Re: CHAT: ASCII IPA transcriptions (was Re: Miapimoquitch cat's cradle)

On Mon, 15 Apr 2002 20:18:17 +0200, Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>
wrote:

>Is that so? Hm. Thanks for the information; I haven't been on the list
>for that long. I just got the impression that a fair number of people
>used X-SAMPA and that it was the _de facto_ standard.
>
>Was it not always so? What did people use before the invasion of the
>Sampists? Or did everyone have their own scheme?
Variations on Kirshenbaum, with special modifications for different
languages. You can see this in the Olaetian dictionary web page, which
hasn't been updated since 1995:

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/dict/olaeeng.html

(Note that the pronunciation given in this dictionary is NOT the current
one. The current romanization is also quite different. One of these days I
really need to update the page....)

After a while, it got to be too awkward to use Kirshenbaum, but I didn't
like SAMPA (still don't), so I came up with my own system, the KPA (or
Kolagian Phonetic Alphabet). This was based on a combination of the best
features of the various competing ASCII-IPA schemes, and designed to be
easier to remember than X-SAMPA. (I still need a chart to interpret some of
the less common X-SAMPA symbols.)

http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/kpa.html

(KPA was also one of the sources of inspiration for Jörg Rhiemeier's CPA,
although it appears to be based on an earlier version of KPA that had the
quotation marks before instead of after the letters.)

I've never been really comfortable with X-SAMPA, but at least I only have
_one_ chart to look at as long as it's in common use. Still, it can get
pretty hard to read, and almost _any_ alternative would be preferable...

--
languages of Azir------> ---<http://www.io.com/~hmiller/lang/index.html>---
hmiller (Herman Miller)   "If all Printers were determin'd not to print any
@io.com  email password: thing till they were sure it would offend no body,
\ "Subject: teamouse" /  there would be very little printed." -Ben Franklin