Talk:Welsh phrasebook

My name is ______ .

   ______ ydy f'enw i. (_____ you ven-oo ee.) 

Should this be:

"_______ YW f'enw i. (_____ you ven-oo ee.)

              OR

"______ ydy f'enw i. (_____ UH-DEE ven-oo ee.)

90.206.69.64 15:11, 31 October 2011 (EDT)

Vowels

If "a" is as in "father", it's not as in many people's pronunciations of "pat", so I'd suggest deleting 'like "pat"'. Any objection? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:08, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Also: "o" as in "pot": "Pot" in American English is generally "paht". Would 'like "oa" in "boat"' work here, or is it a sound used in British English and not by most Americans? Ikan Kekek (talk) 22:10, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Uh, unless I'm mistaken this was written by a Welshman: "father" as spoken in a Cardiff accent ("faaather", basically this with a TH instead of a V) shares a vowel with "pat". But you're right that most accents would distinguish them. I think "pat" is more accurate, at least the way it's pronounced in the UK. Like the O, the A is pronounced differently in American English. Pretty much impossible to explain how it 'should' sound in writing, especially since vowels seem a major point of disagreement even between accents from the same country (hence my enthusiasm for putting audio files on phrasebooks a couple of years ago), but it would not be like the O in "boat". Here's Oxford's take on the UK pronunciations for pot and pat.

I can't see a way to accommodate all or even most accents of English with these pseudopronunciations, but perhaps listening to the audio files may help you... --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 22:59, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, audio files are really the way to go, but each time that's proposed, we haven't been able to get a consensus behind it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:09, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Why do neither audio files nor IPA ever get anywhere? Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:25, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

IPA is not very user-friendly but audio files certainly are. Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:28, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Mark this as another way our anachronistic obsequiousness toward offline users (for whom audio files are useless) is a straitjacket restricting this site from improving the user experience in general. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:49, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Shall we restart this argument? I supposed the thread would be at Wikivoyage talk:External links, but it seems to be somewhere else. Where? Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:03, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

The one I remember taking part in was on Talk:Spanish phrasebook. ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 06:54, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

I think we need to have a policy debate on the most appropriate page. Should that be the one on external links or something else? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:36, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Phrasebooks? I had always assumed we would be recording our own audio files "in-house", so we're not dependent on external websites. But perhaps that is not what you had in mind. --ThunderingTyphoons! (talk) 08:11, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

I suppose so. Yes, maybe that's the best page. Ikan Kekek (talk) 08:23, 4 April 2018 (UTC)