From: Kenneth Whistler (kenw@sybase.com)
Date: Fri Jan 04 2008 - 18:13:11 CST
Dominikus Scherkl wrote:
> > I presume that a systematic survey on dictionaries using other
> > phonetic systems than IPA will "unearth" a lot of other symbols of
> > this kind.
> Yes, I would agree.
> Wouldn't it a better idea to use the modern IPA charakters which
> represent the described sounds, and use a specialized font in which
> those IPA characters have the glyphs used to present the historic book?
I disagree. That would be a misrepresentation of the content of
the text. And in some cases -- particularly the earlier you go
historically -- the very interpretation of the description of
pronunciation symbols in terms of IPA will become problematical.
Early usage of pronunciation and transliteration symbols tended
to be very inexact and problematical -- not at all like the
nature of more rigorous (particularly German ;-) ) usages of
the 20th century.
Doing what you suggest might be appropriate for a redacted,
*interpreted* version of such text, but reinterpreting symbols
in terms of IPA values *does* constitute an editorial interpretation
of the text.
> That has two advantages: the text keeps readable even if a different
> font is used, while the original book can be presented as plain text
> as close to the original as possible.
It isn't as close to the original as possible that way -- and
encoding text in ways where the identity of the characters
depends on fonts chosen is precisely what we are developing
Unicode to get away from.
--Ken
>
> The only problem would be if the modern IPA glyphs are also used in
> the historic text by contrast, but that's very unlikely because than
> the authors wouldn't have needed to invent such new glyphs.
>
> Best regards,
>
> --
>
> Dominikus Scherkl
>
>
>
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