Re: question on sampa representation

Tristan wrote:

> On Sun, 23 Mar 2003, David Barrow wrote:
>
> > The IPA symbol the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English uses for
> > vowel in the above words in RP can be rendered as /Q/ in SAMPA; it
> > uses the same symbol for the GA but followed by a colon, so should I
> > render the GA vowel as /Q:/ ?
> <snip>
> > doesn't show colons, so should this vowel be /A/ or /A:/ ?
>
> In GA, length is not phonemic, so in phonemic representations (i.e. the
> ones in slashes), you don't need to include length symbols. So both
> /pQm/ and /pQ:m/ are accurate for (certain forms of) GA 'palm'* (of
> course, both sound like 'Pom' (slang for 'English') to me so when an
> American was talking of palms the other day, it did confuse me :) ).
>
> Tristan
Does this mean I should have used [ ] rather than / /?

I was indicating that the LDCE uses the same symbol for the vowel in GA
"long" as it does for the vowel in RP "long" and uses a colon to
differentiate the two.

Are there any GA speakers on the list? If so:

do you pronounce the "o" in "long" differently from the "o" in "hot" ?
are you familiar with British "o" in "hot" and "long"?
If the colon is for length, is your pronunciation of "long" simply a longer
version of British "long"  ? and its ok to use Q and Q:
If the difference is not a question of length how would you represent in
SAMPA

GA "hot"
GA "long"

considering that Q is used for British "hot" and "long" ?

(I haven't used [ ] or / / above as I'm not yet sure which ones to use)

thank you

David Barrow

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