> From: Jukka K. Korpela [mailto:jkorpela at cs.tut.fi] > > Just to clarify: IPA can be used to transcribe any language, but any > > instance of IPA transcription is in *some* particular language. > > Normally so, but the particular language may be unknown; Even if it is unknown, it is still in some particular language. > this however is > no different from a case where you have, say, text in Latin letters and > you do not know its language (yet). Yes. ISO 639-2/-3 have "und" for that situation. > Moreover, it is possible to use IPA to > describe words that appear the same (in pronunciation) in different > languages, in which case we would probably use "mul" if we had to tag the > text. I suppose one could use IPA notation to cite an abstracted utterance. Abstracted usage -- i.e. independent of any language -- is often done when discussing individual phonemes, but I don't know that I've ever seen a single instance of a transcription of an abstracted utterance. But I'd suggest that, if a document contained such a thing, it would make most sense either to leave it untagged, or to tag it "zxx" as it is not content in any language, let alone multiple languages; it is just a abstract phonetic sound. > So there are situations where there the language tagging is not > obvious, but this may happen for any script, not just IPA. Quite so; and again no tag or "zxx" makes more sense to me than "mul". Peter Constable _______________________________________________ Ltru mailing list Ltru at ietf.org https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ltru
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