Re: CHAT: XS vs. Kirshenbaum vs. Who-knows-what

Costentin Cornomorus wrote, quoting Trebor Jung:

> > That's why
> > I would like to create a uniform and more less
> > ugly and tidier system...
>
> Feel free to try! You're in good company, as most
> of us fiddle around a little with one of the
> standard systems. Most of the systems in use are
> in fact quite tidy, once you come to understand
> them. As for ugly, you might be looking in the
> wrong place for beauty!
I've just created a transcription scheme to which I've given the
working title of "FITS" (Frivolous IPA Transcription Scheme). I haven't
implemented tones, nor have I used numbers.

My reason for doing this is, quite simply, because I like a puzzle.
And it's a puzzle to try and fit the ASCII characters into the spread
of symbols available in the IPA as elegantly as possible.

I have *not* chosen characters based on their similarity to IPA
characters. In order to make a system reasonably elegant, one has
to be conservative about the number of competing rationales for why
certain characters might be suitable for a given symbol.

One of my gripes about SAMPA is the use of [_] as the diacritic
character. It's a bad choice, because the purpose of the underscore
character is to act as a seperator, not an associator. Thus [t_h]
looks as though the [t] and the [h] are *less* closely bound than in
[th], when in fact the opposite is the case. My preference would be
[\], which is far more intuitive IMO (especially to C programmers).

Inevitably, people with their own preferences won't like my choices.
That's inevitable. And doesn't matter. I enjoyed the puzzle. And am
still happy to correct/improve it.

Want to see?

Adrian.

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