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- '' "IPA" redirects here. For other uses, see IPA (disambiguation). The NATO phonetic alphabet, which is different, has also informally been called the "International Phonetic Alphabet". For a brief description of IPA symbols used for English, see IPA chart for English.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised and in use by linguists. It is intended to provide a standardized, accurate and unique representation for every sound element in human language, that is distinguished as a phone or a phoneme.
For a treatment of the English language using the IPA, see International Phonetic Alphabet for English.
History
The development of the IPA dates back to 1886, when a group of French and British language teachers formed the International Phonetic Association. Two years later, the International Phonetic Association released the first official version of the IPA.
Description
The general principle of the IPA is to provide a separate symbol for each speech segment, avoiding letter combinations (digraphs) such as sh and th in English orthography, and avoiding ambiguity such as that of c in English.
The principle of formation
The IPA is what MacMahon (1996) has termed a "selective" phonetic alphabet. This means that it does not have separate symbols for two sounds if there does not exist a language in which these two sounds are contrasted with one another. In other words, it aims to provide a separate symbol for every contrastive (or phonemic) sound occurring in human language.For instance, flaps and taps are two different kinds of articulation, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a phonemic distinction between, say, an alveolar flap and an alveolar tap, the IPA does not provide them with dedicated symbols. Instead, it provides a single symbol (in this case, ), that represents both sounds. For non-contrastive (that is, phonetic or subphonemic) details of these sounds, the IPA relies on diacritics, which are optional. Thus there is a certain level of flexibility in representing a language with the IPA.
Principles behind the symbols
The letters chosen for the IPA are generally drawn from the Latin and Greek alphabets, or are modifications of Latin or Greek letters. There are also a few letters derived from Latin punctuation, such as the glottal stop (originally an apostrophe, but later given the form of a "gelded" question mark to have the visual impact of the other consonants), and one, *, although Latin in form, was inspired by Arabic letter <ﻉ> `ain. On the other hand, the original Latin-derived symbols for the clicks have been abandoned in favor of iconic Khoisanist symbols such as .The sound-values of most consonants taken from the Latin alphabet correspond to those of French, and are also close to those of most other European languages: such consonants include , , , , , , , , , (unvoiced) , , , . English values are used for and . The vowels from the Latin alphabet (, , , , ) correspond to the vowels of Spanish and are similar to those of Italian. is like the vowel in piece, like rule, etc.
The other symbols from the Latin alphabet, , , , , , and , correspond to sounds these letters represent in various other languages. has the Slavic and Germanic value of
Letters that share a particular modification sometimes correspond to a similar type of sound. For example, all the retroflex consonants have the same symbol as the equivalent alveolar consonants, with the addition of a rightward facing hook at the bottom (e.g., for , for , etc.) Although there is some correspondence between modified letters and their unmodified versions, it is usually not possible to deduce the features of a sound (tongue position, manner of articulation, etc.) from the shape of its IPA symbol. For instance, there is no consistent relationship between lowercase letters and their small capital counterparts, nor are all labial consonants linked through a common design.
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.
Types of transcription
- Main article: Phonetic transcription
The International Phonetic Association recommends that a phonetic transcription should be enclosed in square brackets "*". A transcription that specifically denotes only phonological contrasts may be enclosed in slashes "/ /" instead. If one is in doubt, it is best to use brackets, for by setting off a transcription with slashes one makes a theoretical claim that every symbol within is phonemically contrastive for the language being transcribed.
Consonants (pulmonic)
Single articulation
IPA consonants 2005.pngThe pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation and columns that designate place of articulation. The main chart only includes consonants with a single place of articulation.
Notes:
- Asterisks (*) mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature. *. In the meantime the similarly shaped izhitsa (ѵ) is used here.
- In rows where some symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except for breathy-voiced ). However, cannot be voiced. 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 are treated as specifically alveolar, post-alveolar, etc., as appropriate for that language.
- Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
- The symbols represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
- It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives , , and .
- The labiodental nasal is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.
Coarticulation
IPA co-articulated 2005.pngNotes:
- is described as a "simultaneous and ". However, this analysis is disputed. See the article for discussion.
Consonants (non-pulmonic)
IPA non-pulmonic 2005.png
| Click releases | Implosives | Ejectives | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Bilabial | For example: | |||
| Laminal alveolar ("dental") | Alveolar | Bilabial | |||
| Apical (post-) alveolar ("retroflex") | Palatal | Alveolar | |||
| Laminal postalveolar ("palatal") | Velar | Velar | |||
| Lateral coronal ("lateral") | Uvular | Alveolar fricative | |||
Notes:
- All clicks are doubly articulated and require two symbols: a velar or uvular stop, plus a symbol for the anterior release: etc., or . When the dorsal articulation is omitted, a may usually be assumed.
- Symbols for the voiceless implosives are no longer supported by the IPA, though they remain in Unicode. Instead, the IPA uses the voiced equivalent with a voiceless diacritic: , etc.
- Although not confirmed from any language, and therefore not "explicitly recognized" by the IPA, a retroflex implosive, , 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 symbol is often seen for glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as , but these are more properly transcribed as creaky ().
Vowels
IPA vowel chart 2005.png
Notes:
- Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel, as does (at least prototypically). All others are unrounded.
- is not confirmed as a distinct phoneme in any language.
- is officially a front vowel, but there is little distinction between front and central open vowels, and is frequently used for an open central vowel.
Affricates and double articulation
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, due to the great number of ligatures that would be required to represent all affricates this way. A third affricate transcription sometimes seen uses the superscript notation for a consonant release, for example for , paralleling ~ . The symbols for the palatal plosives, are often used as a convenience for or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.
Note:
- If your browser uses Arial Unicode MS to display IPA characters, the following incorrectly formed sequences may look better due to a bug in that font: .
Extended IPA
The Extended IPA is an new group of symbols for the IPA whose original purpose was to accurately transcribe disordered speech. However, linguists have used it to designate a number of unique sounds within standard communication, such as hushing, gnashing teeth, and smacking lips.
Suprasegmentals
IPA suprasegmentals 2005.png
| Primary stress | |
| Secondary stress | |
| Long (long vowel or geminate consonant) | |
| Half-long | |
| Extra-short | |
| Syllable break | |
| Linking (absence of a break) |
Intonation
| Minor (foot) break | |
| Major (intonation) break | |
| Global rise | |
| Global fall |
Tone
IPA allows for the use of either tone diacritics or tone letters to indicate tones.| Extra high | |
| High | |
| Mid | |
| Low | |
| Extra low | |
| Rise | |
| Fall | |
| e | Downstep |
| e | Upstep |
- With regard to tone diacritics, Unicode encodes marks for some contour tones, but not all. In Unicode version 4.1, only hacek (rising) and circumflex (falling) diacritics were encoded. Subsequent versions may also include six additional diacritics for contour tones, such as the macron-acute and the grave-acute-grave ligatures. (See an image IPA suprasegmentals 2005.png.) Note that contour tone diacritics are not encoded as sequences of level tone diacritics in Unicode.
- With regard to tone letters, Unicode does not have separate encodings for contour tones. Instead, sequences of level tone letters are used, with proper display dependent on the font, usually by means of OpenType font rendition: or . (These are probably not displaying correctly in your browser. See the IPA suprasegmentals 2005.png for a sample of how they should appear.) Since few fonts support combination tone letters (see the external links for one that is free), a common solution is to use the old system of superscript numerals from '1' to '5', for example e312. However, this depends on local linguistic tradition, with '5' generally being high and '1' being low for Asian languages, but '1' being high and '5' low for African languages. An old IPA convention sometimes still seen is to use sub-diacritics for low contour tones: for low-falling and low-rising.
- The upstep and downstep modifiers are superscript arrows. Unicode version 4.1 does not encode these, though subsequent versions will. The arrows for upstep and downstep should not be confused with the full-height arrows, which are used to indicate airflow direction.
Diacritics
IPA diacritics 2005.png
Diacritics are small markings which are placed around the IPA letter in order to show a certain alteration in the letter's pronounciation. Sub-diacritics may be placed above a symbol with a descender (informally called a tail), i.e. . 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: (fricative release), (breathy voice), (glottal onset), (epenthetic schwa), o (diphthongization). More advanced diacritcs were developed in the Extended IPA for more specific pronounciation encoding.
| Syllabicity diacritics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Syllabic | Non-syllabic | ||
| Consonant-release diacritics | |||
| Aspirated | No audible release | ||
| Nasal release | Lateral release | ||
| Phonation diacritics | |||
| Voiceless | Voiced | ||
| Breathy voiced | Creaky voiced | ||
| Articulation diacritics | |||
| Dental | Linguolabial | ||
| Apical | Laminal | ||
| Advanced | Retracted | ||
| Centralized | Mid-centralized | ||
| Raised ( = voiced alveolar nonsibilant fricative) | |||
| Lowered ( = bilabial approximant) | |||
| Co-articulation diacritics | |||
| More rounded | Less rounded | ||
| Labialized | Palatalized | ||
| Velarized | Pharyngealized | ||
| Velarized or pharyngealized | |||
| Advanced tongue root | Retracted tongue root | ||
| Nasalized | Rhoticity | ||
Notes:
- Some linguists restrict this breathy-voice diacritic to sonorants, and transcribe obstruents as .
- With aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is also voiced. Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice.
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:
| voiceless | |
| breathy voice, also called murmured | |
| slack voice | |
| modal voice | |
| stiff voice | |
| creaky voice | |
| glottal closure |
Obsolete symbols, nonstandard symbols, and capital variants
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 for standard . Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that such things should be indicated with diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series has been dropped.
There are also unsupported symbols from local traditions that find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with affricates such as .
While the IPA does not itself have a set of capital letters (the ones that look like capitals are actually small capitals), many languages have adopted symbols from the IPA as part of their orthographies, and in such cases they have invented capital variants of these. This is especially common in Africa. An example is Kabye of northern Togo, which has (capital ). Other pseudo-IPA capitals supported by unicode are .
How to transcribe sounds that have no symbols in the IPA charts
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 lateral flaps and voiceless lateral fricatives, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives. Diacritics can supply much of the remainder, which would indeed be appropriate if the sounds were allophones. For example, the Spanish bilabial approximant is commonly written as a lowered fricative, . Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives would be written as raised lateral approximants, . 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, . Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written (bilabial trill and the dental sign). Palatal and uvular taps, if they exist, and the epiglottal tap could be written as extra-short plosives, . A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted , just as retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining consonants, the uvular laterals 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 * as raised . True mid vowels are lowered , while centered are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The vowels that aren't representable in this scheme are the compressed vowels, which would require a dedicated diacritic.
Names of the symbols
It is often desirable to distinguish an IPA symbol from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound in broad transcription. The symbol's names and phonetic descriptions are described in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. 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 "epsilon", but Unicode calls it "small letter open E".
The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are used for unmodified symbols. 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, 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 is called bridge.
Comparison with other phonetic notation
The IPA is not the only phonetic transcription system in use. The other common Latin-based system is the Americanist phonetic notation, devised for representing American languages, but used by some US linguists as an alternate to the IPA. There are also sets of symbols specific to Slavic, Indic, Finno-Ugric, and Caucasian linguistics, as well as other regional specialties. The differences between these alphabets and IPA are relatively small, although often the special characters of the IPA are abandoned in favour of diacritics or digraphs.
Other alphabets, such as Hangul, may have their own phonetic extensions. There also exist featural phonetic transcription systems, such as Alexander Melville Bell's Visible Speech and its derivatives.
There is an extended version of the IPA for disordered speech (extIPA), which has been included in this article, and another set of symbols used for voice quality (VoQS). There are also many personal or idiosyncratic extensions, such as Luciano Canepari's canIPA.
Since the IPA uses symbols that are outside the ASCII character set, several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Two notable systems are Kirshenbaum and SAMPA (or X-SAMPA). These systems are often used in electronic media, although their usage has been declining with the development of computer technology, specifically because of spreading support for Unicode.
See also: Unicode and HTML
Use in dictionaries
Most British English dictionaries now use the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the pronunciation of words. However some British, and most American volumes use a system that may be more intuitive for readers unfamiliar with the IPA. For example, the pronunciation-representation systems in most U.S. dictionaries use "y" for IPA and "sh" for IPA [ʃ, reflecting the most-common representations of those sounds in written English.
A major drawback of the systems used in American dictionaries is their failure to properly represent sounds not in the English language, such as and [ɾ. In addition, several American dictionary publishers have their own systems for representing pronunciation, so the meaning of a symbol can vary among dictionaries.
The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in other countries and languages. Mass-market Czech multilingual dictionaries, for instance, tend to use the IPA only for sounds not found in the Czech language, due to the current incapability of rendering ř in the IPA correctly.
See also
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- International Phonetic Alphabet for English explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of English.
- IPA chart for English: simplifed version.
- Pronunciation respelling for English: overview of several pronunciation guide systems used in English dictionaries.
- TIPA provides IPA support for LaTeX.
- SAMPA, X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum are other methods of mapping IPA designations into ASCII.
- List of phonetics topics
- Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA)
- Unicode Phonetic Symbols
References
- Albright, Robert W. (1958). The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its background and development. International journal of American linguistics (Vol. 24, No. 1, Part 3); Indiana University research center in anthropology, folklore, and linguistics, publ. 7. Baltimore. (Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, 1953).
- Ball, Martin J.; Esling, John H.; & Dickson, B. Craig. (1995). The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality. Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet, 25 (2), 71-80.
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005a). "A Handbook of Phonetics: ‹Natural› Phonetics." München: Lincom Europa, pp. 518. ISBN 3-8958-480-3 (hb).
- Canepari, Luciano. (2005b) "A Handbook of Pronunciation: English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Esperanto." München: Lincom Europa, pp. 436. ISBN 3-89586-481-1 (hb).
- Duckworth, M.; Allen, G.; Hardcastle, W.; & Ball, M. J. (1990). Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 4, 273-280.
- Ellis, Alexander J. (1869-1889). On early English pronunciation (Parts 1 & 5). London: Philological Society by Asher & Co.; London: Trübner & Co.
- Hill, Kenneth C. (1988). of Phonetic symbol guide by G. K. Pullum & W. Ladusaw. Language, 64 (1), 143-144.
- Hultzen, Lee S. (1958). of The International Phonetic Alphabet: Its backgrounds and development by R. W. Albright. Language, 34 (3), 438-442.
- International Phonetic Association. (1949). The principles of the International Phonetic Association, being a description of the International Phonetic Alphabet and the manner of using it, illustrated by texts in 51 languages. London: University College, Department of Phonetics.
- International Phonetic Association. (1989). Report on the 1989 Kiel convention. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 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).
- Jespersen, Otto. (1889). The articulations of speech sounds represented by means of analphabetic symbols. Marburg: Elwert.
- Jones, Daniel. (1989). English pronouncing dictionary (14 ed.). London: Dent.
- Kelly, John. (1981). The 1847 alphabet: An episode of phonotypy. In R. E. Asher & E. J. A. Henderson (Eds.), Towards a history of phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
- Kemp, J. Alan. (1994). Phonetic transcription: History. In R. E. Asher & J. M. Y. Simpson (Eds.), The encyclopedia of language and linguistics (Vol. 6, pp. 3040-3051). Oxford: Pergamon.
- Ladefoged, Peter. (1990). The revised International Phonetic Alphabet. Language, 66 (3), 550-552.
- Ladefoged, Peter; & Halle, Morris. (1988). Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Language, 64 (3), 577-582.
- MacMahon, Michael K. C. (1996). Phonetic notation. In P. T. Daniels & W. Bright (Ed.), The world's writing systems (pp. 821-846). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-507993-0.
- Passy, Paul. (1888). Our revised alphabet. The Phonetic Teacher, 57-60.
- Pike, Kenneth L. (1943). Phonetics: A critical analysis of phonetic theory and a technic for the practical description of sounds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Pullum, Geoffrey K.; & Laduslaw, William A. (1986). Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68532-2.
- Sweet, Henry. (1880-1881). Sound notation. Transactions of the Philological Society, 177-235.
- Sweet, Henry. (1971). The indispensable foundation: A selection from the writings of Henry Sweet. Henderson, Eugénie J. A. (Ed.). Language and language learning 28. London: Oxford University Press.
- Wells, John C. (1987). Computer-coded phonetic transcription. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 17, 94-114.
External links
- Official home page of the IPA
- Learning the IPA for English
- French IPA characters
- Information on IPA by Omniglot
Free IPA font downloads
- 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.
- 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.
- Doulos SIL, a Times/Times New Roman style font. It contains the same characters as Charis SIL, but only in a single face, roman.
- SIL93 the legacy SIL IPA93 fonts (Manuscript and Sophia) recoded in Unicode.
- DejaVu fonts, an open source font family derived from the Bitstream Vera fonts.
- TIPA, a font and system for entering IPA phonetic transcriptions in LaTeX documents.
Keyboards
- Online keyboard
- Online keyboard and machine pronunciation
- Downloadable IPA-SIL keyboard layout for Mac OS X for Unicode IPA input
- Downloadable IPA keyboard layout for Microsoft Windows for Unicode IPA input
- WikiTeX supports editing IPA sequences directly in Wiki articles.
Sound files
- Peter Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics (with sound files)
- An introduction to the sounds of languages
- IPA Lab Chart with sound files at University of Victoria. (Works with QuickTime.)
- Flash version of IPA charts, with sound samples
- Another set of IPA sound samples
Charts
- IPA chart source
- IPA Chart in Unicode and XHTML/CSS
- IPA number chart, at University of Victoria.
Unicode
Official Unicode PDF files:- Unicode chart for main IPA letters
- Unicode chart for IPA modifier letters
- Unicode chart including IPA diacritics
- International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode
- Unicode-HTML codes for IPA symbols: Tables of symbol names and HTML codes at PennState.
Personal extensions of the IPA
- canIPA : Luciano Canepari's system (500 base symbols)
Pages containing IPA | Phonetic alphabets | Unicode
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"International Phonetic Alphabet"
