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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
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| p | p | p |  | unvoiced bilabial plosive | English hop [hQp], French pose [poz], Spanish perro ["per:o]
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| t | t | t |  | unvoiced alveolar plosive | English too [tu:], French raté [Rate], Spanish tuyo
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| k | k | k |  | unvoiced velar plosive | English cat [k{t], Spanish carro ["kar:o]
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| q | q | q |  | unvoiced uvular plosive | Latin aqwa [aqva]/[aqwa]
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| m | m | m |  | bilabial nasal | English mouse [maUs], French homme [Om]
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| n | n | n |  | alveolar nasal | English nap [n{p], French non [nO~]
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| s | s | s |  | unvoiced alveolar fricative | English seem [si:m], French session [se.sjO~]
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| x | S | ʃ |  | voiceless palatoalveolar fricative | English ship [SIp]
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| l | K | ɬ |  | voiceless alveolar lateral fricative | Welsh llaw
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| h | ? | ʔ |  | glottal stop | Cockney bottle
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Affricate consontants
| SAMPA | X-SAMPA | IPA | IPA | Description | Examples
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| z | ts | ts | | voiceless alveolar affricate | German z (?)
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| r | tK | tɬ | | voiceless alveolar lateral affricate | Welsh (?)
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| c | tS | tʃ | | voiceless palatoalveolar affricate | Italian c (?)
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Semivowels (Approximants)
| SAMPA | X-SAMPA | IPA | IPA | Description | Examples
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| y | j | j |  | palatal approximant | English yes [jEs], French yeux [j2]
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| v | w | w |  | labiovelar approximant | English west [wEst], French oui [wi]
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Vowels
| SAMPA | X-SAMPA | IPA | IPA | Description | Example
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| a | a | a |  | open low front unrounded vowel | French dame [dam], Spanish padre ["padre]
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| e | e | e |  | close-mid front unrounded vowel | French ses [se]
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| i | i | i |  | tense close front unrounded vowel | English be [bi:], French oui [wi], Spanish si [si]
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| o | o | o |  | close-mid back rounded vowel | French gros [gRo]
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