Please help me solve a maddening problem with Doulos and IPA

January 30, 2011 3:01 PM

Desperate IPA situation! I've opened up an old Word doc that was created using SIL Doulos or SIL IPA93 fonts. These are now defunct. I currently use Doulos SIL and Charis (both unicode, hooray!). The document is substituting certain alphabet characters for much needed IPA symbols. I need to know what those masquerading alphabet characters used to be in IPA.

No, the SIL converter will not work for me.

Here's an example of the problem. The word for 'scorching' shows up in the Word doc (using modern unicode Charis font) as [ZeZika] in Proto-slavic and [ZeSk'] in Bulgarian. Capitals Z and S, and the ' symbol are not IPA, but I'm not sure what they used to represent in IPA in the older version of this document (using the bad, non-unicode IPA fonts). I've been able to figure out some of the problems, for example: SIL Doulos' [ʊ] shows up as [U] in Charis, so I just replace all the capital U's with ʊ's.

Here are all the symbols that I'm still unclear about and would like to know the mappings for (the IPA symbols that they're supposed to represent):

A, S, Z, Q, ', ì, ç

If there's a full chart somewhere that lists all the conversion problems (all the substitutions), that would be superb!

Thank you MeFites; you're (hopefully) really saving my butt in a time pinch!

posted by iamkimiam to computers & internet (10 answers total)

Would it help if someone had the old fonts and could send them to you? I can dig around in my archive files and see if I've still got them.
posted by ocherdraco at 3:06 PM on January 30, 2011

I am about 90% sure I still have the old fonts and an old computer with both Word and the fonts installed. If helpful, I can check if that computer has it all, and if so, perhaps you can send me the relevant files?
posted by jeather at 3:13 PM on January 30, 2011

A = ɑ
S = ʃ
Z = ʒ
Q = æ
' = superscript ŋ
ç = ɔ

I'm still trying to figure out ì...
posted by enlarged to show texture at 3:20 PM on January 30, 2011

Actually, one mistake, ' is just an apostrophe (Word was autocorrecting to smartquotes).
posted by enlarged to show texture at 3:23 PM on January 30, 2011

' = ʼ
ì = horizontal line over previous character

Ta-da!
posted by enlarged to show texture at 3:26 PM on January 30, 2011

ì seems to be ɣ
posted by nomis at 3:27 PM on January 30, 2011

(I should clarify -- the conversions I gave are for roman characters --> IPA. Upon rereading your question, I'm not sure if that was what you were looking for, because I have no idea what Charis is [but should probably learn].)
posted by enlarged to show texture at 3:34 PM on January 30, 2011

Thanks everybody; this is such a wonderful relief. I knew you'd come thru for me! I can actually go to bed now and not freak out about this or have weird symbol dreams.

enlarged to show texture, Charis is just a nice serif IPA font (made by SIL and is unicode). It has bold and italic, unlike Doulos, but has strange leading, also unlike Doulos.
posted by iamkimiam at 3:40 PM on January 30, 2011

I'm glad others were able to help, as I couldn't find the old fonts. (Haven't needed them in a long time!)
posted by ocherdraco at 4:31 PM on January 30, 2011

Figured out some more things... ì should be the long macron over the previous letter, I believe, and not ɣ. ' is ə. I am going to write a whole conversion chart soon, for myself and anybody else. Can't thank you all enough again, especially nomis, who helped me via MeFi Mail.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:53 PM on January 30, 2011