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Re: SAMPA sucks! (Or, a few samples of the Ridiculese...)

From:Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>
Date:Friday, April 9, 2004, 22:10
From: "Frank George Valoczy" <valoczy@...>

> SAMPA is taxing to use, heh...
First of all, welcome back! Nice to know you're a Frankenlanger too. Now I'm going to whine about why I hate X-SAMPA (but I use it anyway). One replacement I would make: [H], which represents the labiopalatal semivowel (French consonantal 'u'), should be changed to [y\]. I want to think of the voiceless pharyngeal fricative (which is currently assigned [X\]) when I see [H]. More people speak Arabic as a first language than French; mostly on that basis I'd make the reassignment. The voiced pharyngeal fricatives remains unchanged, [?\] - but I am considering an alternative for that and glottal stop: [<] and [>]. (But that would create a problem for the global rise and fall symbols: <R> and <F>.) And you'll note my complains on the use of underscores below. Side question: I've seen Cyrillic-based phonetic scripts (mostly for Uralic or Caucasian purposes), but what about an Arabic-based IPA (Islamic Phonetic Alphabet?) I would imagine a need for North Caucasian languages, but languages with a lot of vowel sounds might be a problem.... Or what about Hebrew script for Judeo-IPA?
> Anyways, here are the numbers one to ten in Ridiculese (it's base-60, like > Sumerian, but I can't be arsed to SAMPA-ify all the 60 right now...)
Sexagesimal numeration pwns. I've decided to use base-60 for Tech instead of base-20 for whole numbers/base-12 for fractions. I still have to figure out how I'll be compounding roots polysynthetically to make numbers. Now how would I adapt Indo-Arabic numerals to sexagesimal? Or should I just express Pi as 3,08.29.44.00.47.26... and this year as 33.24 (23.45 Hijri, 1.36.04 Jewish)?
> 2. t_Ty_LK`O_B (/t_T/ is a dental affricate, is that how to use the _?)
Two ways to construct affricates: for your Hungarian 'c', [t_s] and [ts)]. Since the underscore/lowline is used primarily for secondary features, I'd recommend the right-hand parenthesis for affricates and double articulations like [kp)].
> 4. X\o:_H_T|\|\6~_X_M
Is it okay to use the tilde with consonants, as in [t~] as an equivalent of [t_e], for 'emphatic' (velarized/pharyngealized/tongue-root retracted) consonants, like those in Arabic, Tiberian Hebrew, Modern Aramaic and Tamazight/Berber? I don't see it in my X-SAMPA chart, but I'm already in the habit of doing this.
> 9. NE_^?E_M?q_>7_H
And is the underscore really necessary for ejectives and implosives? Couldn't [t>] and [d<] suffice instead of [t_>] and [d_<]?
> 10. sktk@\:_R_F
That could pass for a Tashelhit word or maybe a Nuxalk/Bella Coola sentence....

Replies

Frank George Valoczy <valoczy@...>
Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>CXS doesn't suck as much as SAMPA! (was Re: SAMPA sucks! (Or, a few samples of the Ridiculese...))
Michael Potter <mhpotter@...>