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For other uses, see .
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. Without proper , you may see
instead of phonetic symbols.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (unofficially—though commonly—abbreviated IPA) is an
based primarily on the . It was devised by the
as a standardized representation of the sounds of . The IPA is used by ,
students and teachers, , , , ,
creators, and .
The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of oral language: , , , and the separation of
and . To represent additional qualities of speech, such as tooth gnashing, , and sounds made with a , an extended set of symbols called the
may be used.
IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two basic types,
and . 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, [t??], depending on how precise one wishes to be. Often, slashes are used thus, /t/ is less specific than, and could refer to, either [t??] or [t], depending on the context and language.
Occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and four
marks in the IPA. These are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA.
Main article:
In 1886, a group of
language teachers, led by the French linguist , formed what would come to be known from 1897 onwards as the
(in French, l’Association phonétique internationale). Their original alphabet was based on a
for English known as the , 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 [] (the sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter ?c? in English, but with the digraph ?ch? in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, thus providing the base for all future revisions. The idea of making the IPA was first suggested by
in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by , , , and Passy.
Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in
and , the IPA remained unchanged until the
in 1989. A minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for
and the removal of letters for . The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a . Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces.
for speech pathology were created in 1990 and officially adopted by the
The official chart of the IPA as of 2005. Click to enlarge. The proper symbols for upstep and downstep are not available in this font, and have been substituted.
For a guide to pronouncing IPA transcriptions of English words, see .
The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound (), although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. This means that:
It does not normally use
to represent single sounds, the way
does with ?sh?, ?th? 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 do "hard" and "soft"
in several European languages.
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 letters represent
are used to modify these, and 19 additional signs indicate
qualities such as , , , and . These are or the chart displayed here is the
as posted at the website of the IPA.
The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the . For this reason, most letters are either
or , or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the , ???, has the form of a dotless , and derives originally from an . A few letters, such as that of the voiced , ???, were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the
letter ? ‘ain).
Despite its preference for harmonizing with the Latin script, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted other letters. For example, before 1989, the IPA letters for
were ??, ??, ??, and ??, all of which were derived either from existing IPA letters, or from Latin and Greek letters. However, except for ???, none of these letters were widely used among
or , and as a result they were replaced by the more widespread symbols ??, ??, ??, ??, and ?? at the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989.
Although the IPA diacritics are fully , there is little systemicity in the letter forms. A
articulation is consistently indicated with a right-swinging tail, as in ?? ? ??, and
by a top hook, ?? ? ??, but other pseudo-featural elements are due to haphazard derivation and coincidence. For example, all nasal consonants but uvular ??? are based on the form ?n?: ?m ? n ? ? ??. However, the similarity between ?m? and ?n? is a historical accident, ??? and ??? are derived from
of gn and ng, and ??? is an ad hoc imitation of ???.
Some of the new letters were ordinary Latin letters turned 180 degrees, such as ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (turned a c e f h m r t v w y). This was easily done in the era of , and had the advantage of not requiring the casting of special type for IPA symbols.
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
letters taken from the Latin alphabet would correspond to "international usage". Hence, the letters ?b?, ?d?, ?f?, () ?ɡ?, (non-silent) ?h?, (unaspirated) ?k?, ?l?, ?m?, ?n?, (unaspirated) ?p?, (voiceless) ?s?, (unaspirated) ?t?, ?v?, ?w?, and ?z? have the values used in E and the
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 symbols derived or taken from the Greek alphabet, though the sound values may differ. For example, ??? is a vowel in Greek, but an only indirectly related consonant in the IPA. For most of these, subtly different
shapes have been devised for the IPA, namely ?ɑ?, ???, ???, ???, ???, ???, and ???, which are encoded in
separately from their Greek "parent" letters, though one of them – ?θ? – is not, while ???, ??? are not commonly used.
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 t and small capital letters usually represent . 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 (as for example in ) nor even any systematic relation between signs and the sounds they represent (as in ).
Beyond the letters themselves, there are a variety of secondary symbols which aid in transcription.
can be combined with IPA letters to transcribe modified
values or . There are also special symbols for
that are often employed.
There are two principal types of
used to set off IPA transcriptions:
[square brackets] are used with
notations, possibly including details of the pronunciation that may not be used for distinguishing words in the language being transcribed, but which the author nonetheless wishes to document.
// are used for
notations, which note only features that 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 /p?n/ and /sp?n/, with the same /p/ phoneme. However, to capture the difference between them (the
of /p/), they can be transcribed phonetically as [p??n] and [sp?n].
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
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 may not be sufficiently clear for individual letters and digraphs.
{} are used for
notation. See
for examples in that system.
(Parentheses) are used for indistinguishable utterances. They are also seen for silent articulation (mouthing), where the expected phonetic transcription is derived from lip-reading, and with periods to indicate silent pauses, for example (...).
Double parentheses indicate obscured or unintelligible sound, as in ((2 syll.)), two audible but unidentifiable syllables.
An example of a printed text with IPA letters filled in by hand. The two words at the beginning of line 1 are s?k and s??k. The ? has a cursive form that looks somewhat like a 2 or a small-capital Q in some cursive hands.
Main article:
IPA letters have
forms designed for use in manuscripts and whe 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.
Modifying the IPA chart[]
Often, textbook authors or others create revised versions of the IPA chart, expressing their own preferences or needs. This is one such version. Only the black symbols are part of the IPA; additional symbols are in grey.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the alphabet in the form of a chart. (See .) The most recent official chart, from 2005, is presented above. Not all aspects of the alphabet can be accommodated in a chart of the size published by the IPA. The
consonants, for example, are not included in the consonant chart for reasons of space rather than of theory (two additional columns would be required, one between the retroflex and palatal columns and the other between the pharyngeal and glottal columns), and the
would require an additional row for that single consonant, so they are listed instead under the catchall block of "other symbols". The indefinitely large number of
would make a full accounting impractical even on a larger page, and only a few examples are shown.
The procedure for modifying the alphabet or the chart is to propose the change in the . (See, for example, August 2008 on a low central vowel and August 2011 on central approximants.) Reactions to the proposal may be published in the same or subsequent issues of the Journal (as in August 2009 on the low central vowel). A formal proposal is then put to the Council of the IPA – which is elected by the membership – for further discussion and a formal vote.
Only changes to the alphabet or chart that have been approved by the Council can be considered part of the official IPA. Nonetheless, many users of the alphabet, including the leadership of the Association itself, make personal changes or additions in their own practice, either for convenience in working on a particular language (see "Illustrations of the IPA" for individual languages in the Handbook, which for example may use ?c? for [t?]), or because they object to some aspect of the official version. For example, the chart displayed here is reorganized in response to perceived shortcomings of the official version, and in places reflects the organization of the 1979 chart.
Further information:
Although the IPA offers over 160 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. 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
in two . 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 ['l?t?l], and this broad (imprecise) transcription is a more or less accurate description of many pronunciations. A narrower transcription may focus on individual or dialectical details: ['????] in , ['l??o] in , or ['??:?] 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, pi:k/ or /p?k, 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: [p??k], [p?i:k], [pik?].
Although IPA is popular for transcription by linguists, American linguists often alternate use of the IPA with
or use the IPA together with some , 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.
This section requires . (November 2009)
A page from an English language textbook used in . The IPA is used to teach the different pronunciations of the
(/θ/, /?/) 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) and , textbooks for children and adults for studying English and French consistently use the IPA. English teachers and textbooks in Taiwan tend to use the
system, an IPA with slight typographical variations.
Many British dictionaries, including the
such as the
and the , now use
to represent the pronunciation of words. However, most American (and some British) volumes use one of a variety of
systems, intended to be more comfortable for readers of English. For example, the respelling systems in many American dictionaries (such as ) use ?y? for IPA [j] and ?sh? for IPA [?], reflecting common representations of those sounds in written English, using only letters of the English
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.)
The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages with generally
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
use the IPA rarely and sometimes use the
for transcription of foreign words. Monolingual Hebrew dictionaries use pronunciation respelling for words w for example, the
respells ????????? as ?????????? because this word uses . Bilingual dictionaries that translate from foreign languages into
usually employ the IPA, but monolingual Russian dictionaries occasionally use pronunciation respelli for example, 's dictionary adds нэ? in brackets for the
word пенсне () to indicate that the
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 .
Main article:
IPA letters have been incorporated into the alphabets of various languages, notably via the
in : , , , , , , etc. This has created the need for capital variants. For example,
of northern
has , , , , , ,
MB? AJ?YA KIGB?ND?? ?GB?Y? KEDI?ZA? S?S?? T?M SE.
These, and others, are supported by , but appear in Latin ranges other than the .
In the IPA itself, only lower-case letters are used. The 1949 edition of the IPA handbook indicated that an asterisk ?*? may be prefixed to indicate that a word is a proper name, but this convention has not been included in recent editions.
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
are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such as 's volumes and Timothy Cheek's book Singing in Czech. Opera singers' ability to read IPA was used by the site 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."
The International Phonetic Association organizes the letters of the IPA into three categories:
consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.
Pulmonic consonant letters are arranged singly or in pairs of voiceless () and voiced sounds, with these then grouped in columns from front (labial) sounds on the left to back (glottal) sounds on the right. In official publications by the IPA, two columns are omitted to save space, with the letters listed among 'other symbols', and with the remaining consonants arranged in rows from full closure (occlusives: stops and nasals), to brief closure (vibrants: trills and taps), to partial closure (fricatives) and minimal closure (approximants), again with a row left out to save space. In the table below, a slightly different arrangement is made: All pulmonic consonants are included in the pulmonic-consonant table, and the vibrants and laterals are separated out so that the rows reflect the common
pathway of stop → fricative → approximant, as well as the fact that several letters pull double duty as both frica
may be created by joining stops and fricatives from adjacent cells. Shaded cells are judged to be implausible.
Vowel letters are also grouped in pairs—of unrounded and rounded vowel sounds—with these pairs also arranged from front on the left to back on the right, and from maximal closure at top to minimal closure at bottom. No vowel letters are omitted from the chart, though in the past some of the mid central vowels were listed among the 'other symbols'.
Each character is assigned a number, to prevent confusion between similar letters (such as ? and θ, ? and ?, or ? and ?) in such situations as the printing of manuscripts. The categories of sounds are assigned different ranges of numbers.
Main article:
IPA  o
Other clicks
— These tables contain
symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers.
— Where symbols appear in pairs, left–right represent the
consonants.
— Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible or not distinctive.
Asterisks (*) indicate unofficial IPA symbols for
sounds. See the respective articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
In rows where some letters appear in pairs (the ), the letter to the right represents a
[?]). However, [?] cannot be voiced, and the voicing of [?] is ambiguous. In the other rows (the ), 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 [?, ?, ?] represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
In many languages, such as English, [h] and [?] are not actually glottal, fricatives, or approximants. Rather, they are bare .
It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives [? ?], [? ?], and [? ?].
[?] is not known to exist as a
in any language.
consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the
(the space between the vocal cords) or
(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 , meaning how the consonant is produced, and columns that designate , meaning where in the vocal tract the consonant is produced. The main chart includes only consonants with a single place of articulation.
are sounds that involve two simultaneous
(are pronounced using two parts of the ). 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
and , have different coarticulated consonants.
[?] is described as a "simultaneous [?] and [x]". However, this analysis is disputed. (See
for discussion.)
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 , 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 t? for t?s, paralleling k? ~ k?x. The letters for the palatal plosives c and ?, are often used as a convenience for t?? and d?? or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.
Description
voiceless alveolar affricate
voiced alveolar affricate
voiceless postalveolar affricate
voiced postalveolar affricate
voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate
voiced alveolo-palatal affricate
voiceless alveolar lateral affricate
voiceless labial-velar plosive
voiced labial-velar plosive
labial-velar nasal stop
voiced velar affricate
On browsers that use
to display IPA characters, the following incorrectly formed sequences may look better due to a bug in that font: ts?, t??, t??, dz?, d??, d??, t??, kp?, ɡb?, ?m?.
Non-pulmonic consonants are sounds whose airflow is not dependent on the lungs. These include
(found in the
of Africa),
(found in languages such as , ,
and ), and
(found in many
For example:
Laminal alveolar ("dental")
Apical (post-)alveolar ("retroflex")
Laminal postalveolar ("palatal")
Lateral coronal ("lateral")
Alveolar fricative
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: ?k??, ɡ??, ???, q??, ???, ???? etc., or ???k, ??ɡ, ???, ??q, ???, ????. 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, with the different letters representing different click 'types', there is no velar-uvular distinction, and the accompanying letter represents the manner, phonation, or airstream
of the click: ??, ??, ??? etc.
Letters for the
implosives ??, ?, ?, ?, ?? are no longer supported by the IPA, though they remain in Unicode. Instead, the IPA typically uses the voiced equivalent with a voiceless diacritic: ???, ???, etc..
Although not confirmed as contrastive in any language, and therefore not explicitly recognized by the IPA, a letter for the , ???, is supported in the Unicode Phonetic Extensions Supplement, added in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard, or can be created as a composite ????.
The ejective diacritic often stands in for a superscript glottal stop in
but pulmonic , such as [m?], [l?], [w?], [a?]. These may also be transcribed as creaky [m?], [l?], [w?], [a?].
Main article:
Paired vowels are:  o
This table contains
symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers.
 o  o  o   o
Tongue positions of
front vowels, with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness.
show 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 . Vowels pronounced with the tongue lowered are at the bottom, and vowels pronounced with the tongue raised are at the top. For example, [ɑ] (the first vowel in father) is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. However, [i] (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 . Vowels with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth (such as [?], the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as [?], the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.
In places where vowels are paired, the right represents a
(in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.
are typically specified with a non-syllabic diacritic, as in ?a???. However, sometimes a tie bar is used, especially if it is difficult to tell if the diphthong is characterized by an on-glide, an off-glide or it is variable: ?a??? or ?o?e?.
?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
may be added to indicate an open central vowel, as in ?a?? or ???.
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. Subdiacritics (markings normally placed below a letter) may be placed above a letter having a
(informally called a tail), e.g. ??, ??.
The dotless i, ???, is used when the dot would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA letters may appear as diacritic variants to represent phonetic detail: t? (fricative release), b? (breathy voice), ?a (glottal onset), ? ( ), o? (). Additional diacritics were introduced in the , which were designed principally for speech pathology.
Syllabicity diacritics
Consonant-release diacritics
Phonation diacritics
Articulation diacritics
Co-articulation diacritics
or labio-velarized
Velarized or pharyngealized
With aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is also voiced. Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice.
Some linguists restrict this breathy-voice diacritic to , and transcribe obstruents as b?.
The state of the
can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from an open to a closed glottis
Open glottis
, also called murmured
Closed glottis
glottal closure
These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, such as , , , and , which often operate on syllables, words, or : that is, elements such as the intensity, pitch, and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the
of speech. Although most of these symbols indicate distinctions that are phonemic at the word level, symbols also exist for intonation on a level . Various ligatures of tone letters are used in the IPA Handbook despite not being found on the simplified official IPA chart.
Length, stress, and rhythm
(symbol goes
before stressed element)
(symbol goes
before stressed element)
Intonation
Tone diacritics and
Extra high / top
Rising (generic)
Falling (generic)
Extra low / bottom
Finer distinctions of tone may be indicated by combining the tone diacritics and tone letters shown above, though not all IPA fonts support this. The four additional rising and falling tones tones supported by diacritics are high/mid rising ??, ???, low rising ??, ???, high falling ??, ???, and low/mid falling ??, ???. That is, tone diacritics only support contour tones across three levels (high, mid, low), despite supporting five levels for register tones. For other contour tones, tone letters must be used: ???, ???, etc. For more complex (peaking and dipping) tones, though it is theoretically possible to combine the three tone diacritics in any permutation, in practice only generic peaking ?? and dipping ?? combinations are used. For finer detail, tone letters are again required (????, ????, ????, ????, etc.) The correspondence between tone diacritics and tone letters is therefore only approximate.
A work-around for diacritics sometimes seen when a language has more than one rising or falling tone, and the author wishes to avoid the poorly legible diacritics ??, ??, ??, ?? but does not wish to completely abandon the IPA, is to restrict generic rising ?? and falling ?? to the higher-pitched of the rising and falling tones, say ??? and ???, and to use the old (retired) IPA subscript diacritics ?? and ?? for the lower-pitched rising and falling tones, say ??? and ???. When a language has four or six level tones, the two mid tones are sometimes transcribed as high-mid ?? (non-standard) and low-mid ??.
As with other IPA diacritics, such as , , and , the stress mark may be doubled to indicate an extra degree of stress.
A stress mark typically appears before the stressed syllable, and thus marks the syllable break as well as stress. Where the syllable onset is a geminate consonant, e.g. in Italian, the consonant is commonly split by the stress mark, which means that the length sign is not used for gemination. (Thus ?av'v?lse? not *?a'vv?lse?, *?a'v:?lse?, or *?av':?lse?.) However, occasionally the stress mark is placed immediately before the stressed vowel, after any syllable onset (?avv'?lse? or ?av:'?lse?). In such transcriptions, the stress mark does not function as a mark of the syllable boundary.
Tone letters generally appear after each syllable, for a language with syllable tone (?a?v????), or after the phonological word, for a language with
(?av?????). However, in older versions of the IPA, ad hoc tone marks were placed before the syllable, the same position as used to mark stress, and this convention is still sometimes seen (??a??v??, ????av??).
Main articles:
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 ??? which has been standardized to ???. Several letters indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that such things should be indicated with diacritics: ??? for ?z?? is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series ?? ? ? ? ?? they are now written ??? ?? ?? ?? ??? or ?p'↓ t'↓ c'↓ k'↓ q'↓?. A retired set of , ??, ?, ??, is still sometimes seen, as the official pipe letters ??, ?, ?? may cause problems with legibility, especially when used with brackets ([ ] or / /), the letter ?l?, or the
marks ?|, ‖? (for this reason, some publications which use standard IPA pipe letters disallow IPA brackets).
There are also unsupported or
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
??? for [t??].
Main article:
The "Extensions to the IPA", often abbreviated as "extIPA" and sometimes called "Extended IPA", are symbols whose original purpose was to accurately transcribe . At the
in 1989, a group of linguists drew up the initial extensions, which were based on the previous work of the PRDS (Phonetic Representation of Disordered Speech) Group in the early 1980s. The extensions were first published in 1990, then modified, and published again in 1994 in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, when they were officially adopted by the . While the original purpose was to transcribe disordered speech, linguists have used the extensions to designate a number of unique sounds within standard communication, such as hushing, gnashing teeth, and smacking lips. The extensions have also been used to record certain peculiarities in an individual's voice, such as nasalized voicing.
The Extensions to the IPA do not include symbols used for voice quality (VoQS), such as whispering.
The remaining blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without too much difficulty if the need arises. Some
letters have appeared in the literature for the retroflex lateral flap, the voiceless lateral fricatives, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives. (See the grey letters in the PDF chart.) Diacritics can supply much of the remainder. If a sound cannot be transcribed, an asterisk ?*? may be used, either as a letter or as a diacritic (as in ?k*? sometimes seen for the
'fortis' velar).
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, [β?] and [??] respectively. Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives would be written as raised lateral approximants, [?? ?? ??]. A few languages such as
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, [??].
Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written [??] (bilabial trill and the dental sign), and labiodental stops [p? b?] 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. [?? ??/?? ??], though in some cases the diacritic would need to be written below the letter. A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted [r?], just as retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining consonants, the uvular laterals (?? 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.
The vowels are similarly manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering. For example, the unrounded equivalent of [?] can be transcribed as mid-centered [??], and the rounded equivalent of [ae] as raised [??]. True mid vowels are lowered [e? ?? ?? ?? ?? o?], while centered [?? ??] and [?] are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The only known vowels that cannot be represented in this scheme are vowels with unexpected , which would require a dedicated diacritic, such as ???? and ?u?? (or ???? and ????).
Main article:
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. The symbols also have
standard. In some cases, the Unicode names and the IPA names do not agree. For example, IPA calls ? "epsilon", but Unicode calls it "small letter open E".
The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are usually used for unmodified letters. Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as [], may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol or 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 for example, é is , based on the name of the diacritic in English and French. Non-traditional diacritics are often named after objects they resemble, so d? is called bridge.
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. Their collection is extensive enough that the
used it in the development of .
Several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to
characters. Notable systems include , , , and . 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.
– inventor of IPA-based
provides IPA support for
"The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the ''. 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 )
The inverted bridge under the ?t? specifies it as
(pronounced with the tip of the tongue), and the superscript h shows that it is
(breathy). Both these qualities cause the English [t] to sound different from the French or Spanish [t], which is a
(pronounced with the blade of the tongue) and unaspirated [t?]. ?t??? and ?t?? are thus two different IPA symbols for two different, though similar, sounds.
For instance,
are two different kinds of , but since no language has (yet) been found to make a distinction between, say, an
and an alveolar tap, the IPA does not provide such sounds with dedicated letters. Instead, it provides a single letter (in this case, [?]) for both. Strictly speaking, this makes the IPA a partially
alphabet, not a purely
There are five basic tone diacritics and five basic tone letters, both sets of which are compounded for contour tones.
"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 recogni It recognizes only letters which have been carefully cut so as to be in harmony with the other letters." (IPA 1949)
An example in French, with a single stress mark for normal prosodic stress at the end of each
(marked as a minor prosodic break), and a double stress mark for contrastive/emphatic stress:
[''ɑ?:'tre | m?'sj?, | ''vwala ma'dam.] Entrez monsieur, voilà madame.
(Passy, 1958, Conversations fran?aises en transcription phonétique. 2nd ed.)
For example, [p] is called "Lower-case P" and [χ] is "Chi." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 171)
International Phonetic Association (IPA), Handbook.
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.  .
Wall, Joan (1989). . Pst.  .
. Langsci.ucl.ac.uk 2012.
(PDF) 2012.
International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 194–196
"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)
Passy, Paul (1888). "Our revised alphabet". The Phonetic Teacher: 57–60.
IPA in the Encyclopaedia Britannica
Pullum and Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide, pp. 152, 209
Nicolaidis, Katerina (September 2005). . International Phonetic Association.
International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 186
“From its earliest days...the International Phonetic Association has aimed to provide ‘a separate sign for ea 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)
Laver, Principles of Phonetics,pp. 174–175
Cf. the notes at the Unicode
as well as blogs by
and John Wells
Handbook, International Phonetic Association, p. 196, The new letters should be suggestive of the sounds they represent, by their resemblance to the old ones..
True angle brackets, ?...? (U+27E8 and U+27E9), have only recently been supported by many non-mathematical fonts. Therefore chevrons
(U+2039, U+203A) are sometimes used in substitution, as are the less-than and greater-than signs &...& (U+003C, U+003E). See
for how they display in a selection of fonts.
John Esling (2010) "Phonetic Notation", in Hardcastle, Laver & Gibbon (eds) The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences, 2nd ed., p 688, 693.
. Journals.cambridge.org. .
. Journals.cambridge.org. .
. Langsci.ucl.ac.uk.
. Langsci.ucl.ac.uk.
. Langsci.ucl.ac.uk.
. Langsci.ucl.ac.uk.
IPA Handbook (1999)
Sally Thomason (January 2, 2008). . Language Log.
For example, the English school textbooks by I. N. Vereshagina, K. A. Bondarenko and T. A. Pritykina.
For example, "Le Fran?ais 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).
. Cambridge Dictionaries Online. 2002.
Agnes, Michael (1999). Webster's New World College Dictionary. New York, NY: Macmillan USA. xxiii.  .
has detailed comparisons.
(Czech) Fronek, J. (2006). Velk? anglicko-?esk? slovník (in Czech). Praha: Leda.  . 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.
Principles of the International Phonetic Association, 1949:17.
. Castel Opera Arts.
Cheek, Timothy (2001). . The Scarecrow Press. p. 392.  . .
"Segments can usefully be divided into two major categories, consonants and vowels." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 3)
International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 6.
"for presentational convenience [...] because of [their] rarity and the small number of types of sounds which are found there." (IPA Handbook, p 18)
A chart of IPA numbers can be found on the IPA website.
Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, Sounds of the World's Languages, §2.1.
Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, Sounds of the World's Languages, §9.3.
(1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. . p 18
; Rodman, Robert (1998) [1974]. An Introduction to Language (6th ed.). Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.  .
Ladefoged, P
(1996). The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 329–330.  .
Amanda L. Miller et al., . Submitted to the Journal of the International Phonetic Association. Retrieved .
International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 10.
International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 14–15.
International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 13.
The global rise and fall arrows come before the affected syllable or prosodic unit, like stress and upstep/downstep. This contrasts with the Chao tone letters, which come after.
Payne, E. M. (2005) "Phonetic variation in Italian consonant gemination", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35: 153–181.
. Phonetic-. .
"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.)
PRDS Group (1983). The Phonetic Representation of Disordered Speech. London: The King's Fund.
"Extensions to the IPA: An ExtIPA Chart" in International Phonetic Association, Handbook, pp. 186–187.
"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)
Olson, Kenneth S.; & Hajek, John. (1999). The phonetic status of the labial flap. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 29 (2), pp. 101–114.
"The diacritics...can be used to modify the lip or tongue position implied by a vowel symbol." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 16)
"...the International Phonetic Association has never officially approved a set of names..." (International Phonetic Association, Handbook, p. 31)
Ball, Martin J.; John H. E B. Craig Dickson (1995). "The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality". Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 25 (2): 71–80. :.
Duckworth, M.; G. A 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. :.
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. :.  .
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: .  . (hb);
(1988). English pronouncing dictionary (revised 14th ed.). London: Dent.  .  .
(September 1990). "The revised International Phonetic Alphabet". Language 66 (3): 550–552. :.  .
Ladefoged, P Morris Hale (September 1988). "Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet". Language 64 (3): 577–582. :.  .
Laver, John (1994). Principles of Phonetics. New York: Cambridge University Press.  . (hb);
; William A. Ladusaw (1986). Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago: .  .
Skinner, E Timothy M Lilene Mansell (1990). Speak with Distinction. New York, NY: Applause Theatre Book Publishers.  .
Fromkin, V Rodman, R Hyams, Nina (2011). An Introduction to Language (9th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth, Cenage Learning. pp. 233–234.  .
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symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers.
— Where symbols appear in pairs, left–right represent the
consonants.
— Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible or not distinctive.
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