[WikiEN-l] Re: morphophonics for wikipedia

Wed Jul 30 10:34:22 UTC 2003

Geoffrey Thomas wrote:

> I've seen IPA/SAMPA used in Wikipedia articles and didn't like it. The
> former uses too many non-ASCII characters to make it easy enough to use

Currently, that's true, but technology is evolving ... ;-)

> and the latter uses weird ASCII signs that make the word
> [unreadable] and l33t-like for those who don't know the system.

I agree to that. ASCII is not suitable for phonetic representation.

> The system used in practically every school dictionary I've seen  [...]
> everything else is s&#301;m'p&#601;l &#275;n&#601;f' for us to use.
> (If those words came out garbled, either your mail client or mine doesn't
> support Unicode. That was 73 12D 6D 27 70 259 6C 20 113 6E 259 66 27 hex.)

You've sent HTML entities in a plain-text mail. ;-) No compliant 
mail/news client should interpret them.

Here's what you were trying to write:
	everything else is sĭm'pəl ēnəf' for us to use.
	Geoffrey Thomas / jěf'rē tä'məs / JEF-ree TAH-muhs

A Unicode-capable mail/news client should be able to display this correctly.

However, I'm not a great fan of this system either. It is not 
significantly easier to generate than IPA, and it is certainly less 
universal (I, for once, have never come across it; maybe it's Americentric).

> (I-mi-TAY-shuns). If this latter system is formalized (FAR-muh-liyzd) it
> may be simpler than SAMPA for those who don't have the time to learn it.

I always thought this system looked really un-pro-FESH-un-al.

Greetings,
Timwi