehow, given they belong to different phonemes (perhaps [œ̞] for grøn). And by extension the one in røv too, given it supposedly has the same or a similar quality as grøn. Nardog (talk) 13:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: Røv is straightforward, AFAICS - [œw] occurs only after /ʁ/, precisely where [øw] doesn't - so it's a variant of [øw] after [ʁ], phonemically /øv/.

Why should they be differentiated? Only Grønnum differentiates between them and the distinction is variable. The fact that some of the vowels are analyzed as /ø(ː)/ and some as /œ(ː)/ is a matter of phonological analysis. AFAIK, scholars tend to analyze as many mid front rounded vowels as possible as /ø(ː)/ (hence [ʁœː] is /ʁøː/, presumably because [ʁøː] doesn't exist). What we should do is to cover distribution of the vowel phonemes in a separate section. Also, orthographic ⟨y⟩ can't stand for /œ/ (note that when ⟨i y u⟩ stand for /e̝ ø ɔ̝/, this correspodence is similar to ⟨i ü u⟩ for /ɪ ʏ ʊ/ in German, also in terms of quality). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 17:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

What only Grønnum differentiates is between grøn and gøre, is it not? Both DDO and SDU transcribe grynt and grøn differently, and the vowels in them are precisely in the same environment, so I can't imagine a situation where it helps to transcribe them the same, unless, of course, they are pronounced the same.

And should grøn be transcribed differently, so should røv, which supposedly has the same quality—analogous to [ɔ̝], which isn't phonemic but which we transcribe differently anyway because [ɔ̝ː] is. Nardog (talk) 17:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: But Grønnum differentiates between grynt and grøn as [œ] vs. [ɶ], right? Open-mid vs. near-open. If DDO doesn't transcribe them as the same, then for that very reason they should not be differentiated. DDO, like most other sources doesn't distinguish between open-mid and near-open front rounded vowels, only between mid and open-mid. This is another example of different distribution of rounded mid front phones in Danish. In the younger standard described by Grønnum, grynt is open-mid, yet in the standard used as a model in DDO it's mid. This mirrors the height of /øː/ after /ʁ/, which is mid according to Basbøll and open-mid according to Grønnum.

The issue isn't just the presence vs. absence of the fourth short mid (well, near-open to be exact) front rounded phone, it's their different distribution depending on the speakers' age. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 18:01, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

So how are mid and open-mid going to be distinguished in what you're putting forward? Nardog (talk) 18:23, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: They wouldn't be. Would that be a problem? Does the sequence /ʁœ/ exist before oral consonants? If not, I see no problem with differentiating only between close-mid and lower-than-close-mid vowels (lumping together mid, open-mid and near-open allophones).

(BTW, [ɔ̝] also occurs as an allophone of /ɔ̝ː/ before /ð/). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 18:29, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

You just said most sources distinguish between mid and open-mid. And DDO does transcribe grynt and grøn differently. Nardog (talk) 18:42, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: All of them but the two I listed (Haberland and Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen). But what's the point of writing [ˈkʁœ̝nˀt, ˈkʁɶnˀ] when the first vowel can stand for either [œ̝] or [œ] depending on the speakers age and the second one varies between [ɶ] and [œ] (so that it may as well be fully merged with the phone represented by ⟨y⟩ in grynt)? It's not as simple as saying that most sources differentiate between mid and open-mid ⟨ø⟩ if their distribution differs according to the speakers' age. That defeats the purpose of distinguishing between them, given the fact that the allophony is so straightforward (again, unless /ʁœ/ exists before non-nasal consonants other than /v/). We need a good reason to use diacritics, and here we have better reasons not to use them. ⟨e̝ e̝ː ɔ̝ ɔ̝ː⟩ aren't as problematic and the diacritic is essential for phonemic differentiation (though not really in the case of the short ⟨ɔ̝⟩, I know). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:00, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

But not only Grønnum but Basbøll too explicitly identify them as belonging to different phonemes. But what's the point of... Which is why I suggested [ˈkʁœnˀt, ˈkʁœ̞nˀ] rather than what you just wrote, ⟨œ̞⟩ not only being more phonetically representative than ⟨ɶ⟩ but capturing the diachronic variation you've been talking about since the diacritic can represent any amount of lowering. I find not distinguishing between [œ̝] and [œ] totally reasonable, but abandoning ⟨ɶ⟩ strikes me as too much of a leap from the sources—unless you can show us a source that says they are actually merged; otherwise this feels like WP:CRYSTAL. Nardog (talk) 19:28, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: I find not distinguishing between [œ̝] and [œ] totally reasonable, but abandoning ⟨ɶ⟩ strikes me as too much of a leap from the sources You mean the other way around, right? Most sources lump together [œ] and [ɶ] (open-mid with near-open), not [œ̝] and [œ]. Basbøll defines what he transcribes with ⟨ɶ⟩ as open-mid (and therefore uses it in a non-IPA manner) and says that the open-mid–near-open distinction found in Grønnum's papers is variable. There's no source (or no source that I'm aware of, at least) that doesn't differentiate between mid and open-mid while keeping near-open separate. It seems that you too are confused about the IPA-based transcription of Danish found in most sources. Both Haberland and Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen lump together mid, open-mid and near-open. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

What this means is that if Basbøll were describing the standard discussed by Grønnum in her book, he would likely use ⟨ɶ⟩ in both words. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:41, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

God, you're right about that. I think I finally see where you're coming from. But I'm very reluctant to follow a chapter in an anthology book and another in a dictionary of German when all the other, more comprehensive and authoritative sources point to another way, all because the IPA doesn't offer enough symbols.

What about using ⟨œ̝, œ⟩ in phonetic transcription but keeping ⟨œ⟩ in phonemic notation? Nardog (talk) 20:27, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen is Danish: An Essential Grammar, not a chapter about Danish in Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch (where three, not two heights are recognized). Note that we're already following it in the case of [ɔ ɔː], which other sources write ⟨ɒ ɒː⟩ (thus taking up the most optimal symbol for our [ɒ]).

We need to choose which sources to follow when it comes to r-colored vowels and stick to them. By reducing the number of the rounded front vowels to just six ([y yː ø øː œ œː]) we'd be accomodating both Grønnum and Basbøll alike (the distribution of [ø øː] is the same, or almost fully so in both of the standards). As I've already said, if /ʁœ/ doesn't exist before oral consonants other than /v/ then the height of the mid [œ̝] (as well as the marginal [œ̝ː]) is fully recoverable from the context as far as Grønnum's analysis is concerned. The near-open [ɶ] is the only non-close front rounded vowel that can occur between /ʁ/ and /v/, so it's at least partly recoverable. If it's also the only non-close front rounded vowel that can occur between /ʁ/ and nasals, then it's also fully recoverable (not that it matters - the distinction between open-mid and near-open is meaningless for many if not most Danes). That's the point: if we followed Grønnum regarding the r-colored vowels (her analysis seems to be simpler), we can (unless I'm missing something) safely reduce the rounded front set to just [y yː ø øː œ œː], following Allan, Holmes & Lundskær-Nielsen and Haberland.

Using ⟨œ̝⟩ for either of the phonemes (short or long) is IMO out of question. If anywhere, the diacritic belongs to allophonic notation. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 04:02, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Oops, I forgot we were no longer using that source. My point still stands though: the Essential Grammar being a book for language learners rather than a scholarly work in descriptive linguistics, no wonder it wants to present a simpler picture. On top of that, I don't see the urgency of reducing the number of symbols to use in an article dedicated to describe the sound system of a language such as this. However, I have no objections to merging ⟨ɶ(ː)⟩ with ⟨œ(ː)⟩ in IPA-da trasncriptions.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I said "⟨œ⟩ in phonemic notation". Nardog (talk) 13:57, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: I know, and I was agreeing with you. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 12:27, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree with only distinguishing two ø-sounds. Even though there is no phonemic split, the phone in words with /ʁø/ is—according to all sources—at least lowered to the height of /œ/ in non-r contexts. The same quality is described for høns and grynt in Heger's Sprog og lyg, Basbøll (2005), the SDU and the DDO. And all of these have a different height in words with /ʁœ/, e.g. grøn, which has the same vowel as in gør in the SDU, the DDO and in Basbøll's normalized transcription. Basbøll states that the vowel in grøn is a bit lower than in gør, but only notates this in non-normalized transcription on pp. 543–544. Heger describes exactly the same on p. 33 by distinguishing between Dania «ɔ̈» in words like gør and «ɔ̤» in grøn. Grønnum describes a more advanced lowering of /ʁø/ and /ʁœ/ (without merger!), where the vowel in /ʁø/ has the same height as in /œʁ/, while /ʁœ/ is even lower, hence her four ø-sounds.

So we have the following grid of front-rounded heights (short quantities only):

	All	SDU/DDO	Basbøll/Heger	Grønnum
5	lyt
4	kys
3	høns	grynt	grynt
2	gør	grøn		grynt
1			grøn	grøn

I cannot see how we can accomodate the lower three rows with only one phone. Per SDU/DDO, we can certainly neutralize the difference between gør and grøn (as does Basbøll in normalized transcription). Thus we arrive at four phones [y ø œ̝ œ] in lyt, kys, høns/grynt, gør/grøn. The only thing we cannot map here is the vocalism of younger speakers as described by Grønnum, which phonetically merge the grynt/gør-vowel. If we want to include the variation of "innovative" speech, we would in fact have to further add [ɶ]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Austronesier (talk • contribs) 10:33, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: In that case I think that it's best if we don't change anything and keep using ⟨y ø œ̝ œ ɶ⟩ (according to the distrubition in the older standard, not the one described in Grønnum). Let's not forget that Danish is often cited as the example of a language that has [ɶ].

Grønnum describes a more advanced lowering of /ʁø/ and /ʁœ/ (without merger!), where the vowel in /ʁø/ has the same height as in /œʁ/, while /ʁœ/ is even lower, hence her four ø-sounds. Their long counterparts are merged, though (to open-mid [œː]). At least according to Grønnum.

On a similar note, should we distinguish [ɛ̝ː] (for the merged /e̝ː–eː/ vowel after /ʁ/) from other unrounded front vowels? I think we should, if we want a consistent transcription that distinguishes mid from close-mid and open-mid. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 12:26, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

In that case I think that it's best if we don't change anything and keep using ⟨y ø œ̝ œ ɶ⟩ (according to the distrubition in the older standard, not the one described in Grønnum). Where will ⟨œ⟩ be used in this equation? Nardog (talk) 17:36, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Here is a synopsis of the narrow transcriptions by Basbøll and Grønnum.

Basbøll	Grønnum
lyt [lyt]
kys [kʰøs]
høns/grynt [hœ̝nˀs]/[kʁœ̝nˀt]	høns [hœ̝nˀs]
gør [kœɐ̯]	gør/grynt [kœɐ̯]/[kʁœnˀt]
grøn [kʁœ̞nˀ]	grøn [kʁɶ̝nˀ]

For the master table we can thus write e.g.:

• /œʁ/ → [œɐ̯]
• /ʁø/ → [ʁœ̝] according to Basbøll ~ [ʁœ] according to Grønnum
• /ʁœ/ → [ʁœ̞] according to Basbøll ~ [ʁɶ̝] according to Grønnum

or a bit less narrow:

• /œʁ/ → [œɐ̯]
• /ʁø/ → [ʁœ̝] according to Basbøll ~ [ʁœ] according to Grønnum
• /ʁœ/ → [ʁœ] according to Basbøll ~ [ʁɶ] according to Grønnum

–Austronesier (talk) 18:47, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

See, not all three of ⟨œ̝ œ ɶ⟩ would be used, hence the question. Nardog (talk) 19:20, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

In a Basbøll-only description, yes: ⟨œ̝ œ⟩ would suffice. If we follow Grønnum, or want to include both descriptions to accomodate generational variation, all three are needed. –Austronesier (talk) 19:33, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: We can still distinguish between gør and grøn if we follow Basbøll. ⟨ɶ⟩ is a reasonable transcription for both [œ̞] and [ɶ̝] (the way you use those symbols in the table), as gør has a proper open-mid vowel (therefore even a vowel that's "a little lower" than that would be below open-mid). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 06:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Agree. If we choose a narrow notation that also distinguishes predictable allophonic variants, Basbøll's [œ̞] in grøn could well represented by [ɶ]. So what about:

• /œʁ/ → [œɐ̯]
• /ʁø/ → [ʁœ̝] according to Basbøll ~ [ʁœ] according to Grønnum
• /ʁœ/ → [ʁɶ]

–Austronesier (talk) 09:25, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

According to SDU (p. 87), |røv| in drøv has the same quality as grønt, drømme. I wonder if this means |røv| is better analyzed phonemically as /ʁœv/, given [ɶ] in all other environments (|rœN|) is /œ/. Nardog (talk) 19:22, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Agree, /ʁœv/ is most straightforward. /ʁøv/ would require to posit some kind of double-lowering rule at the phoneme-phone interface, and that's overkill. I just wonder how to best formulate the rule for |røv| → /ʁœv/ –Austronesier (talk) 20:22, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, /ʁøv/ would make as little sense as considering tøj to have /ø/, I think. Nardog (talk) 20:37, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

[e̝ ø ɔ̝] and their relation to [ɪ ʏ ʊ] in other Germanic languages and dialects

AFAICS, /e̝/ can only be written ⟨i⟩, whereas [ɔ̝] (the allophone of /o/) is often written with ⟨u⟩ and /ø/ can be written with ⟨y⟩. This got me thinking: aren't these related to [ɪ ʏ ʊ] in e.g. German, Low German and Limburgish? Limburgish (at least the Maastrichtian variety) has both /i, y, u/ and /ɪ, ʏ, ʊ/; the latter also contrast with /ɛ, œ, ɔ/ (the first and the last correspond to /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ [Basbøll's transcription] in Danish in terms of phonemic vowel height (though they're also pretty close phonetically), though /œ/ has a restricted distribution in Danish).

The restricted distribution of Danish /œ/, coupled with the fact that the main short mid front rounded vowel in Danish is /ø/ also reminds me of the /ʏ–œ/ merger that is said to occur in some Low German-influenced varieties of Standard German (and, of course, in Dutch-accented German).

Am I onto something here? Could any of this be covered in the article? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 17:15, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

There are a couple of words where /e̝/ is written ⟨e⟩, e.g. hedder, led (n.), ved. Anyway, the vokalsænking or vokalglidning is often covered in Danish pronunciation textbooks, but related to spelling only. Historically, it is lowering of short vowels in closed syllables (matched by lengthening of short vowels in open syllables). With front vowels, it is one step downwards, with back vowels two steps. Unlike in German, where /ɪ/ is just the short and lax counterpart of /i:/ etc., Danish has short /u/, /y/, /i/ in closed syllables due to borrowing and secondary sound changes, so speakers intuitively equate /e̝/ with long /e̝:/ rather than with long /i:/ etc., inspite of the spelling. I'm doing some reading about Danish phonological history and will start a sketch in my sandbox. I will ping you for comments and contributions. –Austronesier (talk) 19:02, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: That's great news. Thanks. Per [6], trøndersk and North Norwegian dialects feature a similar phenomenon - in those dialects, /i, y, e/ are lowered to /e, ø, æ/, so apparently in those dialects the phonemic status of /æ/ (debated in Standard East Norwegian) is indisputable.

With front vowels, it is one step downwards, with back vowels two steps. You mean like Swedish /ɵ/? Notice how similar it is to Danish /ɔ/ (Basbøll's transcription), by the way. There's just a slight difference in backness (central vs. advanced back).

Would it be accurate to say that /ø/ and /œ/ (both of them at the same time, not separately) correspond to both /ʏ/ and /œ/ in Swedish, whereas Danish /y/ corresponds only to Swedish /ʏ/?

And has /œ/ become phonemic through reintroduction of /ø/ before nasals in loanwords? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:01, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: Swedish /ɵ/ actually is still just one step down in a relative sense, since there is no other quality inbetween /ɵ/ and /y/. Danish ⟨u⟩ jumps down to [ɔ̝], skipping [o], while ⟨o⟩ goes down to [ɒ], skipping [ɔ̝]. Yeah, I know what you mean about the similarity between Swedish /ɵ/ and Danish /ɔ/. On an anectodical level: I am German L1, and Danish advanced [ɔ̝ː] always reminds of Upper Saxon [ɵː], so I when started learning Danish a couple of years ago, I initially kept long ⟨o⟩ and ⟨å⟩ apart by producing the former in my regular (standard, slightly Hessian-colored) manner of pronouncing German /o:/, while for the latter, I switched to a realization of /o:/ in a "mock" Upper Saxon accent.

About Danish /y ~ ø ~ œ/ and the correspondences with Swedish, I'll better read my way through Danish first, and then have a look at Swedish too. I got hold of a copy of The Nordic Languages (2 vols.), Bandle et al. (eds.), that's perfect material for an overview of the phonological history of Danish (and Continental Nordic languages in general). –Austronesier (talk) 10:11, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

Distinct /ʁe̝ː/ and /ʁeː/ before /ð/?

Both Basbøll (2005) and Grønnum (2005) describe for their own speech different vowels in vrede vs. græde, viz. ⟨vʁɛ:ðə⟩ vs. ⟨gʁa:ðə⟩ in their semi-narrow notation, or [vʁɛ̝:ð̩] vs. [gʁæ:ð̩] in our narrow notation. The same vowels are found in the DDO. The DDO further has grade (⟨gʁɑːðə⟩ = [gʁaːð̩]), which means we have a phonemic contrast between /e̝ː/, /eː/ and /a:/ between /ʁ/ and /ð/ in the speech of the older generation. With the younger generation, the vowel of græde is lowered to fall together with grade.

To account for this, instead of positing an additional phoneme /æ:/, we could say that |re:| and |rɛ:| remained distinct before |d|, with the older generation having /ʁe̝ːð/ and /ʁeːð/ being realized as [ʁɛ̝:ð̩] vs. [ʁæ:ð̩], while the younger generation further lowered |rɛ:| to /ʁa:/, thus merging it with |ra:| before |d|. –Austronesier (talk) 20:22, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

You mean like this? Nardog (talk) 21:40, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, Grønnum (pp. 278, 285–6) is saying that |reːd| and |rɛːd| were already merged for her parents' generation, and only in the subsequent generations did |reː| and |rɛː| in other environments like kreds(e) vs kræs(e) start to merge as well and the neutralized vowel in græde to lower further. At any rate, Basbøll (p. 71) posits a separate /æː/ and he is pretty much the only source we're using for the (non-morpho)phonemes so if we want to avoid OR we better stick to his analysis. Nardog (talk) 00:39, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

It's the /æː/ that has confused me. Basbøll uses this phoneme also for the vowel in male, which we write in non-normalized IPA as /ɛ:/. So /ɛ:/ should also be used for the post-R variant [æː], to maintain a one-to-one match with Basbøll's phonemes.

FWIW, the splits and mergers are historically quite tricky, here's the correct account of her description (in our current notation):

		G's parents	Grønnum	Younger gen.
|reː|		[ʁe:] (/ʁe̝:/)	[ʁɛ̝:] (/ʁe:/)	[ʁɛ̝:] (/ʁe:/)
	before |d|
|rɛː|		[ʁɛ̝:] (/ʁe:/)
	before |d|		[ʁɛ̝: ~ ʁæ:] (/ʁe: ~ ʁɛ:/)	[ʁa:] (/ʁa:/)

But that's better dealt with in History of Danish (section "Phonological history" still needs to written, but certainly would be fun). –Austronesier (talk) 08:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

No, Basbøll writes "/aː/", i.e. our /æː/, for græde, on p. 71. /ɛː/ would mean a merger with vrede. Nardog (talk) 18:43, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

And sorry no, Basbøll writes "/aː/", i.e. our /ɛː/, for græde and male, on that very page p. 71, Table 2.9. vrede has /e:/ in our notation. Distinguishing between /æː/ in græde and /ɛː/ in male, when Basbøll has only one phoneme for it (viz. /a:/), is OR. –Austronesier (talk) 19:10, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I didn't realize we were using /ɛː/ for his /aː/. So Basbøll does not posit a separate phoneme for græde, my bad. But using ⟨ɛː⟩ for the phoneme in male seems misguided though, since it's clearly, phonemically, the long version of /æ/ in malle. Nardog (talk) 19:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

And it was my fault to write /æː/ in the earlier edit summary[7] :) –Austronesier (talk) 19:40, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, using /ɛː/ and /æ/ for "conventional" /aː/ and /a/ is the result of the attempt to map our narrow phonetic notation to the phonemes. /æː/ and /æ/ certainly would do the job as well. The phonetic height difference doesn't hurt, since we have it with /o:/ and /o/, too. –Austronesier (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: If you don't mind writing the open back rounded vowel with /ɔ̝/ then sure, change /ɛː/ to /æː/. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 19:49, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kbb2: That's telepathy, I was about to add that too. Thus we get a full one-to-one map of our phonemes with Basbøll's phonemes, and they would still be closely matching our narrow phonetic transcription. –Austronesier (talk) 19:54, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

?? I don't think Kbb2 said what you think he said. He said "/ɔ̝/", not "/ɔ̞/". Nardog (talk) 20:11, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Austronesier: Except that [ɔ̝] typically means the opposite in phonetic transcription - it's an allophone of /o/ (or it's main allophone?), which contrasts with what we currently write /ɒ/. I'm not sure whether it's the best move. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 20:13, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I really meant writing måtte with /ɔ̝/, as short counterpart of long /ɔ̝:/ in måle. I can see the clash with [ɔ̝] which is short /o/ in ost, but Basbøll has mutatis mutandis exactly the same situation in Table 2.5, p. 52, and Grønnum too, on p. 61. –Austronesier (talk) 20:19, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Basbøll seems to consider /o/ in ost to have the same quality as /ɔː/ (our /ɔ̝ː/ currently) in måle, so that doesn't strike me as a problem. Rather, that may be the very reason he uses ⟨ɔ̝⟩ rather than ⟨o̞⟩ for /o/ in the first place. Nardog (talk) 20:24, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Re writing måtte with /ɔ̝/: The differences between [æ] and [ɛ] and between [ɔ̝] and [o] aren't nearly as big as [ɔ̞] and [ɔ̝], though. That to me makes less sense than writing måle with /ɒː/, but of course ⟨ɒː⟩ is what they use for morse, tårne. Nardog (talk) 20:33, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

If we really wanted to emphasize the relation between måtte and måle, we could write måtte with /ɔ̞/, [ɔ̞]. Nardog (talk) 20:45, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: Why is it preferable to use the same symbol for the short counterparts of the long vowels? Especially if we're gonna pick and choose. Don't say it's for the sake of simplicity because ⟨e̝ː⟩ and ⟨ɔ̝ː⟩ are anything but simple symbols. The short [ɛ], AFAIK, exists only as an allophone of the long /ɛː/. I'd argue that we should either write the short counterparts of /oː ɔ̝ː ɛː/ with ⟨ɔ̝ ɒ æ⟩ or as ⟨o ɔ̝ ɛ⟩ (or ⟨o ɔ̝ æ⟩, if we want to write the long open-mid variant of orthographic ⟨a⟩ with ⟨æː⟩ - again, why would we do that? [æː] is a marginal allophone of what we now write with ⟨ɛː⟩) and not give special treatment to any particular vowel pair. In any case, we end up using ⟨ɔ̝⟩ for one of the mid vowels, so we may as well use it to transcribe the phonemic short counterpart of /oː/ (per Haberland, the [o] phone is marginal).

I'm not sure how that'd work. ⟨ɔ̞⟩ is as distinct from ⟨ɔ̝ː⟩ as ⟨ɒ⟩ because there's also the short open-mid /ɔ/, a vowel in-between /ɔ̝ː/ and /ɒ/ (though, AFAICS, it's marginal like [o]). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:27, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Even Basbøll can't account for the fact that as far as orthography is concerned, the short counterpart of /e̝ː/ is /e/ (which can be written with either ⟨e⟩ or ⟨æ⟩). The short /e̝/ is spelled ⟨i⟩, just like /i/. I think that ⟨ɔ̝ ɒ æ⟩ is the best choice of symbols for the aforementioned trio. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 15:06, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

I think that writing måtte with /ɔ̞/, [ɔ̞] is an unfortunate choice, since this is exactly what Basbøll uses for the vowel in vor in his non-normalized transcription (which we have normalized to [ɔ], mainly inspired by its position in Grønnum's vowel chart). Remember, the måtte vowel actually is [ʌ˖˔˒] in narrow transcription (per Basbøll/Grønnum), thus less rounded, somewhat anvanced, and also a bit lower, when compared with the vor-vowel. Why not keep [ʌ˖˔˒], simplified to [ʌ], thus identical to the "traditional" transcription?

As for /ɔ̝/ vs. other options closer to the actual phone: I think we all agree that having a one-to-one match of "our" phoneme slots with the phonemes in the sources is a must (personaly, I even still prefer to use the phonemic transcription of our sources). But whether we use the same symbol in long-short pairs such as /æ: ~ æ/ (corresponding to traditional /a: ~ a/, or to stay closer to the actual phones (e.g. /ɛ: ~ æ/), is an arbitrary choice, because AFAIK there is no phonemic shortening/lengthening in modern Danish—long and short vowel phonemes are thus independent from each other. –Austronesier (talk) 15:14, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Alright, "/ɛː/" it is. I even still prefer to use the phonemic transcription of our sources I do too. Nardog (talk) 15:32, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: I do too. So where to go now? Re-transcribing vowel phonemes requires keeping track of all conversions and intervening adjustments, and a plethora of extra diacritics. /p t g/ instead of /b d g/ was an easier task... Kbb2, what do you think about returning to conventional phonemic transcription, but of course sticking to the narrow non-normalized phones? –Austronesier (talk) 15:53, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Austronesier: If we want to do that then we should first retranscribe our current ⟨a aː ɒ ɔ ɔː⟩ as ⟨ɑ ɑː ʌ ɒ ɒː⟩ (which is a reasonable broad transcription) while keeping the raising diacritic on [ɔ̝ ɔ̝ː] and keeping other symbols as they are right now. We don't want a phonetic transcription that is that different from the phonemic one. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 16:27, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

Done. @Kbb2: Mind updating the charts?

Also, does this mean we should bring back the traditional symbols for the plosive phonemes as well? Or would that be too confusing? Nardog (talk) 04:11, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Nardog: Thanks. No, I can do that.

Yes, for consistency. Also ⟨r⟩ for the rhotic (unless ⟨ʁ⟩ is in use in the literature). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 08:10, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Edit warring about the soft d [ð̠˕ˠ] / [ð̠̞ˠ]

User:Stephen MUFC insists to change [ð̠˕ˠ] into [ð̠̞ˠ], although User:Kbb2 already pointed out that the latter is less readable. I support using [ð̠˕ˠ], which is visually clearer, and especially makes the retracting minus more visible, which is an essential part of the transcription. On one of my screens, the diacritics almost blend, and we should keep transcriptions transparent for all readers who have access to very different levels of screen resolution. –Austronesier (talk) 09:47, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

The site-wide convention is to avoid stacking and interference with a descender, so if someone wants to change things up they should make a case for it at a forum like WT:LING or WT:IPA so we can be consistent, not suddenly change them in one article. Nardog (talk) 00:47, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

A challenge

My humble challenge to you folks is that you rewrite the introduction in plain talk so it is comprehensible to the average person on the street. As suggested in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style. Ideally it should be understood by a six year old, but I would settle for a grade 12 graduate. I recommend The art of readable writing by Rudolf Flesch. The rest can be jargon if you like. I don't know if he really said it, but I like it: "If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself" Albert Einstein. Cheers, John (talk) 18:20, 19 June 2020 (UTC)