Entering Text in Great Andamanese
The Great Andamanese languge does not have any script of its own. We follow the linguistic method to write the language in International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For this purpose we have used the Lucida Sans Unicode MS font to encode and process the text in GA. Given the present status of the encoding method, the readers will not be able to write in this font(specially those characters that are not available in Roman letters) directly in the text area provided. One will have to use alternative ways to write the Great Andamanese text.
There can be two alternative ways to write in GA using the Lucida Sans Unicode font.
Alternative 1: For those who just want to check the system
You can copy the given phrases in the Sample Verb Phrases and paste it in the text area. Any other encoding of the text will not return the desired results.
Alternative 2: For those who want to write the text on their own
You can have your text first written in Lucida Sans Unicode in any text/word processor. And then you can copy them to the text area of the analyzer.
Is typing in IPA a problem?
Not really. However, one has to choose the font for the characters one uses. Most of the characters used in representing a language's phonemes in IPA are common to the roman letters that almost all the typing systems support. It is only the remaining characters that needs to be enabled for putting up. In GA these characters are at most 10 (refer GA phonemic inventory).
There are several fonts that offer IPA characters. Summer Institiute of Linguistics offer several types of fonts in IPA. Earlier versions of Windows did not support the IPA characters. However, XP and later versions have two fonts that have IPA extensions. These two fonts are Lucida Sans Unicode and Arial Unicode MS. You can download both of these two fonts free of cost and install it on your system if it does not have it already. |
