Talk:Cover symbol

Why should the reader believe this?

Rua, you and Peter238 cooked this up in one day in 2015, but neither of you provided any references. Nobody has added references since. ⟨C⟩ for consonant, yes, I believe you; but where does one find (among others) ⟨F⟩ and ⟨G⟩ used in the ways listed here?

Also, where is the term "cover symbol" used, and what does it mean? Without an understanding of this, it's hard to understand what should or shouldn't be listed. ⟨r⟩ is indeed used not only for [r] but also (in the context of English phonology) [ɹ] and much else; but when describing Japanese phonology many writers use ⟨u⟩ for [ɯ]; does this mean that ⟨u⟩ should be listed? Indeed, I'd guess that very many IPA symbols have been used (deliberately, not mistakenly) other than as the IPA was or is prescribing; does this make them "cover symbols"? -- Hoary (talk) 12:12, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Most of this article seems at least potentially citeable (e.g. "A O U" are routine in discussions of Finnish, Hungarian or Turkish vowel harmony; in the last also "I" for /i/ : /ɯ/, in some Finnic languages also "E" for /e/ : /ɤ/), but serious reworking would be required to avoid insinuating that there exists any kind of a standard about this — because there, well, doesn't. Cover symbols are if anything just routinely defined ad hoc in individual studies. Some conventions recur often as a matter of scholarly culture, but others have much variability. I have seen, for instance, "W" for glides instead; Indo-European studies commonly uses "T" for voiceless stops vs. "D" for voiced (and "Dh" for "voiced aspirated").

It is also possible that no secondary sources might be found for any of this, and that even with work, we'd at best end up with only an unmaintainable morass of disparate schemes from disparate primary sources. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 19:34, 2 October 2025 (UTC)