User talk:MaxenceLE

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Enjoy your stay at Wiktionary! Best of luck with editing! Thadh (talk) 11:23, 29 June 2021 (UTC)

Albanian phonetic transcriptions

Good evening, and thank you for your contributions! :) I can see you're definitely very knowledgeable about phonetics, but what variety of Albanian are you describing, and where did you learn about it? Creating non-lemma forms is very much welcome and I'm also very glad you respected the inventory we're using for the phonemic transcription, but I'm a bit worried about mass-adding non-labelled phonetic transcriptions, since the actual realisation of the phonemes varies across regions and speakers, and I'm unsure any particular accent is felt "neutral" or "standard" across all of Albanians. Specifically I'm interested to know more about the [eː oː] you describe, as in gazetë, are they really closed? Waiting for your input. Catonif (talk) 18:54, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi Catonif, my phonetic transcriptions for Albanian are based on Northern Tosk as described by Coretta et al. (2022). Standard Albanian does exist, and it is based primarily on Northern Tosk (Kostallari 1984). Now, the mid vowels are a bit tricky to transcribe in Albanian. According to Buchholz & Fiedler (1987), /e o/ are in free variation with [ɛ ɔ]. In my experience with speakers from Tirana, the mid vowels tend to sound more close in open syllables (especially when the vowel is lengthened) and more open in closed syllables. Hope that helps! MaxenceLE (talk) 19:25, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! :) I know the written standard is based on N Tosk, but about a spoken standard I was unsure. You mention speakers from Tirana as a primary source you've used, does their accent more or less match the N Tosk described by Coretta? I notice what to me look like some inconsistencies, you differentiate [ˈɔ] of donit from the [ˈoː] of telefonit; if this distinction exists it looks like it belongs to Gheg rather than the standard. I also notice an oscillation of [Vː ~ V(ː) ~ V] in open-syllable stressed vowels in your entries, I struggle to understand the pattern. Catonif (talk) 16:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

In my (subjective) experience, yes, speakers of Tirana match Coretta's description well.

Regarding the vowel qualities and lengths, it is true that I am inconsistent in my transcriptions... I haven't found any good research on predicting mid vowel allophones and open-syllable vowel length, so I generally rely on my ear, but maybe I should go broader with my phonetic transcriptions. For instance, open-syllable stressed vowels could all be notated [V(ː)]. About [ˈɔ]~[ˈoː] specifically: these differences do seem to occur in Tosk in a purely allophonic manner. However, I have no empirical data to support these transcriptions, so maybe I should regularize the transcriptions or even omit phonetic transcriptions in cases with a high degree of possible variation? What do you think? MaxenceLE (talk) 03:24, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Hi again! :) What you mention is indeed the kind of problem I'm worried with when it comes to phonetic transcriptions, since there exists a sizable range of variation in realisation, so a regularised phonetic transcription scheme wouldn't really do justice to it, while at the same time trying to present all kinds of variations, especially if inconsistently accross multiple entries, may end up with a rather messy result. It's why I use phonetic transcriptions only when they are labelled to a precise region or dialect or even as vague as "Gheg/Tosk", but I rarely choose to leave full-word phonetic transcription un-labelled. You mention omitting phonetic transcriptions in cases with a high degree of possible variation which I agree with, but if we're doing it for highly variable words and not for relatively static words we end up with yet another inconsistency: to the eyes of a reader it wouldn't make sense why some words have a phonetic transcription and some don't. My personal opinion is to approach this by keeping the number of un-labelled phonetic transcription to a minimum. Catonif (talk) 15:50, 10 May 2024 (UTC)