Re: Zetowvu / Ezotwuv (new conlang)

On Mon, 2003-02-24 at 12:05, Arthaey Angosii wrote:

> PS - Does anyone have a better ASCII representation of the vowels?  Here's
> mine:
> i y       1 }       M u
>     I Y   I\ U\   U
>  e 2      @\ 8      7 o
>            @
>   E 9     3 3\      V O
>    {       6
>     a &             A Q
Well, that's standard X-SAMPA. It gets extra points in the betterness
category because it's reasonably standard. However, because { and } are
stupid characters for letters, and because most other ASCII IPAs use &
for ash/ae ligature, an alternate representation is sometimes used here:

i y       1 0      M u
    I Y  I\ U\    U
 e 2     @\  8     7 o
           @
  E 9    3  3\     V O
   &       6
    a *            A Q

Using 0 for } is reasonably rare and a bit naughty because it's hard to
tell the difference between 0 (zero) and O (capital o) in many fonts.
Not to say that there aren't fonts that don't really distinguish between
1 (one) and l (small L). Using * for small caps OE ligature is something
I just made up on the fly to fill the hole; the symbol is rare enough
that I doubt it's ever come up at the same time someone's used & for
ash.

Whenever you use &, unless it's obvious (i.e. in a well-known natlang),
it's probably best to define it.

Other ASCII IPAs on this list are likely to result in something between
blank stares and utter confusion.

For a while, Christophe (and others?) was working on his own ASCII IPA
because X-SAMPA is unaesthetic and lacks good mnemonics, and other ASCII
IPAs don't represent the entire IPA with simple characters. I don't know
what happened to it in the end; it probably fell onto a backburner and
then dropped behind the oven. Of course, knowing my luck, Christophe's
been working hard at it and is about to start using it tomorrow...

Did that help? I dunno if that was your exact question...

Tristan

Replies