A concise version of SAMPA for Classical Nahuatl sounds

IMPORTANT: SAMPA was created out of the need for a 7-bit plain-text representation of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), required to circumvent printing, editing, and emailing limitations on early computer systems. A second guideline in the creation of the SAMPA transcription for a particular language was simplicity and brevity; thus, most SAMPA tables encode only those phonemes that are necessary for the transcription of their target language, and tend to use the limited number of available ASCII symbols to represent those phonemes.

As a result, SAMPA tables are valid only in the language they were created for, the tables of the various languages are not harmonised, and there are conflicts between languages. X-SAMPA was created to solve this problem, at the price of the optimal simplicity and brevity achievable for a particular language. This is the reason why it is often useful to create a language-specific SAMPA table, while providing it with the X-SAMPA equivalents for disambiguation. That is the approach of this article.

Basic consonants

SAMPA	X-SAMPA	IPA	IPA	Description	Examples
p	p	p		unvoiced bilabial plosive	English hop [hQp], French pose [poz], Spanish perro ["per:o]
t	t	t		unvoiced alveolar plosive	English too [tu:], French raté [Rate], Spanish tuyo
k	k	k		unvoiced velar plosive	English cat [k{t], Spanish carro ["kar:o]
q	q	q		unvoiced uvular plosive	Latin aqwa [aqva]/[aqwa]
m	m	m		bilabial nasal	English mouse [maUs], French homme [Om]
n	n	n		alveolar nasal	English nap [n{p], French non [nO~]
s	s	s		unvoiced alveolar fricative	English seem [si:m], French session [se.sjO~]
x	S	ʃ		voiceless palatoalveolar fricative	English ship [SIp]
l	K	ɬ		voiceless alveolar lateral fricative	Welsh llaw
h	?	ʔ		glottal stop	Cockney bottle

Affricate consontants

SAMPA	X-SAMPA	IPA	IPA	Description	Examples
z	ts	ts		voiceless alveolar affricate	German z (?)
r	tK	tɬ		voiceless alveolar lateral affricate	Welsh (?)
c	tS	tʃ		voiceless palatoalveolar affricate	Italian c (?)

Semivowels (Approximants)

SAMPA	X-SAMPA	IPA	IPA	Description	Examples
y	j	j		palatal approximant	English yes [jEs], French yeux [j2]
v	w	w		labiovelar approximant	English west [wEst], French oui [wi]

Vowels

SAMPA	X-SAMPA	IPA	IPA	Description	Example
a	a	a		open low front unrounded vowel	French dame [dam], Spanish padre ["padre]
e	e	e		close-mid front unrounded vowel	French ses [se]
i	i	i		tense close front unrounded vowel	English be [bi:], French oui [wi], Spanish si [si]
o	o	o		close-mid back rounded vowel	French gros [gRo]