Re: IPA block in Unicode

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.

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