TalkBank

[Brian MacWhinney]

On 9/22/03 4:39 PM, "Thomas Purnell" <tcpurnell at wisc.edu> wrote:

> Brian,
>
> In looking at the CHILDES data, I'm having a difficulty in seeing what the
> real symbol is for phonetic transcriptions (using @u). I downloaded Ariel
> Unicode and have some other unicode fonts on my computer. But none of these
> seems to work. Would you have any tips for getting the transcriptions to
> appear with the correct phonetic font? Thanks in advance.
>
> --tom.

Dear Tom,

  The @u code and all other uses of the older Unibet and SAMPA formats are
superseded by the new IPA Unicode format.  To use Unicode, you need to
follow the instructions at
http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/tools/uniwin.html for Windows or
http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/tools/unimac.html for Mac

The Mac installation of IPA Keys is super easy.  The KeyMan installation for
Windows is much trickier.  Also, you have to use the Unicode versions of
CLAN as specified at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/clan/

To help you out further, I would need to know what operating system you are
using and whether you have followed all of the steps on these web pages.

All of the files currently in the database are now in Unicode.  This doesn't
mean much for files that are just in English or Dutch, but when you get to
languages like Cantonese or some of the transcripts with IPA characters in
them, you will only see them correctly if your system and the editor are
using Unicode.

--Brian MacW