Just for fun here is a macro called “read-out” that you provide some text to the macro <<read-out "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog">> and it is converted to the phonetic alphabet;
Tango Hotel Echo
Quebec Uniform India Charlie Kilo
Bravo Romeo Oscar Whiskey November
Foxtrot Oscar X-ray
Juliett Uniform Mike Papa Echo Delta
Oscar Victor Echo Romeo
Tango Hotel Echo
Lima Alfa Zulu Yankee
Delta Oscar Golf
You can also do numbers.
Note is uses the simple dictionary tiddler format to store the conversion.
IMO it would make a great way, in illustrative documents, to show how brilliant TW is at text substitution.
FYI, calling it a “Phonetic Alphabet” could be slightly confusing (it is not what phoneticians use).
At base it is the “USA Military Alphabet” (also adopted by NATO; widely used also by police forces in English speaking countries).
It might be interesting to show in an instruct-able how to convert it for non-English environments. Like one of the Italian variants (using, mainly, place names) …
Italian Phonetic Alphabet (one variant)
A come Ancona
B come Bologna (or Bari or Brescia)
C come Catania (or Como)
D come Domodossola
E come Empoli (or Enna)
F come Firenze
G come Genova
H come Hotel (acca)
I come Imola
J (gei or i lunga) come jolly (the joker in Italian card games) (or Jugoslavia)
K (kappa) come Kursaal
L come Livorno
M come Milano
N come Napoli
O come Otranto
P come Palermo (or Padova or Pisa)
Q come Quaderno
R come Roma
S come Savona (Sassari or Siena)
T come Torino (Taranto)
U come Udine
V come Venezia (Verona)
W (vi/vu doppio) come Washington (Wagner)
X (ics) come Xanto (xilofono)
Y come ipsilon (York or yacht)
Z come Zara (Zurigo or zeta)
My main point?
That macro is a great way to illustrate the value & ease of text substitution in TW and show what macros often do.
Indeed, I never knew the NATO/military folks called the alpha-bravo-charlie code “phonetic”; I eagerly opened this thread wondering whether I’m not alone (among TW folks) in my fascination with the International Phonetic Alphabet. Alas, we’re still quite ways from automatic conversion to phonemes.
Well then, it started with the Phoenician’s who traded across the Mediterranean and across languages so needs ways to express languages in the way they are sounded. Phonetically.
It is a “phonetic alphabet” because its the letters “voiced as words”, so they can be heard over poor connections and to ensure accuracy.
Of course many come across phonetics because of dictionaries that help us know “How to say the words”, the sounds of other languages and more.
I needed help in high school because I was a “phonetic speller”, not a rote learner
I like how this was written with TiddlyWiki \define() prams and widgets and not JavaScript. I would have totally done this in JavaScript 'cause that is what I know better. Props to figuring it out in a different way.
Here’s a version that doesn’t need a separate “phonetic alphabet” data dictionary tiddler:
\define read-out(text)
\define phonetic-alphabet() a Alfa b Bravo c Charlie d Delta e Echo f Foxtrot g Golf h Hotel i India j Juliett k Kilo l Lima m Mike n November o Oscar p Papa q Quebec r Romeo s Sierra t Tango u Uniform v Victor w Whiskey x X-ray y Yankee z Zulu 0 zero 1 one 2 two 3 three 4 four 5 five 6 six 7 seven 8 eight 9 nine . decimal
;$text$
<$list filter="[[$text$]split[]lowercase[]]" variable=letter>
<$let voice-word={{{ [enlist<phonetic-alphabet>after<letter>!match[]else[<br>]] }}}>
<<voice-word>>
\end
<<read-out "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog">>
<$edit-text field="string" tag="textarea" class="tc-edit-texteditor"/>
;Result
{{{
[{!!string}split[]!match[ ]]
:map[enlist[
Alfa Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliett Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey X-ray Yankee Zulu
]search:title:anchored{!!title}]
+[join[ ]trim[,]]
}}}
Phoneme transcription is a skill that (especially for the English language) takes-on the sound of the spoken words in context (not their spelling); resolving them to an unambiguous (phonetic; not A-Zee alphabetical) notation system.
(Note: This is one of the few areas where AI really can be an helpful sidekick.)
Without some kind of monstrous phonemic AI back-end I doubt TW could get there?
The link you shared is a discussion about the entomology between ‘Phoenician’ and ‘phonic’.
What I do know from memory is that languages as written by the Egyptian’s included some “phonetic symbols” but they were just part of wide set of ideographs. The Phonetians wrote down words as they said them, not unlike what we do today with the exception of inherited spelling, and grammatical complications. The alphabet they used represented sounds, unlike the hieroglyphs which represented words. It is this fact I do not think is in dispute even if the entomology of related words is in dispute.
It was a Frenchman that gave the Vietnamese there current phonetic words with the phonetic alphabet. Korea and China still use symbols for words, but some of our community can shed more light on that.
I happen to be aware (from being a student of Japanese) that while Japan still uses Chinese ideographs (“kanji”), mixed in with phonetic symbols, Korean has made great efforts to leave these (“hanja” characters) behind. Schools that still teach them are rare (compare to schools that still teach cursive writing in the anglophone world).
The Korean phonetic script, Hangul, is widely considered the most logical and coherent phonetic system in the world. You can learn your way around the script in a day, and once you internalize how it works, you can pronounce anything you read. Pretty different from English!!
Korean is great, 24 letters, no words that are spelt differently to how they sound…I think they designed it to break away from Chinese in the 1400’s. Though much like writing in normal English was looked down on as Latin was SO AWSOME so Hangul was treated for a long time.
[We could go all ideological and discuss the socio-economics of Hangul in North v. South Korea and it’s variant adoptions. That is for another forum methinks]
You are right that the Korean alphabet pronunciation in actual use is remarkably akin to a phonetician’s take on the spoken …
As I wrote twice before, I think @TW_Tones’ OP is very useful.
It lends itself very well to an instructional exemplar of TW macro use for text substitution.
In some ways my intention. The alternative ways to do the same thing presented in other replies in helpful to compare and contrast.
One reason for the data tiddler, including single letter index names was the ability to change this out for other letter to word mapping without needing to edit the code. This is also a useful code pattern separating the data from the code.
We could have just used the first letter of each work to do the lookup
Sometimes the advantage of a particular code pattern is not in the code, or the data but the possibilities, outside both, for alternative uses.
I hope that those reluctant to program can see such examples as inspiration to learn, not because I want them to “have to code” but because the value if they do is substantial. With TiddlyWiki, learning to program is possibly easier in the long run, compared to learning a complete programming language, although may encourage life long learning.
]
