Herman Ranes wrote:
> I have observed that MS Core Fonts include glyphs for
> U+018f (Ə) LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SCHWA and for
> U+0259 (ə) LATIN SMALL LETTER SCHWA. Obviously,
> they were included for use in Azeri text.
> Is it considered correct to use IPA characters like U+0259
> in non-IPA contexts?
Here's an example of Lingala quoted from "The Languages of
the World", (Katzner, 1975):
"Loléngé lɔ́kɔ́ sɔ́kɔ́ bakolakisa bísó lingála, kiswahíli,
kikɔ́ngɔ́, tsiluba, b.n.b., toébi naíno malámu tɛ́,
tokoíbwáka pé tokolela français, flamand, anglais."
And Shona from the same source:
"Mambo akaswedza zuʋa ari mumba,
Haana kumboɓuɗa kana kweŋguʋa shoma cete.
Asi ʋahosi, mukadzi mukuru wamambo,
Ndiʋo ʋakaɓuɗa ʋakapembera nesimba,
Simba rinoshamisa iʐo risakabva mukudya."
Latin letters from non-IPA ranges are needed in order to
have the complete IPA character set. Seems only fair that
languages using adaptations of the Latin script including
IPA letters would use letters from the IPA Unicode range.
> On the other hand, MSCF do not include glyphs for
> u+01dd (ǝ) LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED E. In which
> language(s) is this character used?
According to TUS 3.0, U+01DD is used in the Pan-Nigerian
alphabet, and all other usages of schwa are U+0259.
When is a schwa not a schwa?
Which of the Nigerian languages actually use the schwa?
Not Yoruba, and I'm pretty sure Hausa and Igbo don't,
either. (There are many languages in Nigeria.)
Best regards,
James Kass.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Mon Sep 17 2001 - 05:54:42 EDT