Re: IPA block in Unicode

Herman Miller skrev:
> John Vertical wrote:
>
>>> Herman Miller wrote:
>>> >> *"Squat reversed esh" and "turned r with fiskhook" (ʅ ɿ): I
>>> >> have heard that these are "retroflex vowel" and "alveolar vowel", but
>>> >> that makes little sense.
>>> >
>>> >These are used for the sounds in Mandarin Chinese written as "i" in
>>> >pinyin, in words such as "shi" and "si". Not officially part of the
>>> IPA.
>>> >They sound like prolonged versions of [z`] and [z], but without
>>> friction.
>>
>>
>>
>> Alright ... but then, how are they different from [r\`] and [r\]?
>>
>
> They're used as vowels, like [i] (compared to [j]) or [u] (compared to
> [w]). I suppose [r\`=] would be the IPA equivalent of "squat reversed
> esh". (Note that [r\`] is a recent addition to the IPA and probably
> wasn't around when the Chinese phonetic conventions were established.)
> Also, [r\] is typically used for sounds like the English "r-", but
> Chinese "-i" in "si" is very z-like (as I recall; it's been a long time
> since I've heard Chinese). (Yale romanization writes "si" as "sz" and
> "shi" as "shr".) On the chart [r\] looks like it ought to be a z-like
> sound, but I don't think it's typically used for sounds like that.
>
>
I have [z=:] as an allophone of /i/ in my childhood accent of Swedish
(from Orust, Bohuslän,if anyone wonders) and to my ear and my limited
experience Mandarin _si_ sounds exactly the same.

--

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

         Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant!
                                             (Tacitus)

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