/E~/ (was: Re: Kyrgyz was Re: Zetowvu / Ezotwuv (new

Christophe Grandsire scripsit:

> En r=E9ponse =E0 Daniel Andreasson Vpc-Work <daniel.andreasson@...>:
> >
> > Well, the IPA was designed to distinguish phonemes *within* a language.
>
> Remind me the actual name of the IPA. No, let me tell you: International
> Phone*t*ic Alphabet. The purpose of the IPA is to provide with phone*t*ic
> transcriptions, not phonemic ones
Actually, you are both partly wrong.

The IPA is designed to allow representation of every phone that makes a
phonemic distinction in some language.  If two sounds are distinguishable,
but are never used contrastively in any language, they share an IPA symbol.
In such a case, they may be distinguishable by diacritics, but that is not
guaranteed.

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