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

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....

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