Re: xsampa for vowels and diphthongs

On Thursday 13 March 2003 01:24 am, Isaac Penzev wrote:
> Ktabta Elyse Grasso:
>
> > I don't need enormous precision for depicting the vowel sounds in
> > Jouevyaix... the Shayanans have stingers and venom sacks in their
> > mouths, so the shapes of their oral cavities are affected by mood.
>
> Ssshnakesssh? I jzzhusst love sshnakessh...
>
There's a description of how the mouths work in the Phonology section on
my website... basically, the air passage runs under, not over the
tongue thats used in eating, so Shayanans are like snake in being able
to swallow and breathe at the same time. The stinger, also located
below the tongue, is flexible and extensible. Since it is in the
airway, it has chemosensors (smell sensors) along its surface.

From a distance, Shayanans look to humans like green glass
spider-monkeys with feline markings (spots like jaguars, leopards,
etc.), scaled up so that when they stand bipedally the largest ones are
nearly 2 meters tall. I think their complicated skins and baroque
reproduction system have more analogies on Earth among tropical frogs
than in reptiles.


> > (u" is u umlaut)
> > Ascii   Latin1  Center of gravity of the Sound  possible xsampa
> > ii      ii      heat                            i: or i_i?
> > u       u"      hoot (rounded)                  u?
>
> My comment here is not on shmampa, but on spelling. When you *write*
words
> by hand, |ii| and |ü|/|u"| will be definitely confused. It's almost a
no-no
> in alphabet designing to have them both at one time, AFAIK.
I'll admit I chose the umlaut partly because it is derived from a u, so
u" is a sort of stacked w. I also chose it before I realized that ii
existed so frequently in the language.

I'm left-handed. I only write connected script on checks, and ii and u"
are fine when typed or hand printed. If html had the macron I'd use
that. I'd use the circumflex instead of the umlaut, but I'm using the
circumflex for long vowels in Imperial, and I'd like to keep the
transliterations separate.

Maybe I'll add a diacritic to i, instead of doubling it. The ii is
partly a symptom of stressed syllables, but not always.

W and Y are being used as consonants, and using them in diphthongs would
make it harder to see the syllable boundaries: siie is sii-e and siye
is si-ye... which tend to blur in rapid speech, of course, but the
difference is at least etymologically important
>
> > Elyse Grasso
>
> Yitzik the Snakie
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
--
Elyse Grasso