International Phonetic Alphabet

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

International Phonetic Alphabet
Script type	Partially featural alphabet
Time period	since 1888
Languages	Used for phonetic and phonemic transcription of any language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Romic alphabet Phonotypic alphabet International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers, actors, lexicographers, conlangers and translators.

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. 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.

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.

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). The 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. 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. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, thus providing the base for all future revisions.

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 mid-central vowels and the removal of symbols for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005, with the addition of a symbol for the labiodental flap. Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and modifying typefaces.

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.

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 symbol for each distinctive sound (or speech segment). This means that it does not use letter combinations to represent single sounds, 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").

Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 represent consonants and vowels, 31 are diacritics that are used to further specify these sounds, and 19 are used to indicate such qualities as length, tone, stress, and intonation.

Letterforms

The symbols chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. For this reason, most symbols are either Latin or Greek letters, or modifications thereof. However, there are symbols that are neither: for example, the symbol denoting the glottal stop, ‹ʔ›, has the form of a "gelded" question mark, and was originally an apostrophe. In fact, there are a few symbols, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, ‹ʕ›, which, though modified to blend with the Latin alphabet, were inspired by glyphs in other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter Template:Rtl-lang, `ain).

Despite its preference for letters that harmonize with the Latin alphabet, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted symbols that do not have this property. For example, before 1989, the IPA symbols for click consonants were ‹ʘ›, ‹ʇ›, ‹ʗ›, and ‹ʖ›, all of which were derived either from existing symbols, or from Latin and Greek letters. However, except for ‹ʘ›, none of these symbols 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.

Some of the new symbols were ordinary Roman letters typeset "turned" (= upside-down) (e.g. ʎ ɥ ə ɔ ɹ ᴚ), which was easily done before mechanical typesetting machines came into use.

Symbols and sounds

The International Phonetic Alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, using as few non-Latin forms as possible. The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most consonants taken from the Latin alphabet would correspond to "international usage". 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 vowels from the Latin alphabet (‹a›, ‹e›, ‹i›, ‹o›, ‹u›) correspond to the 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. Two of these (‹θ› and ‹χ›) are used unmodified in form; for others (including ‹β›, ‹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. 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 the shape of the symbol (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), it 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).

Usage

Further information: [[:Phonetic transcription]]

Ébauche is a French term meaning outline or blank.

Although the IPA offers over a hundred symbols for transcribing speech, it is not necessary to use all relevant symbols at the same time; 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. 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 a lot of 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.

Language study

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 textbooks for children and adults 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. 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, 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.)

One of the benefits of using an alternative to the IPA is the ability to use a single symbol for a sound pronounced differently in different dialects. For example, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language uses ‹ŏ› for the vowel in cot (kŏt) but ‹ô› for the one in caught (kôt). Some American speakers pronounce these the same way (for example, like IPA [ɒ] in the Boston dialect); for those speakers who maintain the distinction, depending on the accent, the vowel in cot may vary from [ɑ] to [a], while the vowel in caught may vary from [ɔ] to [ɑ], or may even be a diphthong. Using one symbol for the vowel in cot (instead of having different symbols for different pronunciations of the o) enables the dictionary to provide meaningful pronunciations for speakers of most dialects of English.

Other languages

The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages with generally phonemic orthographies generally don't 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 alphabet 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.

Standard orthographies and capital variants

See also: Latin characters in Unicode

IPA symbols have been incorporated into the standard orthographies of various languages, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa but in other regions as well, for example: Hausa, Fula, Akan, Gbe languages, Manding languages, and Lingala.

An example of capital letter forms for IPA symbols is Kabiyé of northern Togo, which has Ɔ Ɛ Ɖ Ŋ Ɣ Ʃ Ʊ (or Ʋ) (capital ɔ ɛ ɖ ŋ ɣ ʃ ʊ (or ʋ)): MBƱ AJƐYA KIGBƐNDƱƱ ŊGBƐYƐ KEDIƔZAƔ SƆSƆƆ TƆM SE. Other IPA-paired capitals include Ɑ Ɓ Ƈ Ɗ Ə/Ǝ Ɠ Ħ Ɯ Ɱ Ɲ Ɵ Ʈ Ʒ Ɽ.

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 rarely sing in their native language. Opera librettos are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such as Nico Castel's volumes and Timothy Cheek's book Singing in Czech. 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."

Letters

The International Phonetic Alphabet divides its letter symbols into three categories: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels. 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

Pulmonic consonants

Main article: Consonant

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.

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.

Notes

• Asterisks (*) next to symbols mark reported 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 symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except breathy-voiced [ɦ]). However, [ʔ] cannot be voiced, and the voicing of [ʡ] is ambiguous. In the other rows (the sonorants), the single symbol represents a voiced consonant.
• Although there is a single symbol for the coronal places of articulation for all consonants but fricatives, when dealing with a particular language, the symbols 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 symbols [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.
• It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives [ʃ ʒ], [ɕ ʑ], and [ʂ ʐ].

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]". 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 symbols joined by a tie bar, either above or below the symbols. The six most common affricates are optionally represented by ligatures, though this is no longer official IPA usage, 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 symbols 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
[[voiceless alveolar affricate|t͡s]]	ʦ	voiceless alveolar affricate
[[voiced alveolar affricate|d͡z]]	ʣ	voiced alveolar affricate
[[voiceless postalveolar affricate|t͡ʃ]]	ʧ	voiceless postalveolar affricate
[[voiced postalveolar affricate|d͡ʒ]]	ʤ	voiced postalveolar affricate
[[voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate|t͡ɕ]]	ʨ	voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate
[[voiced alveolo-palatal affricate|d͡ʑ]]	ʥ	voiced alveolo-palatal affricate
[[voiceless alveolar lateral affricate|t͡ɬ]]	–	voiceless alveolar lateral affricate
[[voiceless labial-velar plosive|k͡p]]	–	voiceless labial-velar plosive
[[voiced labial-velar plosive|ɡ͡b]]	–	voiced labial-velar plosive
[[labial-velar nasal|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
[[bilabial click|ʘ]]	Bilabial	[[voiced bilabial implosive|ɓ]]	Bilabial	ʼ	For example:
[[dental click|ǀ]]	Laminal alveolar ("dental")	[[voiced alveolar implosive|ɗ]]	Alveolar	[[bilabial ejective|pʼ]]	Bilabial
[[postalveolar click|ǃ]]	Apical (post-) alveolar ("retroflex")	[[voiced palatal implosive|ʄ]]	Palatal	[[alveolar ejective|tʼ]]	Alveolar
[[palatal click|ǂ]]	Laminal postalveolar ("palatal")	[[voiced velar implosive|ɠ]]	Velar	[[velar ejective|kʼ]]	Velar
[[alveolar lateral click|ǁ]]	Lateral coronal ("lateral")	[[voiced uvular implosive|ʛ]]	Uvular	[[alveolar ejective fricative|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'. 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.
• Symbols 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 symbol 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: Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
Near-close	ɪ ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
Mid	e̞ ø̞	ə	ɤ̞ o̞
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
Near-open	æ	ɐ
Open	a ɶ	ä	ɑ ɒ

---

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Legend: unrounded • rounded

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. 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. 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. Sub-diacritics (markings normally placed below a letter or symbol) may be placed above a symbol having a descender (informally called a tail), e.g. ŋ̊, ȷ̈.

The dotless i, ‹ı›, is used when the dot would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA symbols may appear as diacritics 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	ˁ	tˁ aˁ	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:

	[t]	voiceless	̤	[d̤]	breathy voice, also called murmured
̥	[d̥]	slack voice		[d]	modal voice
̬	[d̬]	stiff voice	̰	[d̰]	creaky voice
ʔ͡	[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. 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.

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 symbols 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 symbols 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↓› respectively. 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 ‹|, ‖›.

There are also unsupported or ad hoc symbols 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].

Neutrality

In IPA, aspiration and voicing are treated differently - voiced bilabial plosive is commonly written as [b] but not [p̬], while aspirated bilabial plosive must be written as [pʰ] when to distinguish with plain bilabial plosive. This cause that English speakers can simply use "[b]" and "/p/" (/p/ as a phoneme that can either be plain bilabial plosive or aspirated bilabial plosive) to refer their phonemes but a Mandarin Chinese speaker must use "[b] or [p]" and "[pʰ]" (Chinese people can never refer the phoneme that can either be plain bilabial plosive or voiced bilabial plosive in one character; nor can they refer aspirated bilabial plosive without diacritics). This phenomenon directly lead to the principal difference between Hanyu Pinyin and Wade–Giles.

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. 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. 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.

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

Segments that have no symbols

The remaining blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without too much difficulty if the need arises. Some ad hoc symbols 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 symbols in the PDF chart.) Diacritics can supply much of the remainder, which would indeed be appropriate if the sounds were allophones.

Consonants without letters

Representations of consonant sounds outside of the core set are created by adding diacritics to symbols for 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 symbol and the advanced diacritic, [ѵ̟].

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 symbols 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 without letters

The vowels are similarly manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering. 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] or [u͍].

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 a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound in broad transcription. While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association states that no official names exist for symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each character that are commonly used. 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 symbols. 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 symbols of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the symbols from the Greek section.

For diacritics, there are two methods of naming. For traditional diacritics, the IPA uses the name of the symbol from a certain language, for example, é is acute, based on the name of the symbol in English and French. In non-traditional diacritics, the IPA often names a symbol according to an object it resembles, as d̪ is called bridge.

ASCII and keyboard transliterations

Several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Notable systems include Kirshenbaum, 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
• 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
• ICAO spelling alphabet
• Wikipedia:IPA for English

Further reading

• Ball, Martin J. (1995). "The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality". Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet. 25 (2): 71–80. doi:10.1017/S0025100300005181. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Duckworth, M. (1990). "Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech". Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics. 4 (4): 273–280. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Hill, Kenneth C. (1988). "Review of Phonetic symbol guide by G. K. Pullum & W. Ladusaw". Language. 64 (1): 143–144. doi:10.2307/414792. {{cite journal}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• 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). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Jones, Daniel (1988). English pronouncing dictionary (revised 14th ed.). London: Dent. OCLC 18415701.
• Ladefoged, Peter (1990). "The revised International Phonetic Alphabet". Language. 66 (3): 550–552. doi:10.2307/414611. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Ladefoged, Peter (1988). "Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet". Language. 64 (3): 577–582. doi:10.2307/414533. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Laver, John (1994). Principles of Phonetics. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45031-4 (hb); ISBN 0-521-45655-X (pb). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
• Pullum, Geoffrey K. (1986). Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68532-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Skinner, Edith (1990). Speak with Distinction. New York, NY: Applause Theatre Book Publishers. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

External links

• 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)
• The International Phonetic Association web site
• Various resources including a glossary by Peter Roach, Professor of Phonetics, University of Cambridge, UK
• 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 English Phonetic Alphabet. All of the sounds and symbols within the IPA that are associated with the English language are included. IPA symbols are displayed in square brackets ([]). Please browse this site to find out more about the International Phonetic Alphabet.

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 symbols 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

• 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
• IPA Palette is the Mac OS X version of IPACharMap.
• 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
• Online keyboard with MP3 sound files for IPA symbols
• IPAEdit Unicode-compliant Transcription Editor for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows from the University of Marburg
• PhonPad online IPA editor.

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 symbols 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
• Template:PDFlink
• Template:PDFlink
• Template:PDFlink
• Template:PDFlink 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 PennState.

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.