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Re: More ASCII IPA suggestions

From:Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 11, 2004, 14:17
Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:


> >[snip] > > > May I also propose [w\] (or [w*]) for bilabial approximant > > > as in Hlasa Tibetan [NA:_Lw\@N_H], a proper name. > > > I use Greek psi for this as a compromise between IPA > > > [p\] and [v\]. > > > > > >Wouldn't [B\] (or [B*]) be better - it relates to [B] as [v\] ([v*]) to > [v]? > > [B\] is already taken by the bilabial trill, > and {w} is the usual romanization for the thing, > e.g. _Ngawang_ (it's {Nag.dbaN} in Tib. Orthogr.)
[slap myself] How did I manage to miss that? [w\] it is then. Quoting Barbara Barrett <barbarabarrett@...>:
> Andreas Answered; > > You could always use [^*] for mid-centralizing and > > consign the backslash to oblivion, or use \ as a less > > confusable alternative to ` -- cf. the typo-problem above > > and the fact that people tend to mix up ` and '! > > ...and... > > > I've grown rather attached to ` for retroflexes, but I of course agree > it's > > not problem-free. > > Barbara Babbles; > in CB with its 'visualization-phoneme-pronunciation syntax for multi > character graphemes had different solutions. > > anything that followed ^ was a superscript or over-diacritic and not a > phoneme so "x" after "^" was the mid centralized diacritic in that position > and not the velar fricative: EG; > > /e^x/ = mid centralized /e/
That makes plenty of sense, actually. I'll be using that, I think.
> For retroflex we took a cue from the IPA; every phoneme in the Retroflex > column was a character from the Alveolar column with a rightward hooked > extended stem or leg, so to "retroflex" a phoneme all we needed was a > pronunciation symbol. we chose "<" because the easy mnemonic was the > leftward chevron points *against* (retro) the direction of reading, and it > was "open" to the right as the IPA "hook" was. so the entire alveolar and > retroflex equivalents sequence were; > > t d to t< d< , n to n< , r to r< , ;r to ;r< > (" ; " meant "imagine character upside down" to 'see' the IPA one) > s z to s< z< , l to l< , and t' to t'< > > Just a different solution ;-). But we too loathed the backslash and grave. > The backslash because it interrupted the flow of reading too much, and the > grave because in too many faces/fonts it simply was too small - easy to > mistake for the font's apostrophe - or even miss altogether.
The '<' is, of course, already taken in my scheme. Why couldn't Latin simply had a retroflex series! :)
> One problem we never cracked was how to always differentiate the capitol I > from the lower case l and the number 1 regardless of the typeface used by > the viewer because in some sans serif typefaces these characters are > indistinguishable. All we could come up with was the rather clunky > prescriptive that CB should always be written and read in a Serif typeface! > We were not happy about that, but it was all we could come up with :-(
My scheme avoids '1' (outside tonal stuff, anyway, where it's safely put withing '<' '>'), but 'I' vs 'l' can still be problematic. Damnable sans-serif fonts! :) Andreas