Standard Alphabet by Lepsius
The Standard Alphabet by Lepsius is a Latin alphabet developed by Karl Richard Lepsius to write African languages. Published 1855 and in a revised edition (with many more languages added) in 1863, it was comprehensive but it was not used much as it contains a lot of diacritic marks and therefore was difficult to read, write and typeset at that time.
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[edit] Vowels
Vowel length is indicated by a macron (ā) or a breve (ă) for long and short vowels, respectively. Open vowels are marked by a line under the letter (e̱), while a dot below the letter makes it a close vowel (ẹ). Central vowels are indicated by an ogonek-like hook below (į). Rounded front vowels, especially [ø] and [y] are written with an umlaut (ö and ü), either on top or below, when the space above the letter is needed for vowel length marks (as in ṳ̄ or ṳ̆). As in the International Phonetic Alphabet, nasal vowels get a tilde (ã). A small circle below a letter is used to mark both the schwa (e̥) and syllabic consonants (r̥ or l̥, for instance). Diphthongs do not receive any special marking, they are simply juxtaposed (au).
[edit] Consonants
To mark aspiration and affricates, the corresponding letters are simply written next to each other, thus kh in Lepsius' Standard Alphabet would be [kʰ] in IPA and tš would be [t͡ʃ]. For palatalization, the character ʹ is used, so pʹ is [pʲ] in IPA. Ejective consonants are sometimes written as double letters, although this could be mixed up with long consonants.
The symbols for the clicks were devised by Lepsius in 1855 and have since been used in Southern Africa. The IPA had different symbols for four of the click phonemes, but after a proposal by Köhler et al. adopted Lepsius' version in 1989.
[edit] Tones
Tone in tonal languages like Chinese or some African languages is marked with accent-like characters written to the right of the corresponding syllable. The tone system employed in Lepsius' 1863 version is as follows (using the yin values of the Chinese tones for reference):
| S.A. | Pinyin | IPA | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| maˏ | mā, má | ma˥, ma˧˥ | level tone (平聲) |
| ma´ | mǎ | ma˨˩˦ | rising tone (上聲) |
| ma` | mà | ma˥˩ | departing tone (去聲) |
| maˎ | — | — | entering tone (入聲) |
Yang values are written with a small line under the accent mark. Tonal African languages written in this alphabet would use the acute accent to mark high tones, the grave accent to mark low tones and leave the mid tone unmarked.
[edit] See also
- Africa Alphabet
- African reference alphabet
- Alphabets derived from the Latin
- Dinka alphabet
- ISO 6438
- Pan-Nigerian Alphabet
[edit] References
- Lepsius, C. R. (1863): Standard Alphabet for Reducing Unwritten Languages and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform Orthography in European Letters, 2nd rev. edn. John Benjamins, Amsterdam. [1] (full text available on Google Books)
- Faulmann, Carl (1880): Das Buch der Schrift enthaltend die Schriftzeichen und Alphabete aller Zeiten und aller Völker des Erdkreises, 2nd rev. edn. Kaiserlich-königliche Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Wien.
- Köhler, O., P. Ladefoged, J. Snyman, A. Traill, R. Vossen: The symbols for clicks.
