Re: IPA block in Unicode

Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:

> Herman Miller skrev:
> > John Vertical wrote:
> >
> >>> Herman Miller wrote:
> >>> >> *"Squat reversed esh" and "turned r with fiskhook" (&#645; &#639;): 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.
In case somebody hasn't yet grasped that Swedish is insane, you also get people
who have [z^w=:] for /y/.

                                     Andreas