> > In that case, though, what's all this /Q/ and /a/ business? I can figure
> > out
> > some of it from context, but would like to know I'm getting them right.
>
> You're talking about the phonemic notation? Well, that's a long story, but
to
> make it short there is an alphabet called the IPA used to transcribe
sounds
> accurately. Since it features plenty of characters that ASCII doesn't
have,
> various transcription systems have been created to be able to write IPA on
> media like e-mail. You can find a description of the different ASCII-IPA
> transcriptions here:
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html. Here the
> commonly used system is X-SAMPA, an extension of SAMPA to include the full
IPA
> (but some people prefer the Kirshenbaum system). To learn what sounds the
IPA
[snip for brevity]
> If you never saw those things before, my explanation is probably extremely
> confusing. Don't worry about it, those things are so much used on the list
that
> you will get used to it fast. But I do urge you to learn the IPA and at
least X-
> SAMPA, or you'll never be able to understand what goes between slashes or
> brackets, which is important if you want to have an idea of how other
people's
> conlangs sound like, or if you want to explain us how your conlang(s)
sound
> like.
>
Ah, thank you very much! I am (somewhat) familiar with the IPA, actually.
I don't use it a lot to describe pronunciation, th ough, because so few
people have ever heard of it... I tend to describe things in the terms of in
which words they are present.
> > Heheh, that answers my question. My train of thought is basically that
> > it's
> > easier to memorize words as a whole than their parts, which then leads
> > to
> > parts (syllables), which then leads to letters.
>
> It's indeed how we read, even people who use alphabets. We don't read
letter by
> letter, except uncommon words, but by the general shape of the word.
True. that's probably why I read so quickly, and why I trip over sentences
which contain words I don't see used very often...
>
> Well, Chinese has quite an expansive vocabulary, and yet uses ideograms.
But
> first ideograms don't correspond to words but to morphemes, so when you
have
> compounds or bimorphemic words you use two ideograms to write them down,
and
> even then you arrive at nearly 5000 characters (at least the ones commonly
> used) and Chinese people seem to have no problem with it :)) .
>
Also true, but I think english has a hideously large vocabulary compared to
other languages, though I could be mistaken.
> > French in general is crazy. It seems like it's all vowels to me.
>
> Well, being French, I can tell you it's not :)) . We have nice consonant
> clusters too (try "psychologue", remembering that the 'p' is pronounced
:)) ).
>
Maybe it's my teacher. He seems to drop an amazing amount of consonants, but
doesn't correct people when they pronounce them. Bleah ;) I wish I had as
many french speaking friends as I do German speaking friends...
Though, my german speaking friends make fun of my r's. :P
> It took me less than a day to learn both Japanese syllabaries, and I still
can
>read them correctly (though writing is another story. I recognise the
>characters, but can't remember them when needed for writing :)) ). On the
other
>hand, I still have difficulties with Cyrillic, despite its similarities
with
>the Greek and Roman alphabets that I know, and I still don't master the
Arabic
>script (alphabetic, at least for the consonants), even the isolated forms.
And
>it's not a problem of time spent on it or interest (I spent much more time
>learning Arabic and the Arabic script than Japanese in my life, and I find
the
>Arabic script one of the most beautiful of the world, more than the
Japanese
>syllabaries :)) ).
Same here, though for some reason I really like Japanese. I've never
actually sat down and tried to learn the Japanese syllabaries, just picked
them up (through osmosis or who knows what,) which is what makes me think
they're relatively simple and intuitive.
I can't write to save my life though. I get the two alphabets mixed up and
give my literate friends headaches. :)
> You did well. In fact, since there is a 100 mail per day limit on the
list,
> multiple replies are rather advisable. The only problem may come then from
the
> title, since many people on the list decide from the title whether they
are
> gonna read the post or not (I don't do that myself. I read everything and
> anything that comes from the list :)) ).
>
Yeah, I'm only responding to the "optimum number of symbols" e-mails in this
e-mail, for instance. I think that would get much too confusing. I
practically die when I get home and see 74 unread messages. But they're all
worth reading :) I will continue to combine posts because I don't think I
have enough to say to warrant seperate posts at this point. ;)
I feel like I'm wandering off topic, but I really want to know: How does one
use the IPA extensions in unicode [in html, even]? It's frustrating me that
I can't use the sassy n-with-a-tail, because I really like that better than
q (which is the Tiri'n transliteration for 'ng', which appears to be N in
the ASCII thing. Fancy!)
> (1) Written English and French are basically phonemic, but contain
> nonphonemic characteristics whose complexity present great
> difficulties in both learning and usage; therefore phonemic
> systems aren't all they're cracked up to be.
Am I wrong to think this has more to do with the fact that spelling is
standardized, while pronunciation changes continually, which is no fault of
the system itself? I'd think that syllabic systems would behave similarly,
were such changes present, though I'm not edumacated enough to know so.
> on morphemics and written French's overbearing insistence on
> marking inflections long since disappeared from speech, while
I failed a quiz on passé compose for this specific reason. Damn you, "Les
autres patineuses sont tombées!" Damn you and your outdated gender roles! (I
love french, don't get me wrong, but... man)
-Kendra