Re: Phonetic Transcriptions

>I think they made a mistake for Romanian. Instead of e_Xa for the
>diphthong <ea>, I think they should have chosen Ea, and similarly I
>think Oa would have been better than o_Xa for <oa>. Let the native
>speakers decide.

Indeed. Is this /_X/ supposed to be some kind of aspiration? /h/?
Romanian "ea" is a real ea-diphtong: neither /ya/, nor /e-hiatus-a/.
Also "oa", neither /wa/, nor /o-hiatus-a/. Rather closer to the
Bavarian-Austrian "oan(s)" (ein(s)), "Oachkatzlschwoaf" (Eichkätzchen-
schweif) and "Goasslschnoitza" (Geisselschnalzer), that to Engl.
"one". (As for "ea", again the Bavarian-Austrian counterpart is quite
close to the Romanian diphtong, e.g. "tean" (Hochdeutsch "tun").

[But! In Northern Romanian subdialects, especially those of Transylvania
and Banat, most of "oa"-s are actually pronounced a one vowel, namely
resembling the /o/ in Brit. English "hot, loss, bottle" (perhaps a bit
closer to /a/, but not as in Amer. English).]

>The _X suffix means 'eXtra short';

Oh, if _X is a sign to show that "ea" and "oa" are very short, then it's
okay! Indeed, "ea" and "oa" are as short as "ya" and "wa-wa".

>Finally, there's the issue of schwa, which causes Yahoo groups to
>mangle words containing them. The quick and dirty solution is to use
>&.

Yes, sir! :) OTOH, in Romanian examples, "ã" is always to be read
as a Schwa. (In Romanian all vowels are "short", so is "ã".)

>so that the pronunciation of mãr is
>written /m&\r/.

What's the significance of this slash "\"?

>I suppose /m3r/

Of course! "3:" has anyway been in use for decades now.
So, its short variant /3/ will fit here.

>Richard.

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