World Orthographies
comparison of letters assigned to phonemes
across writing systems for different languages
Example IPA SAMPA Spanish Dutch German Danish
at, ax,
ash æ t } . . . æ
alms,
wand a: 5 a a a a
edge,
bett e e e e e e
hay ä e: e: rey ee e, ä i
même E 3 . e . .
egg E: . . ee a: æ
ace ä ei . ey *rey ij . .
ill i . . i i ill
eel ë i: . i ie ie, i, il
ih
ox a 5 . . . .
ox o . . . o .
awe o: . . . o, oo, å a
oh ring
oat ou . o . ? .
up ^ . . . a .
foot u . . . u .
ooze u: . u . u, oo .
a'go. c . . . . .
h'r *her c: . . . . .
. Y . . put . .
. y . . . . .
eye ï ai . ai aai ei, ai æi
*mein
oil,
deutch oi . oi ooi eu .
eu
*sneeue . . eeue . .
deux o 2 . eu(r) Ö blÖd Ø
. iu . . ieuw . .
. yu . . uw *duw . .
. au . . . au .
neuf aoe . . . ü .
ü
wet . . uet . vet .
*luego
yet . . iet . iet .
> What this table illustrates is that
while any language can
> be written in any orthography, there
will be certain
> phonemes that cannot be expressed adequately
because the
> orthography has no conventional way
of indexing or coding
> the sound. Germanic languages
start out trying to represent
> 20 vowels with only the four letters
inherited from Latin.
> Perhaps only 12-15 are pure unblended
sounds. It still
> means that digraphs and/or diacritics
will be necessary if
> there is to be one and only one phoneme
corresponding to
> each grapheme.
