61–63 of 63 posts
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It’s a design problem in English. Learn Sanskrit. Use its script to write English. There’s a vocalist who can sing in any language. She rewrites the lyrics in Sanskrit and then has perfect pronunciation. Will update with a link when I find it.
You don’t need Sanskrit. IPA probably works much better, as Sanskrit’s alphabet doesn’t represent everything.
Keyboards since the 17th century don’t include thorn, so as long as I am not using an Icelandic keyboard I don’t have to worry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t need Sanskrit. IPA probably works much better, as Sanskrit’s alphabet doesn’t represent everything.
I suggest you take a look at Sanskrit.
It has a larger consonant inventory than any other natural language that I've ever seen, which is impressive, but that doesn't make it phonologically universal.
Some things that American English has that Sanskrit doesn't include /ð/, /θ/, [ɹ] as a realization of /r/, and contrastive /v/ and /w/ (like "vein", the body part, versus "wain", the old word for a wagon; or "vine", the plant, and "wine", the beverage made from it).
I'm unclear on the effects of the vowel gradations, so I don't know whether they approximate other languages' vowel inventories well.
It also looks like Sanskrit doesn't have any uvular, pharyngeal, or glottal consonants, and no velar or post-velar fricatives. For example, I don't see that it could represent Hebrew חָכָם 'wise, smart' (pronounced /χa'χam/).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%97%D7%9B%D7%9D#Hebrew
I could see that Sanskrit might have been the best single choice for transcribing a wide range of unrelated languages at some point in history, but now that we have IPA, we can make lots of distinctions that Sanskrit doesn't.