IPA block in Unicode
| From: | John Vertical <johnvertical@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, August 7, 2005, 19:14 |
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Doubtlessly many of you have noticed that the "IPA Extensions" block in
Unicode has several characters which do not appear in the official IPA.
These symbols are apparently (mostly) from older versions. So, this begs the
question: what did they stand for? Here's what I've deduced so far; can
anyone confirm?
*Iota and closed omega (ɩ ɷ): [I_x U_x]. Tho I've also seen some
systems position closed omega as an _unrounded_ [U].
*Esh and ezh with loops (ʆ ʓ): [S_j Z_j].
*Reversed t and k (ʇ ʞ): central alveolar and velar clicks,
respectively.
*Stretched c (ʗ): and old symbol for the palatal click.
*"r with long leg" (ɼ): a retroflex trill (or was it a fricative
trill?)
*"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.
*The unvoiced stops with a upper rightwards hook (ƥ ƭ ƈ
ƙ ʠ) (most of which are actually in Latin Extensions B) are
obviously supposed to be unvoiced ejectives... just makes me wonder why
there is no retroflex one.
*The ls, lz and feng diagraphs (ʪ ʫ ʩ) and the double-w and
double-bridge (ʬ ʭ) appear in the ExtIPA table. (As:
lateral+central alveolar fricatives, velopharyngeal fricative, and bilabial
& bidental percussives.)
But about the "inverted glottal stop" (ʖ), "closed epsilon" (ʚ)
and the turned h's with left hook (ʮ) or with left hook and a right
tail (ʯ) I have no idea at all; nor about the whole of "Phonetic
Extensions" block with all the letters like "capital ou" or "sideways m" or
"ain".
And while I'm at it, it would also be interesting to know if all of the
Latin Extensions B letters (like B with topbar) are actually used in
natlangs somewhere, but that's getting off-topic.
John Vertical
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