PHONETIC SYMBOLS
I am representing here some symbols, much of which are used in IPA (international phonetic alphabet). These I’m using (or adapting) are reduced to a handful, because I’ve taken on the commitment to avoid to reader a stress of learning graphically the myriad of pronunciations of Sardinian linguistic cantons, which multiply for every single village on the island. Reader, if forced to do so, would suffer undeserved torture.
Reader needs to be reassured about the exact pronunciation, but he also needs not to get lost among thousands of micro-variants that no one will ever be able to harness in their minimal change from area to area (even from moment to moment), since Sardinian language expresses itself, as a whole, in a phonetic jumble whose disparity no one is able to untangle in the fields of a wise illustration, unless a linguist uses the usual “tricks of the trade”, arbitrarily simplifying. Yes, because it is always arbitrary, like it or not, in managing these procedures. And I, with all modesty, cannot evade the responsibilities of this arbitrariness.
Then I submit to the reader the graphic equivalences for twenty-six phonemes, in turn distinguished between those currently in use in Sardinia and those acquired directly from the dictionaries of dead languages consulted by me.
ă = short Latin a
ā = a long Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian
å = one of the three a‘s used by Egyptologists. It’s difficult to establish the pronunciation. It’s enough to know that in Sardinian it has
three outcomes: a, e, i
â = a with very long pronunciation
ĕ = short Latin e
ē = e long Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Akkadian, Sumerian
ê = e with very long pronunciation
č = c in It. cento
ḍ = d cacuminal (alveolar) in Sardinian, Akkadian
ĝ = Sumerian g, pronounced almost like It. gn, or Ags. i-ng
j = j pronounced as in Fr. joli
ħ = voiced guttural fricative
ĭ = short Latin i
ī = long Latin i
î = i with very long pronunciation
ŏ = short Latin o
ō = long Latin o
ŭ = short Latin u
ū = long Latin u
χ = pronounce as ted. i-ch
ḥ = palatal fricative of Sumerians, Akkadians, Hebrews, Egyptians
ḫ = guttural fricative of Sumerians, Akkadians, Egyptians
š = alveo-dental fricative as in it. sc-emo
ṭ = deaf dental fricative-explosive in Akkadians, Hebrews, Egyptians
θ = Greek dental fricative, also used in Sardinia and in various Mediterranean regions
ž = j in fr. joli