Re: Greek characters in IPA usage

From: Karl Pentzlin (karl-pentzlin@acssoft.de)
Date: Tue Aug 18 2009 - 11:28:12 CDT

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    Am Dienstag, 11. August 2009 um 22:15 schrieb Andreas Stötzner:

    AS> There seems to be repeated confusion about Greek minuscules beta and
    AS> theta when it comes to their usage in phonetic context (IPA).

    When discussing this, it should be also taken in consideration that
    some letters which were Greek in first line, are used now within Latin
    orthographies of living languages.
    As far as African orthographies are concerned, these letters usually are
    encoded as Latin letters with separate codepoints, like
    U+0251 LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA or U+0269 LATIN SMALL LETTER IOTA.

    However, this is not the case for letters used in North American
    orthographies, which use theta, lambda, and chi (of which theta and
    chi also are contained in IPA).
    See the list below based on a quick survey of http://www.languagegeek.com .
    (The theta is also rumored to be used in some orthographies of Romani,
    a minority language used by gypsies in Europe, but I could not confirm this.)

    Thus, their use in "good" typography in North American text also has
    to be considered (which is possible close to or like the IPA use,
    rather than the Greek use).
    There is a strong case for encoding these as separate Latin letters
    especially as their Greek uppercase forms are incompatible with the Latin
    script (at least for the chi and the lambda, regarding the latter, the
    U+028C/0245 LATIN SMALL/CAPITAL LETTER TURNED V is also used in North
    American orthographies).
    The possible look of such letters is illustrated by the U+019B LATIN SMALL
    LETTER LAMBDA WITH STROKE and some letters from the Private Use area
    of the font AboriginalSerifREGULAR downloaded from the mentioned site
    http://www.languagegeek.com ; see attached pictures.

    - Karl Pentzlin

    ------------------
    Appendix:
    Result of the mentioned quick survey of the use of Theta, Lambda, and
    Chi in North American Languages (not claimed to be complete and
    accurate in all cases):

    Theta:
    Algonquin: ’Ɔ’níííh (White Clay)
    Coast Salish: Həəmiəm
    Coast Salish: Sliammon Comox Homalco Klahoose
    Rotinonhsonni: Wendat

    Modifier Letter Theta:
    Coast Salish: Nəxʷsaəmúcən (Klallam)
    Coast Salish: Ləʷiŋínəŋ (N Straits Salish)
    Coast Salish: Sliammon Comox Homalco Klahoose

    Lambda:
    Wakashan: Haiɫzaqvla (Heiltsuk)

    Barred Lambda:
    Coast Salish: Həəmiəm
    Coast Salish: Nəxʷsaəmúcən (Klallam)
    Coast Salish: Ləʷiŋínəŋ (N Straits Salish)
    Coast Salish: Sliammon Comox Homalco Klahoose
    Salish: Dəxʷləšucid
    Salish: Nxaʔamxčín
    Salish: ʷayáeł (Upper Chehalis)
    Wakashan: Haiɫzaqvla (Heiltsuk)
    Wakashan: Qʷi·qʷi·diččaq (Makah)
    Wakashan: Nuučaauł
    Rotinonhsonni: Wendat

    Chi:
    Coast Salish: Həəmiəm
    Coast Salish: Sliammon Comox Homalco Klahoose

    BarredLambda.png
    LambdaForms.png
    CapitalChiForm.png

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