Re: <a> - front or central? [was Re: Another Daniels screwup...]

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 11/21/04 

Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 22:26:57 GMT

Tak To wrote:

> Every so often I come across these heated discussions (not necessarily
> on sci.lang) on the theme of "X in language A sounds more like Y1 in
> language B than Y2", and I just want to cite a pair of contrasting IPA
> charts to clear up the confusion.

There's no such thing as "contrasting IPA charts." The International
Phonetic Association publishes a chart of the International Phonetic
Alphabet (the last revision, a very minor one, was in 1996). It comes
with instructions (well, it doesn't actually come with them; you now
have to buy a $20 book from Cambridge that isn't worth the money --
there used to be a small pamphlet that was all you needed), and among
the instructions, it tells you to use as few symbols, and as few unusual
symbols, as you can. For instance, if the language you're describing has
only one rhotic, you use the ordinary <r> whether it's a tap, a trill,
or the English kind, each of which has an r-derived symbol for when you
need to distinguish among them, and in your description, you explain
what kind of rhotic it is. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net