Phonetic transcription in the context of "Speech synthesizer"

In linguistics, romanization or romanisation is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and transcription, for representing the spoken word, and combinations of both. Transcription methods can be subdivided into phonemic transcription, which records the phonemes or units of semantic meaning in speech, and more strict phonetic transcription, which records speech sounds with precision.

ʔ (majuscule: Ɂ, minuscule: ɂ), called glottal stop, is an alphabetic letter in some Latin alphabets, most notably in several languages of Canada where it indicates a glottal stop sound. Such usage derives from phonetic transcription, for example the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), that use this letter for the glottal stop sound. The letter derives graphically from use of the apostrophe ⟨ʼ⟩ or the symbol ʾ for glottal stop.

Gamma (/ˈɡæmə/ ; uppercase Γ, lowercase γ; Greek: γάμμα, romanized: gámma) is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop IPA: [ɡ]. In Modern Greek, this letter normally represents a voiced velar fricative IPA: [ɣ], except before either of the two front vowels (/e/, /i/), where it represents a voiced palatal fricative IPA: [ʝ]; while /g/ in foreign words is instead commonly transcribed as γκ).

In the International Phonetic Alphabet and other modern Latin-alphabet based phonetic notations, it represents the voiced velar fricative.

Chinese characters, also known as Han characters, Chinese script or Hanzi, are logographs used to write the Chinese languages and other Far Eastern languages from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture such as Japanese, Korean and (pre-colonial) Vietnamese. Unlike letters in the alphabets of most languages, which only transcribe the phonetics (phonemes) of speech (i.e. are phonegraphs), Chinese characters generally represent morphemes, the basic units of meaning in a language, thus making them the linguistic equivalent of words rather than letters, while the majority of "words" in the Chinese lexicon are in fact compounds and phrasemes (short phrases). The pronunciation of Chinese characters is transcribed phonetically via separate (usually romanized) transliteration systems such as the Pinyin, Zhuyin, Jyutping, Wade–Giles or Yale system.

At the most basic level, Chinese characters are composed of strokes (the actual linguistic equivalent of letters), which are written in a fixed stroke order for each character. The strokes are then organized into radicals, which are the fundamental root components that represent either a semantic feature or a homophone (often based on the Middle Chinese pronunciations) of the character. Historically, methods of writing characters have included carving inscriptions on stone, animal bones (usually turtle shells) or bronze; drawing ink onto bamboo slips, fabric (typically silk) or paper; and printing with woodblocks or moveable type. Technologies invented since the 19th century to facilitate the use of characters include telegraph codes and typewriters, as well as input methods and text encodings on computers.

Wa is the oldest attested name of Japan and ethnonym of the Japanese people. From c. the 2nd century AD Chinese and Korean scribes used the Chinese character 倭; 'submissive'', ''distant'', ''dwarf' to refer to the various inhabitants of the Japanese archipelago, although it might have been just used to transcribe the phonetic value of a Japonic ethnonym with a respectively differing semantic connotation. In the 8th century, the Japanese started using the character 和, wa, 'harmony', 'peace', 'balance' instead due to the offensive nature of the former.
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