International Phonetic Alphabet

Not to be confused with NATO phonetic alphabet.

"IPA" redirects here. For other uses, see IPA (disambiguation).

For usage of IPA in Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:IPA or Wikipedia:IPA/Introduction

International Phonetic Alphabet
Type	Alphabet , partially featural
Languages	Used for phonetic and phonemic transcription of any language
Time period	since 1888
Parent systems	Romic alphabet Phonotypic alphabet International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)^{[note 1]} is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.^[1] The IPA is used by foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers, actors, lexicographers, constructed language creators (conlangers), and translators.^[2][3]

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 may be used.^[2]

IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two basic types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a single letter, [t], or with a letter plus diacritics, [t̺ʰ], depending on how precise one wishes to be.^[4] Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription; thus, /t/ is less specific than, and could refer to, either [t̺ʰ] or [t] depending on the context and language.

Occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of 2008, there are 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and four prosodic marks in the IPA.

History

Main article: History of the IPA

In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would come to be known from 1897 onwards as the International Phonetic Association (in French, l’Association phonétique internationale).^[5] Their original alphabet was based on a spelling reform for English known as the Romic alphabet, but in order to make it usable for other languages, the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language.^[6] For example, the sound [ʃ] (the sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the letter ⟨x⟩ in French.^[5] However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, thus providing the base for all future revisions.^[5][7]

Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989. A minor revision took place in 1993, with the addition of four letters for mid-central vowels^[2] and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives.^[8] The alphabet was last revised in May 2005, with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap.^[9] Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces.^[2]

Extensions of the alphabet are relatively recent; "Extensions to the IPA" was created in 1990 and officially adopted by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association in 1994.^[10]

Description

A chart of the full International Phonetic Alphabet.

For a guide to pronouncing IPA transcriptions of English words, see IPA chart for English dialects.

The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound (speech segment).^[11] This means that it does not use combinations of letters to represent single sounds, the way English does with ⟨sh⟩ and ⟨ng⟩, or single letters to represent multiple sounds the way ⟨x⟩ represents /ks/ or /ɡz/ in English. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as ⟨c⟩ does in English and other European languages, and finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as "selectiveness".^{[2][note 2]}

Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics are used to modify these, and 19 additional signs indicate suprasegmental qualities such as length, tone, stress, and intonation.^{[note 3]}

Letterforms

The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet.^{[note 4]} For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. However, there are letters that are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a dotless question mark, and derives originally from an apostrophe.^{[note 5]} In fact, there are a few letters, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, ⟨ʕ⟩, which, though modified to fit the Latin alphabet, were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter ﻉ‎, `ain).^[8]

Despite its preference for harmonizing with the Latin alphabet, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted letters that do not have this property. For example, before 1989, the IPA letters for click consonants were ⟨ʘ⟩, ⟨ʇ⟩, ⟨ʗ⟩, and ⟨ʖ⟩, all of which were derived either from existing IPA letters, or from Latin and Greek letters. However, except for ⟨ʘ⟩, none of these letters was widely used among Khoisanists or Bantuists, and as a result they were replaced by the more widespread symbols ⟨ʘ⟩, ⟨ǀ⟩, ⟨ǃ⟩, ⟨ǂ⟩, and ⟨ǁ⟩ at the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989.^[12] Although the IPA diacritics are fully featural, there is little systemicity in the letter forms. A retroflex articulation is consistently indicated with a right-swinging tail, as in ⟨ɖ ʂ ɳ⟩, and implosion by a top hook, ⟨ɓ ɗ ɠ⟩, but other pseudo-featural elements are due to haphazard derivation and coincidence. For example, all nasal consonants but uvular ⟨ɴ⟩ are based on the form ⟨n⟩: ⟨m ɱ n ɲ ɳ ŋ⟩. However, the similarity between ⟨m⟩ and ⟨n⟩ is a historical accident, ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ŋ⟩ are derived from ligatures of gn and ng, and ⟨ɱ⟩ is an ad hoc imitation of ⟨ŋ⟩. In none of these is the form consistent with other letters that share these places of articulation.^{[citation needed]}

Some of the new letters were ordinary Roman letters turned upside-down, such as ɐ ɔ ə ɟ ɥ ɯ ɹ ᴚ ʇ ʌ ʍ ʎ (turned a c e f h m r ʀ t v w y). This was easily done with mechanical typesetting machines, and had the advantage of not requiring the casting of special type for IPA symbols.

Symbols and sounds

The International Phonetic Alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, using as few non-Latin forms as possible.^[5] The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most consonant letters taken from the Latin alphabet would correspond to "international usage".^[5] Hence, the letters ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨f⟩, (hard) ⟨ɡ⟩, (non-silent) ⟨h⟩, (unaspirated) ⟨k⟩, ⟨l⟩, ⟨m⟩, ⟨n⟩, (unaspirated) ⟨p⟩, (voiceless) ⟨s⟩, (unaspirated) ⟨t⟩, ⟨v⟩, ⟨w⟩, and ⟨z⟩ have the values used in English; and the vowel letters from the Latin alphabet (⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩) correspond to the (long) sound values of Latin: [i] is like the vowel in machine, [u] is as in rule, etc. Other letters may differ from English, but are used with these values in other European languages, such as ⟨j⟩, ⟨r⟩, and ⟨y⟩.

This inventory was extended by using capital or cursive forms, diacritics, and rotation. There are also several derived or taken from the Greek alphabet, though the sound values may differ. For example, ⟨ʋ⟩ is a vowel in Greek, but an only indirectly related consonant in the IPA. Three of these (⟨β⟩, ⟨θ⟩ and ⟨χ⟩) are used unmodified in form; for others (including ⟨ɣ⟩, ⟨ɛ⟩, ⟨ɸ⟩, and ⟨ʋ⟩) subtly different glyph shapes have been devised, which may be encoded in Unicode separately from their "parent" letters.

The sound values of modified Latin letters can often be derived from those of the original letters.^[13] For example, letters with a rightward-facing hook at the bottom represent retroflex consonants; and small capital letters usually represent uvular consonants. Apart from the fact that certain kinds of modification to the shape of a letter generally correspond to certain kinds of modification to the sound represented, there is no way to deduce the sound represented by a symbol from its shape (unlike, for example, in Visible Speech).

Beyond the letters themselves, there are a variety of secondary symbols which aid in transcription. Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA letters to transcribe modified phonetic values or secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features such as stress and tone that are often employed.

Brackets and phonemes

There are two principal types of brackets used to set off IPA transcriptions:

• [square brackets] are used for phonetic details of the pronunciation, possibly including details that may not be used for distinguishing words in the language being transcribed, but which the author nonetheless wishes to document.
• /slashes/ are used to mark off phonemes, all of which are distinctive in the language, without any extraneous detail.

For example, while the /p/ sounds of pin and spin are pronounced slightly differently in English (and this difference would be meaningful in some languages), the difference is not meaningful in English. Thus phonemically the words are /pɪn/ and /spɪn/, with the same /p/ phoneme. However, to capture the difference between them (the allophones of /p/), they can be transcribed phonetically as [pʰɪn] and [spɪn].

Two other conventions are less commonly seen:

• Double slashes //...//, pipes |...|, double pipes ||...||, or braces {...} may be used around a word to denote its underlying structure, more abstract even than that of phonemes. See morphophonology for examples.
• Angle brackets are used to clarify that the letters represent the original orthography of the language, or sometimes an exact transliteration of a non-Latin script, not the IPA; or, within the IPA, that the letters themselves are indicated, not the sound values that they carry. For example, ⟨pin⟩ and ⟨spin⟩ would be seen for those words, which do not contain the ee sound [i] of the IPA letter ⟨i⟩. Italics are perhaps more commonly used for this purpose when full words are being written (as pin, spin above), but this convention may not be considered sufficiently clear for individual letters and digraphs. The true angle brackets ⟨...⟩ (U+27E8, U+29E9) are not supported by many non-mathematical fonts as of 2010. Therefore chevrons ⟨...⟩ (U+2039, U+203A) are sometimes used in substitution, as are the less-than and greater-than signs <...> (U+003C, U+003E).

Handwritten forms

An example of a printed text with IPA letters filled in by hand. The two words at the beginning of line 1 are sɨk and sɔ̄k. The ɔ has a cursive form that looks somewhat like a 2 or a small-capital Q in some cursive hands.

IPA letters have handwritten forms designed for use in manuscripts and when taking field notes; they are occasionally seen in publications when the printer did not have fonts that supported IPA, and the IPA was therefore filled in by hand.

Usage

Further information: Phonetic transcription

Ébauche is a French term meaning outline or blank.

Although the IPA offers over a hundred and sixty symbols for transcribing speech, only a relatively small subset of these will be used to transcribe any one language. It is possible to transcribe speech with various levels of precision. A precise phonetic transcription, in which sounds are described in a great deal of detail, is known as a narrow transcription. A coarser transcription which ignores some of this detail is called a broad transcription. Both are relative terms, and both are generally enclosed in square brackets.^[1] Broad phonetic transcriptions may restrict themselves to easily heard details, or only to details that are relevant to the discussion at hand, and may differ little if at all from phonemic transcriptions, but they make no theoretical claim that all the distinctions transcribed are necessarily meaningful in the language.

Phonetic transcriptions of the word international in two English dialects. The square brackets indicate that the differences between these dialects are not necessarily sufficient to distinguish different words in English.

For example, the English word little may be transcribed broadly using the IPA as [ˈlɪtəl], and this broad (imprecise) transcription is an accurate (approximately correct) description of many pronunciations. A more narrow transcription may focus on individual or dialectical details: [ˈɫɪɾɫ] in General American, [ˈlɪʔo] in Cockney, or [ˈɫɪːɫ] in Southern US English.

It is customary to use simpler letters, without many diacritics, in phonemic transcriptions. The choice of IPA letters may reflect the theoretical claims of the author, or merely be a convenience for typesetting. For instance, in English, either the vowel of pick or the vowel of peak may be transcribed as /i/ (for the pairs /pik, piːk/ or /pɪk, pik/), and neither is identical to the vowel of the French word pique which is also generally transcribed /i/. That is, letters between slashes do not have absolute values, something true of broader phonetic approximations as well. A narrow transcription may, however, be used to distinguish them: [pʰɪk], [pʰiːk], [pik].

Linguists

Although IPA is popular for transcription by linguists, it is also common to use Americanist phonetic notation or IPA together with some nonstandard symbols, for reasons including reducing the error rate on reading handwritten transcriptions or avoiding perceived awkwardness of IPA in some situations. The exact practice may vary somewhat between languages and even individual researchers, so authors are generally encouraged to include a chart or other explanation of their choices.^[14]

Language study

A page from an English language textbook used in Russia. The IPA is used to teach the different pronunciations of the digraph ⟨th⟩ (/θ/, /ð/) and to show the pronunciation of newly introduced words polite, everything, always, forget.

Some language study programs use the IPA to teach pronunciation. For example, in Russia (and earlier in the Soviet Union), mainland China, and in Taiwan^{[citation needed]} textbooks for children^[15] and adults^[16] for studying English and French consistently use the IPA.

Dictionaries

English

Many British dictionaries, among which are learner's dictionaries such as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, now use the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the pronunciation of words.^[17] However, most American (and some British) volumes use one of a variety of pronunciation respelling systems, intended to be more comfortable for readers of English. For example, the respelling systems in many American dictionaries (such as Merriam-Webster) use ⟨y⟩ for IPA [j] and ⟨sh⟩ for IPA [ʃ], reflecting common representations of those sounds in written English,^[18] using only letters of the English Roman alphabet and variations of them. (In IPA, [y] represents the sound of the French ⟨u⟩ (as in tu), and [sh] represents the pair of sounds in grasshopper.)

Other languages

The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages with generally phonemic orthographies generally do not bother with indicating the pronunciation of most words, and tend to use respelling systems for words with unexpected pronunciations. Dictionaries produced in Israel use the IPA rarely and sometimes use the Hebrew script for transcription of foreign words. Monolingual Hebrew dictionaries use pronunciation respelling for words with unusual spelling; for example, Even-Shoshan Dictionary respells תָּכְנִית as תּוֹכְנִית because this word uses kamatz katan. Bilingual dictionaries that translate from foreign languages into Russian usually employ the IPA, but monolingual Russian dictionaries occasionally use pronunciation respelling for foreign words; for example, Ozhegov's dictionary adds нэ́ in brackets for the French word пенсне (pince-nez) to indicate that the е doesn't iotate the н.

The IPA is more common in bilingual dictionaries, but there are exceptions here too. Mass-market bilingual Czech dictionaries, for instance, tend to use the IPA only for sounds not found in the Czech language.^[19]

Standard orthographies and capital variants

See also: Latin characters in Unicode

IPA letters have been incorporated into the alphabets of various languages, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa: Hausa, Fula, Akan, Gbe languages, Manding languages, Lingala, etc. This has created the need for capital variants. For example, Kabiyé of northern Togo has Ɔ ɔ, Ɛ ɛ, Ɖ ɖ, Ŋ ŋ, Ɣ ɣ, Ʃ ʃ, Ʊ ʊ (or Ʋ ʋ):

MBƱ AJƐYA KIGBƐNDƱƱ ŊGBƐYƐ KEDIƔZAƔ SƆSƆƆ TƆM SE.

Other IPA-paired capitals include Ɑ ɑ, Ɓ ɓ, Ƈ ƈ, Ɗ ɗ (or Ɗ ɖ), Ə ə (or Ǝ ə), Ɠ ɠ, Ħ ħ, Ɯ ɯ, Ɱ ɱ, Ɲ ɲ, Ɵ ɵ, Ɽ ɽ, Ʈ ʈ, Ʒ ʒ.

The above-mentioned and other capital forms are supported by Unicode, but appear in Latin ranges other than the IPA extensions.

Classical singing

IPA has widespread use among classical singers for preparation, especially among English-speaking singers who are expected to sing in a variety of foreign languages. Opera librettos are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such as Nico Castel's volumes^[20] and Timothy Cheek's book Singing in Czech.^[21] Opera singers' ability to read IPA was recently used by the Visual Thesaurus, which employed several opera singers "to make recordings for the 150,000 words and phrases in VT's lexical database. ...for their vocal stamina, attention to the details of enunciation, and most of all, knowledge of IPA."^[22]

Letters

The International Phonetic Alphabet organizes its letter symbols into three categories: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.^[23][24] Each character is assigned a number, to prevent confusion between similar letters (such as ɵ and θ), for example in printing manuscripts. Different categories of sounds are assigned different ranges of numbers.

Consonants

Main article: Consonant

v · d · eIPA pulmonic consonants chartchart image • audio

Place →

Labial

Coronal

Dorsal

Radical

Glottal

↓ Manner

Bila​bial

Labio​dental

Den​tal

Alve​olar

Post​alv.

Retro​flex

Pal​a​tal

Ve​lar

Uvu​lar

Pha​ryn​geal

Epi​glot​tal

Glot​tal

Nasal

m

ɱ

n̪

n

ɳ

ɲ

ŋ

ɴ

Plosive

p

b

p̪

b̪

t̪

d̪

t

d

ʈ

ɖ

c

ɟ

k

ɡ

q

ɢ

ʡ

ʔ

Fricative

ɸ

β

f

v

θ

ð

s

z

ʃ

ʒ

ʂ

ʐ

ç

ʝ

x

ɣ

χ

ʁ

ħ

ʕ

ʜ

ʢ

h

ɦ

Approximant

ʋ

ɹ

ɻ

j

ɰ

Trill

ʙ

r

ɽ͡r

ʀ

я *

Flap or tap

ⱱ̟

ⱱ

ɾ

ɽ

ɢ̆

ʡ̯

Lateral Fric.

ɬ

ɮ

ɭ˔̊

ʎ̥˔

ʟ̝̊

Lateral Appr.

l

ɭ

ʎ

ʟ

Lateral flap

ɺ

ɺ̠

ʎ̯

Non-pulmonic consonants

Clicks	ʘ	ǀ	ǃ		ǂ		ǁ
Implosives	ɓ	ɗ	ʄ	ᶑ	ɠ		ʛ
Ejectives	pʼ	tʼ	cʼ	ʈʼ	kʼ		qʼ
	fʼ	θʼ	sʼ	ɬʼ	xʼ		χʼ
	tsʼ	tɬʼ	cʎ̝̥ʼ	tʃʼ	ʈʂʼ	kxʼ	kʟ̝̊ʼ

Affricates

p̪f		ts	dz	tʃ	dʒ	tɕ	dʑ	ʈʂ	ɖʐ
		tɬ	dɮ	cç	ɟʝ

Co-articulated consonants

Fricatives	ɕ	ʑ	ɧ
Approximants	ʍ	w	ɥ	ɫ
Stops	k͡p	ɡ͡b	ŋ͡m

These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]

Where symbols appear in pairs, left—right represent the voiceless—voiced consonants.

Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible.

* Symbol not defined in IPA.

Notes

• Asterisks (*) next to letters mark attested sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the respective articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
• In rows where some letters appear in pairs (the obstruents), the letter to the right represents a voiced consonant (except breathy-voiced [ɦ]). However, [ʔ] cannot be voiced, and the voicing of [ʡ] is ambiguous.^[25] In the other rows (the sonorants), the single letter represents a voiced consonant.
• Although there is a single letter for the coronal places of articulation for all consonants but fricatives, when dealing with a particular language, the letters may be treated as specifically dental, alveolar, or post-alveolar, as appropriate for that language, without diacritics.
• Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
• The letters [ʁ, ʕ, ʢ] represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
• In many languages, such as English, [h] and [ɦ] are not actually glottal, fricatives, or approximants. Rather, they are bare phonation.^[26]
• It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives [ʃ ʒ], [ɕ ʑ], and [ʂ ʐ].
• The labiodental nasal [ɱ] is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.^[27]

Pulmonic consonants

A pulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the glottis (the space between the vocal cords) or oral cavity (the mouth) and either simultaneously or subsequently letting out air from the lungs. Pulmonic consonants make up the majority of consonants in the IPA, as well as in human language. All consonants in the English language fall into this category.^[28]

The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation, meaning how the consonant is produced, and columns that designate place of articulation, meaning where in the vocal tract the consonant is produced. The main chart includes only consonants with a single place of articulation.

Co-articulated consonants

Co-articulated consonants are sounds that involve two simultaneous places of articulation (are pronounced using two parts of the vocal tract). In English, the [w] in "went" is a coarticulated consonant, because it is pronounced by rounding the lips and raising the back of the tongue. Other languages, such as French and Swedish, have different coarticulated consonants.

Note

• [ɧ] is described as a "simultaneous [ʃ] and [x]".^[29] However, this analysis is disputed. (See voiceless palatal-velar fricative for discussion.)

Affricates and double articulated consonants

Affricates and doubly articulated stops are represented by two letters joined by a tie bar, either above or below the letters. The six most common affricates are optionally represented by ligatures, though this is no longer official IPA usage,^[1] because a great number of ligatures would be required to represent all affricates this way. Alternatively, a superscript notation for a consonant release is sometimes used to transcribe affricates, for example tˢ for t͡s, paralleling kˣ ~ k͡x. The letters for the palatal plosives c and ɟ, are often used as a convenience for t͡ʃ and d͡ʒ or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.

View this table as an image.
Tie bar	Ligature	Description
t͡s	ʦ	voiceless alveolar affricate
d͡z	ʣ	voiced alveolar affricate
t͡ʃ	ʧ	voiceless postalveolar affricate
d͡ʒ	ʤ	voiced postalveolar affricate
t͡ɕ	ʨ	voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate
d͡ʑ	ʥ	voiced alveolo-palatal affricate
t͡ɬ	–	voiceless alveolar lateral affricate
k͡p	–	voiceless labial-velar plosive
ɡ͡b	–	voiced labial-velar plosive
ŋ͡m	–	labial-velar nasal stop

Note

• On browsers that use Arial Unicode MS to display IPA characters, the following incorrectly formed sequences may look better due to a bug in that font: ts͡, tʃ͡, tɕ͡, dz͡, dʒ͡, dʑ͡, tɬ͡, kp͡, ɡb͡, ŋm͡.

Non-pulmonic consonants

Non-pulmonic consonants are sounds whose airflow is not dependent on the lungs. These include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages of Africa), implosives (found in languages such as Swahili) and ejectives (found in many Amerindian and Caucasian languages).

View this table as an image
Clicks		Implosives		Ejectives
ʘ	Bilabial	ɓ	Bilabial	ʼ	For example:
ǀ	Laminal alveolar ("dental")	ɗ	Alveolar	pʼ	Bilabial
ǃ	Apical (post-) alveolar ("retroflex")	ʄ	Palatal	tʼ	Alveolar
ǂ	Laminal postalveolar ("palatal")	ɠ	Velar	kʼ	Velar
ǁ	Lateral coronal ("lateral")	ʛ	Uvular	sʼ	Alveolar fricative

Notes

• Clicks are double articulated and have traditionally been described as having a forward 'release' and a rear 'accompaniment', with the click letters representing the release. Therefore all clicks would require two letters for proper notation: ⟨k͡ǂ, ɡ͡ǂ, ŋ͡ǂ, q͡ǂ, ɢ͡ǂ, ɴ͡ǂ⟩ etc., or ⟨ǂ͡k, ǂ͡ɡ, ǂ͡ŋ, ǂ͡q, ǂ͡ɢ, ǂ͡ɴ⟩. When the dorsal articulation is omitted, a [k] may usually be assumed. However, recent research disputes the concept of 'accompaniment'.^[30] In these approaches, the click letter represents both articulations, there is no velar-uvular distinction, and the accompanying letter represents the manner of the click: ⟨ǂ, ᶢǂ, ᵑǂ⟩ etc.
• Letters for the voiceless implosives ⟨ƥ, ƭ, ƈ, ƙ, ʠ⟩ are no longer supported by the IPA, though they remain in Unicode. Instead, the IPA typically uses the voiced equivalent with a voiceless diacritic: ⟨ɓ̥, ʛ̥⟩, etc..
• Although not confirmed as contrastive in any language, and therefore not explicitly recognized by the IPA, a letter for the retroflex implosive, ⟨ᶑ⟩, is supported in the Unicode Phonetic Extensions Supplement, added in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard, or can be created as a composite ⟨ɗ̢⟩.
• The ejective diacritic often stands in for a superscript glottal stop in glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as [mˀ], [lˀ], [wˀ], [aˀ]. These may also be transcribed as creaky [m̰], [l̰], [w̰], [a̰].

Vowels

Main article: Vowel

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ ə •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ ɐ •aɶ •ä •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
This table contains phonetic symbols. They may not display correctly in some browsers (Help).
IPA help • IPA key • chart •  chart with audio • view

Tongue positions of cardinal front vowels with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness

An X-ray film shows the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]

The IPA defines a vowel as a sound which occurs at a syllable center.^[31] Below is a chart depicting the vowels of the IPA. The IPA maps the vowels according to the position of the tongue.

The vertical axis of the chart is mapped by vowel height. Vowels pronounced with the tongue lowered are at the bottom, and vowels pronounced with the tongue raised are at the top. For example, [ɑ] (said as the "a" in "palm") is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. However, [i] (said as the vowel in "meet") is at the top because the sound is said with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth.

In a similar fashion, the horizontal axis of the chart is determined by vowel backness. Vowels with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth (such as [ɛ], the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as [ʌ], the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.

In places where vowels are paired, the right represents a rounded vowel (in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.

Notes

• ⟨a⟩ officially represents a front vowel, but there is little distinction between front and central open vowels, and ⟨a⟩ is frequently used for an open central vowel.^[14] However, if disambiguation is required, the retraction diacritic or the centralized diacritic may be added to indicate an open central vowel, as in ⟨a̠⟩ or ⟨ä⟩.

Diacritics

Diacritics are small markings which are placed around the IPA letter in order to show a certain alteration or more specific description in the letter's pronunciation.^[32] Sub-diacritics (markings normally placed below a letter) may be placed above a letter having a descender (informally called a tail), e.g. ŋ̊, ȷ̈.^[32]

The dotless i, ⟨ı⟩, is used when the dot would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA letters may appear as diacritic variants to represent phonetic detail: tˢ (fricative release), bʱ (breathy voice), ˀa (glottal onset), ᵊ (epenthetic schwa), o^ʊ (diphthongization). Additional diacritics were introduced in the Extensions to the IPA, which were designed principally for speech pathology.

View the diacritic table as an image
Syllabicity diacritics
◌̩	ɹ̩ n̩	Syllabic	◌̯	e̯ ʊ̯	Non-syllabic
Consonant-release diacritics
◌ʰ	tʰ	Aspirated[a]	◌̚	d̚	No audible release
◌ʱ	dʱ
◌ⁿ	dⁿ	Nasal release	◌ˡ	dˡ	Lateral release
Phonation diacritics
◌̥	n̥ d̥	Voiceless	◌̬	s̬ t̬	Voiced
◌̤	b̤ a̤	Breathy voiced[b]	◌̰	b̰ a̰	Creaky voiced
Articulation diacritics
◌̪	t̪ d̪	Dental	◌̼	t̼ d̼	Linguolabial
◌̺	t̺ d̺	Apical	◌̻	t̻ d̻	Laminal
◌̟	u̟ t̟	Advanced	◌̠	i̠ t̠	Retracted
◌̈	ë ä	Centralized	◌̽	e̽ ɯ̽	Mid-centralized
◌̝	e̝ ɹ̝	Raised (ɹ̝ = voiced alveolar nonsibilant fricative)
◌˔	˔
◌̞	e̞ β̞	Lowered (β̞ = bilabial approximant)
◌˕	˕
Co-articulation diacritics
◌̹	ɔ̹ x̹	More rounded	◌̜	ɔ̜ x̜ʷ	Less rounded
◌ʷ	tʷ dʷ	Labialized or labio-velarized	◌ʲ	tʲ dʲ	Palatalized
◌ˠ	tˠ dˠ	Velarized	◌ˤ	tˤ aˤ	Pharyngealized
◌ᶣ	tᶣ dᶣ	Labio-palatalized	◌̴	ɫ z̴	Velarized or pharyngealized
◌̘	e̘ o̘	Advanced tongue root	◌̙	e̙ o̙	Retracted tongue root
◌̃	ẽ z̃	Nasalized	◌˞	ɚ ɝ	Rhotacized

Notes

a^ With aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is also voiced. Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice.

b^ Some linguists restrict this breathy-voice diacritic to sonorants, and transcribe obstruents as bʱ.

The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from an open to a closed glottis phonation are:

Open glottis	[t]	voiceless
	[d̤]	breathy voice, also called murmured
	[d̥]	slack voice
Sweet spot	[d]	modal voice
	[d̬]	stiff voice
	[d̰]	creaky voice
Closed glottis	[ʔ͡t]	glottal closure

Suprasegmentals

These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, such as prosody, tone, length, and stress, which often operate on syllables, words, or phrases: that is, elements such as the intensity, pitch, and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the rhythm and intonation of speech.^[33] Although most of these symbols indicate distinctions that are phonemic at the word level, symbols also exist for intonation on a level greater than that of the word.^[33]

View this table as an image
Length, stress, and rhythm
ˈa		Primary stress (symbol goes before stressed syllable)	ˌa	Secondary stress (symbol goes before stressed syllable)
aː kː		Long (long vowel or geminate consonant)	aˑ	Half-long
ə̆		Extra-short	a.a	Syllable break
s‿a		Linking (absence of a break)
Intonation
|		Minor (foot) break	‖	Major (intonation) break
↗		Global rise	↘	Global fall
Tone diacritics and tone letters
ŋ̋ e̋	e˥	Extra high / top	ꜛke	Upstep
ŋ́ é	e˦	High	ŋ̌ ě	Rise
ŋ̄ ē	e˧	Mid
ŋ̀ è	e˨	Low	ŋ̂ ê	Fall
ŋ̏ ȅ	e˩	Extra low / bottom	ꜜke	Downstep

Finer distinctions of tone may be indicated by combining the tone diacritics and letters shown here, though not many fonts support this. The primary examples are high (mid) rising ɔ᷄, ɔ˧˥; low rising ɔ᷅, ɔ˩˧; high falling ɔ᷇, ɔ˥˧; low (mid) falling ɔ᷆, ɔ˧˩; peaking ɔ᷈, ɔ˧˥˧; and dipping ɔ᷉, ɔ˧˩˧. A work-around for diacritics sometimes seen when a language has more than one rising or falling tone, and the author does not wish to completely abandon the IPA, is to restrict generic rising ɔ̌ and falling ɔ̂ for the higher-pitched of the rising and falling tones, ɔ˥˧ and ɔ˧˥, and to use the non-standard subscript diacritics ɔ̗ and ɔ̖ for the lower-pitched rising and falling tones, ɔ˩˧ and ɔ˧˩. When a language has four level tones, the two mid tones are sometimes transcribed as high-mid ɔ̍ (non-standard) and low-mid ɔ̄.

Obsolete and nonstandard symbols

Main article: Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet

The IPA inherited alternate symbols from various traditions, but eventually settled on one for each sound. The other symbols are now considered obsolete. An example is ⟨ɷ⟩ which has been standardised to ⟨ʊ⟩. Several letters indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that such things should be indicated with diacritics: ⟨ƍ⟩ for ⟨zʷ⟩ is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series ⟨ƥ ƭ ƈ ƙ ʠ⟩ has been dropped; they are now written ⟨ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ʄ̊ ɠ̊ ʛ̥⟩ or ⟨pʼ↓ tʼ↓ cʼ↓ kʼ↓ qʼ↓⟩. A rejected competing proposal for transcribing clicks, ⟨ʇ, ʗ, ʖ⟩, is still sometimes seen, as the official letters ⟨ǀ, ǃ, ǁ⟩ may cause problems with legibility, especially when used with brackets, the letter ⟨l⟩, or the prosodic marks ⟨|, ‖⟩.^[34]

There are also unsupported or ad hoc letters from local traditions that find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with affricates such as the "barred lambda" ⟨ƛ⟩ for [t͜ɬ].

IPA extensions

Main article: Extensions to the IPA

Extensions to the IPA, also often abbreviated as extIPA, is a group of symbols whose original purpose was to accurately transcribe disordered speech. At the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989, a group of linguists drew up the initial set of symbols for the Extended IPA.^[35] Extensions to the IPA were first published in 1990, and modified over the next few years before its official publication in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association in 1994 allowed it to be officially adopted by the ICPLA.^[36] While its original purpose was to transcribe disordered speech, linguists have used it to designate a number of unique sounds within standard communication, such as hushing, gnashing teeth, and smacking lips. The Extensions to the IPA have also been used to record certain peculiarities in an individual's voice, such as nasalized voicing.^[2]

Aside from the extIPA, another set of symbols is used for voice quality (VoQS), such as whispering.

Segments without letters

The remaining blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without too much difficulty if the need arises. Some ad hoc letters have appeared in the literature, for example for the retroflex lateral flap and the voiceless lateral fricative series, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives. (See the grey letters in the PDF chart.) Diacritics can supply much of the remainder, which would indeed be appropriate if the sounds were allophones.^[37]

Consonants

Representations of consonant sounds outside of the core set are created by adding diacritics to letters with similar sound values. The Spanish bilabial and dental approximants are commonly written as lowered fricatives, [β̞] and [ð̞] respectively. Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives would be written as raised lateral approximants, [ɭ˔ ʎ̝ ʟ̝]. A few languages such as Banda have a bilabial flap as the preferred allophone of what is elsewhere a labiodental flap. It has been suggested that this be written with the labiodental flap letter and the advanced diacritic, [ⱱ̟].^[38]

Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written [ʙ̪] (bilabial trill and the dental sign), and labiodental stops [p̪ b̪] rather than with the ad hoc letters sometimes found in the literature. Other taps can be written as extra-short plosives or laterals, e.g. [ɟ̆ ɢ̆/ʀ̆ ʟ̆], though in some cases the diacritic would need to be written below the letter. A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted [r̠], just as retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining consonants, the uvular laterals (ʟ̠ etc.) and the palatal trill, while not strictly impossible, are very difficult to pronounce and are unlikely to occur even as allophones in the world's languages.

Vowels

The vowels are similarly manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering.^[39] For example, the unrounded equivalent of [ʊ] can be transcribed as mid-centered [ɯ̽], and the rounded equivalent of [æ] as raised [ɶ̝]. True mid vowels are lowered [e̞ ø̞ ɘ̞ ɵ̞ ɤ̞ o̞], while centered [ɪ̈ ʊ̈] and [ä] are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The only known vowels that cannot be represented in this scheme are vowels with unexpected roundedness, which would require a dedicated diacritic, such as [ʏ̫] and [u͍] or [ʏʷ] and [uᵝ].

Symbol names

Main article: Naming conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet

An IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound in broad transcription, making articulatory descriptions such as 'mid front rounded vowel' or 'voiced velar stop' unreliable. While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association states that no official names exist for its symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each.^[40] The symbols also have nonce names in the Unicode standard. In some cases, the Unicode names and the IPA names do not agree. For example, IPA calls ɛ "epsilon", but Unicode calls it "small letter open E".

The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are usually used for unmodified letters.^{[note 6]} Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as [ʕ], may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol, and sometimes based on the sound that it represents. In Unicode, some of the letters of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the letters from the Greek section.

For diacritics, there are two methods of naming. For traditional diacritics, the IPA notes the name in a well known language; for example, é is acute, based on the name of the diacritic in English and French. Non-traditional diacritics are often named after objects they resemble, so d̪ is called bridge.

Pullum and Ladusaw list a variety of names in use for IPA symbols, both current and retired, in addition to names of many other non-IPA phonetic symbols.^[8] Their collection is extensive enough that the Unicode Consortium used it in the development of Unicode.

ASCII and keyboard transliterations

Several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Notable systems include Kirshenbaum, Arpabet, SAMPA, and X-SAMPA. The usage of mapping systems in on-line text has to some extent been adopted in the context input methods, allowing convenient keying of IPA characters that would be otherwise unavailable on standard keyboard layouts.

See also

• Articulatory phonetics
• Index of phonetics articles
• International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration
• ICAO spelling alphabet
• IPA chart for English dialects
• List of international common standards
• Luciano Canepari
• Phonetic transcription
• Semyon Novgorodov – inventor of IPA-based Yakut alphabet
• TIPA provides IPA support for LaTeX
• Unicode Phonetic Symbols
• English Phonetic Alphabet

Notes

1. ^ "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself (from the phrase 'International Phonetic Alphabet') that resistance seems pedantic. Context usually serves to disambiguate the two usages." (Laver 1994:561)
2. ^ For instance, flaps and taps are two different kinds of articulation, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a distinction between, say, an alveolar flap and an alveolar tap, the IPA does not provide such sounds with dedicated letters. Instead, it provides a single letter (in this case, [ɾ]) for both. Strictly speaking, this makes the IPA a partially phonemic alphabet, not a purely phonetic one.
3. ^ There are five basic tone diacritics and five basic tone letters, both sets of which are compounded for contour tones.
4. ^ "The non-roman letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet have been designed as far as possible to harmonize well with the roman letters. The Association does not recognise makeshift letters; It recognises only letters which have been carefully cut so as to be in harmony with the other letters." (IPA 1949)
5. ^ Technically, the glyph [ʔ] could be considered Latin-derived, since the question mark may have originated as "Qo", an abbreviation of the Latin word quæstio, "question".
6. ^ For example, [p] is called "Lower-case P" and [χ] is "Chi." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 171)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} International Phonetic Association (IPA), Handbook.
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} MacMahon, Michael K. C. (1996). "Phonetic Notation". In P. T. Daniels and W. Bright (eds.). The World's Writing Systems. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 821–846. ISBN 0-19-507993-0. 
3. ^ Wall, Joan (1989). International Phonetic Alphabet for Singers: A Manual for English and Foreign Language Diction. Pst. ISBN 1877761508. http://www.amazon.com/International-Phonetic-Alphabet-Singers-Language/dp/1877761508. 
4. ^ The inverted bridge under the ⟨t⟩ specifies it as apical (pronounced with the tip of the tongue), and the superscript h shows that it's aspirated (breathy), both qualities which cause the English [t] to sound different from the French or Spanish [t], which is a laminal (pronounced with the blade of the tongue) and unaspirated [t̻]. ⟨t̺ʰ⟩ and ⟨t̻⟩ are thus two different IPA symbols for two different, though similar, sounds.
5. ^ ^{a b c d e} International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 194–196
6. ^ "Originally, the aim was to make available a set of phonetic symbols which would be given different articulatory values, if necessary, in different languages." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 195–196)
7. ^ Passy, Paul (1888). "Our revised alphabet". The Phonetic Teacher: 57–60. 
8. ^ ^{a b c} Pullum and Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide, pp. 152, 209
9. ^ Nicolaidis, Katerina (September 2005). "Approval of New IPA Sound: The Labiodental Flap". International Phonetic Association. http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/flap.htm. Retrieved 2006-09-17. 
10. ^ International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 186
11. ^ “From its earliest days...the International Phonetic Association has aimed to provide ‘a separate sign for each distinctive sound; that is, for each sound which, being used instead of another, in the same language, can change the meaning of a word’.” (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 27)
12. ^ Laver, Principles of Phonetics,pp. 174–175
13. ^ "The new letters should be suggestive of the sounds they represent, by their resemblance to the old ones." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 196)
14. ^ ^{a b} Sally Thomason (January 2, 2008). "Why I Don't Love the International Phonetic Alphabet". Language Log. http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005287.html. 
15. ^ For example, the English school textbooks by I.N.Vereshagina, K.A. Bondarenko and T.A. Pritykina.
16. ^ For example, "Le Français à la portée de tous" by K.K. Parchevsky and E.B. Roisenblit (1995) and "English Through Eye and Ear" by L.V. Bankevich (1975).
17. ^ "Phonetics". Cambridge Dictionaries Online. 2002. http://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.htm. Retrieved 2007-03-11. 
18. ^ "Merriam-Webster Online Pronunciation Symbols". http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html. Retrieved 2007-06-04. 
    Agnes, Michael (1999). Webster's New World College Dictionary. New York, NY: Macmillan USA. xxiii. ISBN 0-02-863119-6. 
    Pronunciation respelling for English has detailed comparisons.
19. ^ (Czech) Fronek, J. (2006) (in Czech). Velký anglicko-český slovník. Praha: Leda. ISBN 80-7335-022-X. "In accordance with long-established Czech lexicographical tradition, a modified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is adopted in which letters of the Czech alphabet are employed." 
20. ^ "Nico Castel's Complete Libretti Series". Castel Opera Arts. http://www.castelopera.com/libretti.htm. Retrieved 2008-09-29. 
21. ^ Cheek, Timothy (2001). Singing in Czech. The Scarecrow Press. p. 392. ISBN 0-8108-4003-0 ISBN 978-0-8108-4003-4. http://scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0810840030. 
22. ^ Zimmer, Benjamin (2008-05-14). "Operatic IPA and the Visual Thesaurus". Language Log. University of Pennsylvania. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=155. Retrieved 2009-09-29. 
23. ^ "Segments can usefully be divided into two major categories, consonants and vowels." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 3)
24. ^ International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 6.
25. ^ Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, Sounds of the World's Languages, §2.1.
26. ^ Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, Sounds of the World's Languages, §9.3.
27. ^ Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.  p 18
28. ^ Fromkin, Victoria; Rodman, Robert (1998) [1974]. An Introduction to Language (6th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. ISBN 0-03-018682-X. 
29. ^ Ladefoged, Peter; Ian Maddieson (1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 329–330. ISBN 0-631-19815-6. 
30. ^ Amanda L. Miller et al., "Differences in airstream and posterior place of articulation among Nǀuu lingual stops". Submitted to the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. Retrieved 2007-05-27.
31. ^ International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 10.
32. ^ ^{a b} International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 14–15.
33. ^ ^{a b} International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 13.
34. ^ "John Wells's phonetic blog". Phonetic-blog.blogspot.com. 2009-09-09. http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/09/click-symbols.html. Retrieved 2010-10-18. 
35. ^ "At the 1989 Kiel Convention of the IPA, a sub-group was established to draw up recommendations for the transcription of disordered speech." ("Extensions to the IPA: An ExtIPA Chart" in International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 186.)
36. ^ "Extensions to the IPA: An ExtIPA Chart" in International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 186–187.
37. ^ "Diacritics may also be employed to create symbols for phonemes, thus reducing the need to create new letter shapes." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 27)
38. ^ Olson, Kenneth S.; & Hajek, John. (1999). The phonetic status of the labial flap. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 29 (2), pp. 101–114.
39. ^ "The diacrtics...can be used to modify the lip or tongue position implied by a vowel symbol." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 16)
40. ^ "...the International Phonetic Association has never officially approved a set of names..." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 31)

Further reading

• Ball, Martin J.; John H. Esling & B. Craig. Dickson (1995). "The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality". Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 25 (2): 71–80. doi:10.1017/S0025100300005181. 
• Duckworth, M.; G. Allen, M.J. Ball (December 1990). "Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech". Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 4 (4): 273–280. doi:10.3109/02699209008985489. 
• Hill, Kenneth C.; Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William (March 1988). "Review of Phonetic symbol guide by G. K. Pullum & W. Ladusaw". Language 64 (1): 143–144. doi:10.2307/414792. JSTOR 414792. 
• International Phonetic Association (1989). "Report on the 1989 Kiel convention". Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 19 (2): 67–80. 
• International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65236-7 (hb); ISBN 0-521-63751-1 (pb). 
• Jones, Daniel (1988). English pronouncing dictionary (revised 14th ed.). London: Dent. ISBN 0521862302. OCLC 18415701. 
• Ladefoged, Peter (September 1990). "The revised International Phonetic Alphabet". Language 66 (3): 550–552. doi:10.2307/414611. JSTOR 414611. 
• Ladefoged, Peter; Morris Hale (September 1988). "Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet". Language 64 (3): 577–582. doi:10.2307/414533. JSTOR 414533. 
• Laver, John (1994). Principles of Phonetics. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45031-4 (hb); ISBN 0-521-45655-X (pb). 
• Pullum, Geoffrey K.; William A. Laduslaw (1986). Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68532-2. 
• Skinner, Edith; Timothy Monich, and Lilene Mansell (1990). Speak with Distinction. New York, NY: Applause Theatre Book Publishers. ISBN 1557830479. 

External links

• York University IPA Interactive Flash Charts
• The International Phonetic Association web site
• Video recordings of the sounds of IPA by The University of Sheffield
• Information on IPA by Omniglot
• IPA Chart in Unicode and XHTML/CSS
• IPA copy & paste charts, keyboards, etc by IPA.Webstuff.org
• Learning the IPA for English, (Standard American English)
• Various resources including a glossary by Peter Roach.
• The International Phonetic Alphabet (revised to 2005) Symbols for all languages are shown on this one-page chart
• Using IPA fonts with Mac OS X: The Comprehensive Guide, an article explaining how to install and use freeware fonts and keyboard layouts to type in the International Phonetic Alphabet on OS X
• Visual Thesaurus
• IPA – Introduction This site was especially designed to act as an introduction to the International Phonetic Alphabet as used for English.

Education

• Interactive Saggital Section
• Phonetics: the Sounds of English and Spanish Note: requires Flash 7 or higher.
• IPA Charts with an interactive chart of all IPA letters with their sounds (Flash)

IPA font downloads

• Charis SIL, a very complete international font (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic) in roman, italic, and bold typefaces that includes tone letters and pre-composed tone diacritics on IPA vowels, the new labiodental flap, and many non-standard phonetic symbols. Based on Bitstream Charter, this font suffers from extremely bad hinting when rendered by FreeType on Linux.
• DejaVu fonts Sourceforge.net have full Unicode IPA support. Sourceforge.net
• Doulos SIL, a Times/Times New Roman style font. It contains the same characters as Charis SIL, but only in a single face, roman.
• Gentium, a professionally designed international font (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic) in roman and italic typefaces that includes the IPA, but not yet tone letters or the new labiodental flap. For bold typefaces but only the most basic IPA letters, Gentium Basic may be used.
• TIPA, a font and system for entering IPA phonetic transcriptions in LaTeX documents.

Keyboard input

• Extended IPA keyboard layout for Microsoft Windows: for Unicode IPA input
• Complete Guide: Beginners’ guide to using IPA on Windows, Mac OS and Linux, covering many office applications and browsers
• Downloadable IPA keyboard layout for Microsoft Windows for Unicode IPA input
• Downloadable IPA-SIL keyboard layout for Mac OS X for Unicode IPA input
• IPA Character Picker Web-based input method
• IPAPalette is the Mac OS X input method on which IPACharMap is based.
• IPACharMap (scroll down to see it) is an on-screen keyboard for point and click character entry, which can then be copied and pasted into a unicode-aware word processor. Based on IPA Palette.
• IPATotal keyboard – This free UNICODE based keyboard encodes the whole character and diacritics charts of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), designed to represent all the sounds of speech in any language.
• IPA Writer: The IPA Writer. Online tool to write IPA.
• Microsoft Template – Creates a Toolbar for Microsoft Word. (This uses macros)
• Online keyboard^{[dead link]}
• IPAEdit Unicode-compliant Transcription Editor for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows from the University of Marburg
• PhonPad online IPA editor.
• Lenz Windows program that allows typing IPA symbols directly into other programs.

Sound files

• An introduction to the sounds of languages
• Complete IPA chart with sound samples, including English diphthongs
• IPA chart with MP3 sound files for all IPA letters on the chart (limited version is available to anyone)
• IPA chart with AIFF sound files for IPA symbols
• Peter Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics (with sound files)

Unicode charts

• International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode
• Unicode chart for main IPA lettersPDF (246.8 KB)
• Unicode chart for IPA modifier lettersPDF (203 KB)
• Unicode chart including IPA diacriticsPDF (231.2 KB)
• IPA with Unicode superimposedPDF (1.6 MB) from the University of Marburg
• MySQL Unicode collation chart for IPA and other phonetic blocks
• Unicode-HTML codes for IPA symbols: Tables of symbol names, character entity references and/or numeric character references at Penn State.

Technical note Most IPA symbols are not included in the most widely used form of Times New Roman (though they are included in the version provided with Windows Vista), the default font for Latin scripts in Internet Explorer for Windows. To properly view IPA symbols in that browser, you must set it to use a font which includes the IPA extensions characters. Such fonts include Lucida Sans Unicode, which comes with Windows XP; Gentium, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, DejaVu Sans, or TITUS Cyberbit, which are freely available; or Arial Unicode MS, which comes with Microsoft Office. On this page, we have forced Internet Explorer to use such a font by default, so it should appear correctly, but this has not yet been done to all the other pages containing IPA. This also applies to other pages using special symbols. Bear this in mind if you see error symbols such as "຦" in articles. Special symbols should display properly without further configuration with Mozilla Firefox, Konqueror, Opera, Safari and most other recent browsers.