"Logic" for describing IPA as a script

Michael Everson everson at evertype.com
Fri Apr 11 19:14:45 CEST 2003


At 17:42 +0000 2003-04-11, John Clews wrote:

>One swallow doesn't make a summer;
>One [klu:z] does not a Latin make ...
>
>In message <p05200a0ebabc6a3f43b8@[195.218.107.156]> Michael Everson writes:
>  > IPA is not a separate script. How do you write Clews? [klu:z].
>
>Ah, you can't generalise from a single example about all of IPA.

The majority of letters used in IPA are ordinary ASCII letters.

>Additional to Latin script: i.e, much of the Latin range, _and_ THETA
>as you pointed out yourself. IPA uses not _just_ Latin script.

Your logic isn't very logical, John. That a Greek letter is used in 
it does not mean that that Greek letter has ceased to be Greek, and 
it doesn't mean that the Latin letters have ceased to be Latin. If 
they had, we would have encoded an IPA script alongside the Latin 
script, with clones for abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz and others.

>Several people would like to see a script code for IPA, not just me.

Well, there isn't one.

>It doesn't mean that they want to describe IPA as a script 
>particular, just that they want a script code for it, and have cited 
>various user needs.

We give script codes to scripts. I can write out any number of texts 
and you would be unable to determine whether it was IPA or Latin 
until some stray letter wandered in. No, it just doesn't make logical 
sense at all.
-- 
Michael Everson * * Everson Typography *  * http://www.evertype.com


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