Re: Latin-alphabet transcription systems

Herman Miller wrote:

>I've been considering using the IPA as a transcription system for my new
>languages, such as Virelli, and the older ones that I'm planning on
>maintaining or bringing back to life, like Zharranh. Most of my langs
>(other than a few like Eklektu, Ludireo, and Tilya, which were designed
>around the Latin alphabet) either have their own writing systems, or at
>least are normally written using something other than the Latin alphabet.
>And yet, they each have their own Latin alphabet transcriptions, which are
>totally different from one another (despite attempts to come up with
>unified systems like Kolagian Orthography).
>
>However, I've run into difficulties with using IPA, and I'm now thinking
>that a new unified Latin-alphabet transcription might have some advantages.
>
>Some problems I've been having with IPA:
>
>* Certain distinctions that are phonemic in my languages require
>diacritics, which goes against the general IPA tendency of one symbol per
>phoneme. Virelli for instance has distinct /t_d/ and /t/. I recently had
>the idea of using t with stroke (U+0166, U+0167) for the dental t in the
>Latin transcription. On the other hand, far more diacritics are used in
>Latin alphabet transcriptions.
>
>
>
Don't bother.  Just use the diacritics.  They don't really affect the
look of the thing anyway.

>* Many IPA letters don't have capitals, making it difficult to distinguish
>between words and proper names.
>
>
>
Well, German(which, if I recall correctly, it your native language,
though I could be completely out) doesn't distinguish between nouns and
names.

>* Some sounds just don't exist in the IPA. Virelli has a voiceless palatal
>lateral fricative, and Lindiga has a voiceless retroflex lateral fricative.
>Virelli could use /L_0/, but this doesn't really make it clear that it's a
>fricative. I've patched together a /K\`/ symbol for Lindiga with an "l with
>belt" and a "combining retroflex hook below". There's a "whistled
>articulation" diacritic in the ExtIPA symbols for disordered speech, but
>not many fonts include this symbol....
>
>
>
[K_j]  and [K`] respectively, I'd expect.

>* The nasal vowel diacritic doesn't stack with tone accents. In an ideal
>world, the font system would handle this, but that's not likely to happen
>any time soon (or for years to come, at the rate it's going). Using the
>Polish nasal hook fixes this problem for most vowels, except /y/ (and
>fortunately, I don't have a tonal language with /y~/ as a phoneme).
>
>
>
Make up a picture?  Or use LaTeX...

>* For similar reasons, tone accents don't work with /1/ (the dot gets in
>the way), and the voiceless diacritic doesn't work with /j/ (but /C/ could
>substitute for /j_0/).
>
>
>
see above

>* Having a single symbol (letter + diacritic) for some of the common
>affricates would be nice; Tirelat needs the distinction between /ts/ and
>/t_s/. The IPA ligatures are officially disapproved, but the tie bar is
>awkward.
>
>
>
Put a dash in between the non-affricates?

>* ASCII versions of IPA are just plain ugly. Romanization will continue to
>be necessary for email. For instance, in the romanization system for
>Virelli, I use "y" to indicate palatal sounds, so that voiceless palatal
>lateral fricative is written "hly". The word for "eight" is "hlyú" in
>romanization, and [L_0W_H] in X-SAMPA. (It doesn't look much better in APA:
>[$_om\^4].)
>
>
>
Yeah, well, work out a romanisation system.  Acutally, If I was to give
my advice, don't bother with the IPA.  Just use lots of di/triagraphs
and diacritics.