Re: SAMPA from IPA

En réponse à David Barrow :

>The sound represented by G in IPA is represented by G\ in SAMPA, and G
>in SAMPA is used to represent in IPA what looks like a V with a loop
>underneath it
>
>The sound represented by B in IPA is represented by B\ in SAMPA, and B
>in SAMPA is used to represent IPA symbol BETA.
>
>The sound represented by N in IPA is represented by N\ in SAMPA, and N
>in SAMPA is used to represent IPA n with a long inward turning right leg
>
>The sound represented by R in IPA is represented by R\ in SAMPA, and R
>in SAMPA is used to represent IPA upside down R.
>
>The sound represented by L in IPA is represented by L\ in SAMPA, and L
>in SAMPA is used to represent IPA upside down Y
>
>and, instead of using some variant of N or n to represent  the sound of
>Spanish ñ, SAMPA has J
>
>When they were designing SAMPA, what were they drinking because I'd like
>to try some : )
One of the principles of SAMPA and X-SAMPA was that often used IPA
characters should be one single character in X-SAMPA. So since it is more
common (for linguists, not conlangers ;)) ) to use the character for the
voiced velar fricative rather than the voiced uvular stop, the voiced velar
fricative received a single character (G, which was also chosen as
mnemonic) and the less used character received a digraph (G\, it's a common
principle in X-SAMPA to use \ that way). The same logic goes behind the use
of B (the voiced bilabial fricative is more commonly used than the bilabial
trill), N (the velar nasal is more commonly used than the uvular one), R
(the uvular fricative is more commonly used than the uvular trill) and L
(the palatal lateral is more commonly used than the lateral velar). As for
J, well, like the use of K for the voiceless lateral fricative, there is a
moment when you run out of letters in the ASCII range! :)) J, at least, is
a mnemonic for the palatal position.

The whole thing is full of compromises, but you have no choice when you
want to map the IPA to the ASCII range. In the case of my C-IPA, I ranked
the similarity to the IPA higher than the frequency of use, so the IPA
small capitals are represented by the corresponding capitals of the ASCII
range. But that doesn't make C-IPA much better than X-SAMPA, just a bit
simpler to learn for someone who already knows the IPA. In any case, it's
more an aesthetic choice than anything else.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.