Talk:International Phonetic Alphabet

The IPA asks that one acknowledge them in using their IPA chart. This is followed by an address. It seems possible that one has to find out what they mean before copying it.

Further, the chart of symbols is not on their home page, as this article indicates. A click on the link to the homepage, included in this article, shows this. RoseParks

What about clicking on alphabet on the home page? I suppose acknowledging means giving the link the information come from. --HJH

Is there a way someone can textify this thing? Ill give it a shot.-&#35918&#30505

How's this? --Morwen

Consonants (Pulmonic)

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosive	p b			t d		ƫ ɗ	c ɟ	k g	q ɢ		ʔ
Nasal	m	ɱ		n		ɳ	ɲ	ŋ	ɴ
Trill	ʙ			r					ʀ
Tap or Flap				ɾ		ɼ
Fricative	ɸ β	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ	ʂ ʐ	ç ʝ	x ɣ	χ ʁ	ħ ˁ	h ɦ
Lateral fricative				ɬ ɮ
Approximant		ɺ		&#633		ɻ	j	ɰ
Lateral approximant				l		ɭ	ʎ	ʟ

Consonants (non-pulmonic)

	Clicks		Voiced implosives		Ejectives
ʘ	Bilabial	ɓ	Bilabial	ʼ	as in:
ǀ	Dental	ɗ	Dental/alveolar	pʼ	Bilabial
ǃ	Alveolar (retroflex)	ʄ	Palatal	tʼ	Dental/aveolar
ǂ	Palatoaveolar (alveolar)	ɠ	Velar	kʼ	Velar
ǁ	Aveolar lateral (lateral)	ʛ	Uvular	sʼ	Alveolar fricative

Vowels

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

Other Symbols

ʍ	Voiceless labial-velar fricative
w	Voiced labial-velar approximant
ɥ	Voiced labial-palatal approximant
ʜ	Voiceless epiglottal fricative
ʢ	Voiced epiglottal fricative
ʢ	Epiglottal plosive
ɕ &#657	Alveolo-palatal fricatives
ɺ	Alveolar lateral flap
ɧ	Simeltaneous ʃ and x

Suprasegmantals

ˈ	Primary stress
ˌ	Secondary stress
ː	Long
ˑ	Half-long
˘	Extra-short
.	Syllable break

This won't render properly in IE, which most people use. Dysprosia 09:32, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Define 'won't render properly'. Is this just a font thing?

Yes, if you set the font to Arial Unicode, it works in I.E., but most ppl (99.99%) don't do that or don't have that font installed. On the other hand, it works perfectly w/out adjustment in Mozilla. --Menchi 09:58, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC)

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Just wondering, I've always thought the International Phonetic Alphabet was "Alpha/Bravo/Charlie" etc. I'm obviously wrong. What do I call what I'm thinking of? and maybe there should be a link at the bottom of this page for disambiguation? --Neolux 09:54, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

You are not alone at all. You're thinking of NATO. And because it's so common a misconception, the disambiguity block is at the top of the page in italics. --Menchi 09:56, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC)

Oh. Yes. It was highlighted and right in front of me and so obviously placed that I completely ignored it and read everything below it. Sorry about that, and thank you for directing me to the right place. --Neolux 10:04, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Anytime. I've made it easier to see. Admittedly, the original disambiguity wasn't too revealing. --Menchi 10:05, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC)

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Examples

Does anyone have some kind of list of usage examples? For example like you see in a dictionary: (symbol, words) z, _z_one, rai_se_

Here: SAMPA Chart. --Menchi 23:20, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Phonemes

"The general principle is to use one symbol for one speech segment..."

Is a 'speech segment' a phoneme? If it is, that would be a better word, and should probably be linked. --Spikey 04:25, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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History?

Does anybody know anything about the history of the IPA [where A in this case stands for Alphabet, not Association ;)]? I'm wondering who decided on these symbols, and when, and how. leigh 01:41, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC)

Pronunciation guide

For stylistic reasons, I removed the "questions" section with this question:

• Are there any good guides to learning to pronounce all of the sounds in the alphabet?

A better approach would be to ask the question here on the talk page, then include a link in the article if someone comes up with a pronunciation guide.

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I'd like to repeat Spikey's question, above. Does "speech segment" mean phoneme? If so, why not put it in the article?

In re Greek

I deleted mention of [y] being pronounced like Greek υ because that letter (ypsilon) is pronounced [i] in Modern Greek—except when it's pronounced [f] or [v] in certain digraphs. All in all, it's a very poor example. —Tkinias 18:48, 31 Mar 2004 (UTC)

IPA - what

I read the main page of the article on IPA. On the plus side it is clear. On the minus side, it makes no attempt to explain what the IPA is. (context, scope, purpose, etc.) Nice chart. Lots of data (for people who probably have no need of it) but virtually no general information. My questions (which weren't answered - keep in mind I'm a totally lay person): An alphabet is used to 1. Communicate between a writer and a reader (of the same language), 2. Describe that communication (unambigously?) Right?

Certain things are implied by its name, but clearly one should define what the subject of the alphabet is (are). I have no idea if it covers all indoeuropean languages not to mention Mandarin Chinese (etc.)? Does it (attempt) to cover all spoken languages? Written? What about non-vocal languages (finger snaps - all that stuff). Sign-language? We now have some evidence that hand gestures are linked to language in the brain...but I digress. From a simplistic point of view language can be thought of as being three distinct (context sensitive) types of communication: written/read, spoken/heard and performed/viewed. I suppose an alphabet can't cover the last (but see how choreographers describe dance) and, obviously, there are non-alphabetical languages (pictographics, heiroglyphic, etc.) just as there are languages which make use of whistles, clicks. SO what does the IPA do?

It just occured to me that maybe the IPA is (now-a-days) only used by euro-centric hobbyists and that would explain why there was no attention given to giving a serious explanation of what it is: "if you have to ask...{then you don't need to know}"