--- Florian Rivoal wrote:

> Hello all.
>
> This is just a short message to introduce myself, since I just joined the
> list.

Welcome to the List, then!

> Actually I had been a member before for a short time, but I am back now.

Yes, your name sounds sort of familiar.

> I haven't made any conlang yet. Just a few tries on phonetic systems, or
> scripts.

Well, that's a beginning as good as any ;)

> As for real languages, I am really fond of asian languages. I know a little
> of japanese and chinese. And I would like to know more about the other
> chineses 'dialects" as well as languages from suroundings countries, like
> vietnam, or korea. I know those languages are not really relatd to each
> ohter, but i think the interaction between them is really interesting. Take
> japanese and chinese, for example. Of course they are radicaly different, but
> what would japanese be without the influence of the chinese writting system
> and vocabular. Ok, let's stop it for now, I will have plenty of time to talk
> about asian languages with you...

There are plenty of people on the list who are interested in (and in many cases
actually know) Asiatic languages. Especially Japanese and Tagalog seem to be
popular. It's really funny: those 398 people on the list combine together an
incredible amount of linguistic knowledge, that I personally find really
illuminating.
So, you are in good company :)

> I just have one question now. I know you guys often use some phonetic
> notation to describe you languages, but I don't understand it, can anybody
> give me an explanation on it?

The problem is, that HTML is not very popular among the list members, and
that's why IPA characters, normally used for phonetic notations, has to be
substituted with something else. Now, there are several ways to transcribe IPA
to ASCII. Most frequently used on the list is X-SAMPA. Personally, I don't like
it too much, but I must admit that it is helpful and once you know the rules of
the game even funny from time to time.
Here are a few links:

  IPA:              http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html
  SAMPA:            http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/home.htm
  X-SAMPA:          http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/x-sampa.htm
  IPA -> ASCII:     http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html
  How they sound:   http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/

Best regards,
Jan



=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com