Re: [AfricanLanguages] Re: Recordings with Transciption

[paa kwesi imbeah]

Ah, bien.
Responding to the second question first (one of the kasahorow newsletters was dedicated to this issue--http://kasahorow.org/magazine/1July2006).

Well, a point of clarification--see the alphabets here: www.kasahorow.org/alphabets. All the characters established by the official orthographic committees are present. However, we do not recommend using tone markings (which are merely pronunciation aids) except when doing specialist work ( e.g. teaching first time learners, writing a linguistics book). When trying to compose a text message in Yoruba, tone markings should not be required. Yeah, the open e and open o in Akan are represented in Yoruba with dots underneath both vowels (dotted vowels). The dotted vowels are letters of the alphabet and should be represented in a Yoruba text message. Dotted vowels with accents indicating high or low tones are linguistic annotations--they shouldn't normally be represented in a Yoruba text message since context can be supplied to isolate the correct meaning of the word.

The problem of ambiguity can easily be solved by using an unambiguous writing style. For example the ff made up English sentence is considered bad writing style even though it is grammatically correct:

Refuse? Yes, refuse.

Good writing style suggests that more context needs to be provided to make clear whether the writer means refuse as a verb, or as a noun instead of using accent/tone markings. Or better still to use different words that are less ambiguous. All this is possible because writing is not like speaking. The (West) African languages I'm familiar with however, are mostly written as they are spoken (as if it is a transcription of an oral conversation) hence the wide prevalence of accents and diacritics.

I hope this answers both questions.
Regards,
paa.kwesi

On 8/30/06, Anja Choon <[EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:

Dear Paa Kwesi,

no accents and no sub-lines? I think that would create too much ambiguity in Yoruba. The 1974 official orthography, the most recent one I am aware of, states something as following:

(7) The diacritic marking open vowels should be a dot or a vertical line but not a horizontal line.

(13) It is not necessary to mark the tone on every syllable except in dictionaries, poetry, dialects and in special writing. However, in any case, tone marks should be employed in a way that will facilitate comprehension.

As you see, the people responsible for the current official orthography of the Yoruba language saw it fit to use diacritics to mark the open vowels and to use tone marks when their absence could lead to ambiguity.

It seems the two open vowels represented in Yoruba by e + sub-line and o + subline also exist in Akan. They look a bit like a 3 and a c both rotated by 180° (the last two characters in the list of vowels below). What would happen, if you wrote these two letters of the Akan alphabet as e and o?

Akan pronunciation

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/akan.htm

Greetings, Anja

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