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Re: IPA block in Unicode

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Thursday, August 18, 2005, 12:56
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