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Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 2:39 pm
by alice
No, I don't mean
this, or
this, much less
this, although alternate-universe versions of these might well exist and be worth talking about. I am of course talking about the
International Phonetic Alphabet, with which at least some of you here may have a passing familiarity. The theme of this thread is:
what would the IPA look like if it originated in a script which was not one of those in common use in Europe, such as Arabic, Hebrew, Hangul, or even Chinese ideographs?
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 2:51 pm
by Lērisama
I don't know; the closest I've got to that is designing part of an IPA-based phonetic alphabet for a crow-like species on my conworld. I will let you guess the phonetics of {A/Cʡ͡ʜ̣ạɹ.3̠/ị}.
Edit: missed a tie bar.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 3:07 pm
by Raphael
This sounds extremely fascinating, but I'd have no idea how to even start doing something like that.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 6:00 pm
by /ˌnɐ.ˈɾɛn.dɚ.ˌduːd/
I have actually wondered about this myself. early on last year I discovered the whole idea for an alternate timeline in which Ming China discovers and colonizes the Americas instead of European powers, and I wondered to myself what everyday life would look like if we all spoke Mandarin instead of English. part of that was wondering what conlanging would be like, and in turn the IPA. while I haven't actually come up with any ideas, this is my excuse to do so!
edit: fixed a grammar issue.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 6:15 pm
by zompist
The closest to this in the real world is probably
Cyrillic phonetic alphabets.
Honorable mention to the
ʼPhags-pa script, which could be equally used for Mongolian, Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur, and even Sanskrit.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Thu Jan 29, 2026 6:41 pm
by malloc
zompist wrote: ↑Thu Jan 29, 2026 6:15 pmThe closest to this in the real world is probably Cyrillic phonetic alphabets.
Cool. For the longest time, I wondered how one might transcribe my click-using conlangs into Cyrillic and now I have one possible answer. Admittedly it differs greatly from my expectations.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2026 11:45 am
by linguistcat
Could be fun trying to make one based on Japanese kana (maybe a mix of both hiragana and katakana, including odd uses of daku- or handakuten, and small kana). Though I think it would be hard to start off, and it still would make use of basic mora unless forced to use phonemes directly.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2026 11:48 am
by Richard W
For a development from Chinese ideographs, there is Bopomofo.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2026 2:53 pm
by alice
Nice! How many Verdurian phonetic alphabets are you waiting to tell us about?
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2026 3:09 pm
by zompist
alice wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2026 2:53 pm
Nice! How many Verdurian phonetic alphabets are you waiting to tell us about?
It's on the list, now that I have a working font program again...
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2026 3:20 pm
by zompist
linguistcat wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2026 11:45 am
Could be fun trying to make one based on Japanese kana (maybe a mix of both hiragana and katakana, including odd uses of daku- or handakuten, and small kana). Though I think it would be hard to start off, and it still would make use of basic mora unless forced to use phonemes directly.
Kana is admirable for representing Japanese. I think it would be a mess for a general system. It'd be a forest of diacritics.
What would be easily extensible would be Hangul. It's already featural*, and has a much wider variety of vowels than kana. You could easily add another few symbols for places of articulation, and modifications for features not currently represented.
*Carl B. thinks it wasn't originally, but I think a case can be made that it's been reanalyzed, and is best explained and learned that way. Not many scripts are easier to learn than an alphabet!
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2026 4:05 pm
by linguistcat
zompist wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2026 3:20 pm
linguistcat wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2026 11:45 am
Could be fun trying to make one based on Japanese kana (maybe a mix of both hiragana and katakana, including odd uses of daku- or handakuten, and small kana). Though I think it would be hard to start off, and it still would make use of basic mora unless forced to use phonemes directly.
Kana is admirable for representing Japanese. I think it would be a mess for a general system. It'd be a forest of diacritics.
What would be easily extensible would be Hangul. It's already featural*, and has a much wider variety of vowels than kana. You could easily add another few symbols for places of articulation, and modifications for features not currently represented.
*Carl B. thinks it wasn't originally, but I think a case can be made that it's been reanalyzed, and is best explained and learned that way. Not many scripts are easier to learn than an alphabet!
Oh, I know it wouldn't be
good for this usage, but I think it would be
interesting to try.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2026 4:00 am
by Neonnaut
linguistcat wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2026 4:05 pm
Could be fun trying to make one based on Japanese kana (maybe a mix of both hiragana and katakana, including odd uses of daku- or handakuten, and small kana). Though I think it would be hard to start off, and it still would make use of basic mora unless forced to use phonemes directly.
Oh, I know it wouldn't be
good for this usage, but I think it would be
interesting to try.
I was recently trying to put together a conversion table for Hiragana / Katakana and that already felt trauma inducing. "キョ" <KIyo> = /kyo/ vs "キヨ" <KIYO> = /kiyo/ would be difficult for those with even mild dyslexia ; more so if you are sounding out words that you have never seen before and are not expecting as the next word of a sentence.
zompist wrote: ↑Fri Jan 30, 2026 3:20 pm
Kana is admirable for representing Japanese. I think it would be a mess for a general system. It'd be a forest of diacritics.
What would be easily extensible would be Hangul. It's already featural*, and has a much wider variety of vowels than kana. You could easily add another few symbols for places of articulation, and modifications for features not currently represented.
*Carl B. thinks it wasn't originally, but I think a case can be made that it's been reanalyzed, and is best explained and learned that way. Not many scripts are easier to learn than an alphabet!
True but Hangul has no /j/ + "ㅡ" jamo equivalent. There is no currently existing program to compose special hangul symbols into syllabic blocks.
Re: Alternate-universe IPA
Posted: Sat Jan 31, 2026 6:29 am
by WeepingElf
My Elves use a featural alphabet to write Old Albic, and a bard-dialectologist has developed extensions of this alphabet to write sounds in various dialects that do not occur in Classical Old Albic. Not a full-fledged phonetic alphabet, more of a phone
mic alphabet. However, I haven't worked it out yet. What I do have worked out is the
International Hesperic Alphabet, a repository of digraphs and diacritics for making compatible phonemic transcriptions of Hesperic languages.