Re: Digest Number 1798

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "P&G" <petegray@...> wrote:

> So, for example, to represent foreign alphabets:
> s' means the letter s with a dash over it (eg Sanskrit s'abdas

= "sound")

> s^ means the letter s with a ^ (or v) sign over it (eg Lithuanian

s^ioks =

> "such")
> s. means the letter s with a dot under it (eg Sanskrit kr.s.n.a

= "Krishna")

> and so on.
>
> To represent IPA sounds:
> A E I O U can be used to show short vowels (eg English /bAt/

= "bat")

More generally lowered vowels, and in particularly the Slavic vowels
that became the jers. /A/ as above is uncommon - the X-SAMPA
notation ( http://www.i-foo.com/~kturtle/misc/xsamchart.gif ),
applied strictly to Received Pronunciation, now yields [kat] for
<cat> and [kA:t] for <cart>. We use '&'instead of '@' for schwa
because the archives deliberately mangle words containing '@' to
hide e-mail addresses.

The officially approved encoding is 'Western European', so we can
use the ae ligature directly.

> the colon : is used to show long vowels (eg Latin re:x)

> T D can be used to represent the fricatives (eg

English /Dis/ /Tisl./ =

> "this thistle")
> but there is variety in use, and despite several attempts to

formualte a

> consistent system, none has caught on, and we have to explain what

we mean

> if in doubt.

Given the Western European encoding, we also have thorn (þ) and eth
(ð). Capitals can get used for the 'odd' sounds, so Indian
retroflex consonants can appear as capitals (so Krishna could be
kr.SNa), and the Romanian s cedilla and t cedilla have recently been
appearing as <S> and <T>; they used to appear as <$> and <tz>, which
avoided the ambiguity caused by normal capitalisation. The
Romanian 'short a' appears as ã.

> PIE uses raised symbols, which we indicate by a capital letter, so:
> bH means the sequence usually written b+raised small h.
> kW means the sequence usually written k+raised small w
> So kW can be distinguished from kw (which is two sounds, whereas

kW is one)

> A dot under a letter means it functions as the centre of a

syllable (as the

> l in English "tumble" sometimes does.)

So to understand 'n.', you may have to know what language one is
talking about! 'n.' is a syllabic nasal in PIE, but a non-syllabic
retroflex nasal consonant in Sanskrit!

> The sign / before and after a sequence means "this is a phonetic
> transcription"

I.e. a 'broad', or more properly, phonemic one. Square brackets
mean a 'narrow', phonetic description, or a more accurate rendition
of the sound when we are not sure what it actually was.

Richard.