An assessment of the Unicode standard

[r]

On Sep 14, 1:24 pm, Terry Reedy <tjre... at udel.edu> wrote:
> r wrote:
>
> > So how many letters do we need? 50, 100, 1000?
>
>  From Wikipedia IPA article:
> Occasionally symbols are added, removed, or modified by the
> International Phonetic Association. As of 2008, there are 107 distinct
> letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosody marks in the IPA proper.

HaHa! and here is my favorite paragraph from that article..

The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that
are distinctive in spoken language: phonemes, intonation, and the
separation of words and syllables.[1] To represent additional
qualities of speech such as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds made
with a cleft palate, an extended set of symbols called the Extensions
to the IPA is used.[2]

LOL! (a smilie just would not have sufficed!)