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IPA Mystery Cache

Hidden : 9/8/2007
Difficulty:
2 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:


The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates!

One of my interests is linguistics. (Nothing like my daughter's though, who majored in it. I'm just a dilettante.)

Linguists have devised an alphabet, called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for use in transcribing spoken language. IPA may look, to the layman, like Greek... or worse. (This may be for good reason, by the way, since several of the commonly used symbols come from the Greek alphabet.)

Just as I enlisted the assistance of my son for L-Luthor.BlogSpot.com, my daughter helped me with this one. Here's one tidbit that she told me that I thought was very interesting:

When "t" appears after the stressed vowel and before an unstressed vowel, it appears as a "flap" (like the single "r" in Spanish. Example: the pronunciations of "pot o' tea" and "para ti" are nearly identical). You can find the character for the "flap" on the IPA chart in the alveolar column: kinda looks like an upside down capital J.

Anyway, here's how a linguist might transcribe the way I would pronounce the actual coordinates of this cache:

IPA Coordinates

This page may help you figure out the coordinates.

Check your coordinates here.

Congratulations, jon_crowe for being First-to-Find!

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Abg n ohfu uvqr. Ybbx hc (hayrff lbhe anzr vf Xnerrz be Fundhvyyr.)

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)