Transcription

[Douglas G. Wilson]

At 12:08 PM 9/23/00 +0800, you wrote:
>At 9:07 PM -0400 9/21/00, Anne Lambert wrote:
>>Incidentally , how do you people pronounce "clapboard"? I tend to
>>pronounce in /clab:@rd/.
>['klaeb at rd] (where [ae] is the digraph and [@] the schwa--is your /a/
>vowel different from the low front rounded of "cat" and "clap"?  are
>you intending the [:] to represent a long or double [b]?)
>
>Incidentally, did we ever decide whether we're using [@] for schwa,
>or if not, what we're using?
>In the absence of an ascii representation for either the digraph (my
>[ae] above) or the written a, can we agree to use the typed [a] for
>the latter (as in "on", "Don", "Hahn" for the majority of those
>responding to the "back vowels" thread)?  And what DO we use for the
>vowel of "cat"?  I do kind of like the [)] for open-o (backwards-c);
>I'd never come across that before the current thread.

I've been using (mostly) (my version of) the ASCII IPA presented at

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ipa/ascii_ipa_combined.shtml

-- I think this is pretty good for English, and it often matches what seems
to be common current practice on the LINGUIST list and in the newsgroup and
elsewhere. I like the appended sound files. There is -- I think --
sufficient support for common phonemes from German, French, Spanish, etc.
(using ~ for nasalization/'velarization') -- but not necessarily for those
from Russian, Chinese, etc.

Different systems have different limitations, and where there is ambiguity
one can include a note.

There is an alternative system -- more natural for the layman, I think --
at the ADS site:

http://www.americandialect.org/adsfaq.shtml#IPA

-- I don't like it. It has too many 2-letter phonemes (how will one
distinguish 'ae' in 'paella' from 'ae' in 'pal'?). It diverges
unnecessarily from IPA as I learned it. It is entirely inadequate for even
commonly-quoted foreign languages. I find it awkward for common regional
pronunciations.

In some contexts a narrow transcription is necessary, in others not, so I
don't think full standardization is convenient.

When following somebody-else's thread, it may be convenient to follow his
conventions, as I did with ')', which symbol might be awkward in some cases
(e.g., where one desires to show an optional phoneme in parentheses).

-- Doug Wilson