International Phonetic Alphabet

''This article is about the alphabet officially used in linguistics. The NATO phonetic alphabet ("alpha bravo") had also informally been called the 'International Phonetic Alphabet', though these two are unrelated.'' ''See also IPA in Unicode and International Phonetic Alphabet for English.'' The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. It is intended as a notational standard for the Phoneme and Phonetics representation of all languages. For a simplified chart of the main IPA symbols used for English language see IPA chart for English. ==History== It was originally developed by France and United Kingdom language teachers (led by Paul Passy) under the auspices of the International Phonetic Association, established in Paris in 1886 (both the organisation and the phonetic script are best known as IPA). The first official version of the alphabet appears in Passy (1888). These teachers based the IPA upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet (1880–1881, 1971), which was formed from the Phonotypic Alphabet of Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis (Kelly 1981). The alphabet has undergone a number of revisions during its history, including some major ones codified by the IPA Kiel Convention (1989); the most recent revision was in 1993, updated again in 1996. The extIPA was first created in 1991, revised to 1997; the VoQS (Voice Quality Symbols) was proposed in 1995 to provide a system for more detailed transcription of voice production (Ball and others 1995). ==Description== The IPA is primarily a phonemic alphabet, what MacMahon (1996) has termed a "selective" phonetic alphabet. The IPA aims to provide a symbolization of every ''constrastive'' sound occuring in human language. This means that the IPA is not primarily concerned with ''non-contrastive'' sounds. For instance, a flap consonant and a tap are two different articulations, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a phonemic distinction between these two sounds the IPA does not provide a unique alphabetic letter (or diacritic) and instead provides a symbol (i.e. [ɾ]) that will cover both of these articulations. As a result, there does exist some ambiguity in IPA usage. However, it is important to note that in actual practice the IPA ''is'' used as true phonetic alphabet, especially through the use of diacritics. The symbols chosen for the IPA are generally drawn from the Latin and Greek alphabets. The IPA has also created new symbols that are often modified versions of Latin letters. The sound-values of the consonants that are identical to those in the Latin alphabet in most cases correspond to usage in English language as well as many other European languages: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . The vowel symbols that are identical to those in the Latin alphabet (, , , , ) correspond roughly to the vowels of Spanish language or Italian language. is like the vowel in ''piece'', like the vowel in ''food'', etc. Most of the other symbols that are shared with the Latin alphabet, like , , , and , correspond to sounds those letters represent in other languages. has the sound value of English ''y'' in ''yoke'' (= German, Scandinavian or Dutch ''j''); whereas has the ancient Greek, Scandinavian, and Old English value of the letter (= Finnish language ''y'', German ''y'' or ''�'', French ''u'', or Dutch ''uu''.) The general principle is to use one symbol for one speech segment, avoiding letter combinations such as ''sh'' and ''th'' in English orthography. Latin letters that share a particular modification often correspond to similar sound. For example, all the retroflex consonants have the same symbol as the equivalent alveolar consonants, except with a rightward pointing hook coming out of the bottom. Although there is an amount of correspondence between modified letters, generally the IPA does not have a systematic relationship between graphic shape and articulation. For instance, there is not a consistent relationship between lowercase letters and their small capital counterparts nor are all labiodental consonants linked through a common character design. Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA signs to transcribe slightly modified phonetic values or secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features such as stress and tone. The International Phonetic Association recommends that a phonetic transcription should be enclosed in bracket ("[" and "]"). A transcription that only denotes phonological contrasts (a "broad transcription") may be enclosed in slash (punctuation) ("/"). For example some dialects of the English word ''pretzel'' in a phonetic (or "narrow") transcription would be , which notes several phonetic features that are not contrasted phonologically. An equivalent phonological (or "broad") transcription could be or even . ==Chart== A text approximation of this chart with links to articles on the individual sounds is available at IPA in Unicode. media:NewIPAchart.pdf media:IPA_1024x768.png ==Comparison to other phonetic notation== The IPA is not the only phonetic transcription system in use. There are extended versions of the IPA, for example #External links. There also exist somewhat similar alphabets in use by linguists working on Americanist phonetic notation, Indic languages, Finno-Ugric languages, Caucasian languages and Slavic languages. The difference between these alphabets and IPA is relatively small, although often the special characters of the IPA are abandoned in favour of diacritics or digraphs in these alphabets, since many typewriters and older computer software have no support for the many special characters of the IPA. Examples types of notation include ''iconic'' notation, such as the Visible Speech system created by Alexander Melville Bell (Ellis 1869:15), and ''analphabetic'' phonetic notation, such as the two systems created by Otto Jespersen (1889) and Kenneth Pike (1943). ==See also== {{Commons||}} * International Phonetic Alphabet for English explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of English. * IPA chart for English: simplifed version. * IPA in Unicode * List of phonetics topics * Tipa provides IPA support for LaTeX. * SAMPA, X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum are other methods of mapping IPA designations into ASCII. IPA is preferred in Wikipedia articles, however. * Unicode and HTML/IPA Extensions ==External links== * [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html Official home page of the IPA] * [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html Peter Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics (with sound files)] **[http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html Pronounceable IPA chart] * [http://web.uvic.ca/ling/resources/ipa/ipa-lab.htm IPA Lab] Chart with sound files at University of Victoria. * [http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/fullchart.html IPA chart source] * [http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/ IPA Chart] in Unicode and XHTML/CSS ** [http://www.linguiste.org/phonetics/ipa/chart/keyboard/ Interactive symbol selector] * [http://wikisophia.org/wiki/Wikitex#Tipa WikiTeX] supports editing IPA sequences directly in Wiki articles. * Free [http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=DoulosSILfont Unicode phonetics font] (substitute for ''Times Roman'', includes IPA characters) * Extended versions of the IPA : ** [http://venus.unive.it/canipa/ ''^canIPA''] : presents Luciano Canepari's system (500 base symbols, 300 complementary and 200 supplementary) and gives examples of its use for several major languages ; PDF documents excerpts of the books listed in #References. ==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, Standford 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." M�nchen: Lincom Europa, pp. 518. [https://ssl.kundenserver.de/s83009615.einsundeinsshop.de/sess/utn1541a7584d7471b/shopdata/0002_New+titles/product_details.shopscript 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." M�nchen: Lincom Europa, pp. 436. [https://ssl.kundenserver.de/s83009615.einsundeinsshop.de/sess/utn1541a7584d7471b/shopdata/0002_New+titles/product_details.shopscript 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: Tr�bner & Co. * Hill, Kenneth C. (1988). [Review of ''Phonetic symbol guide'' by G. K. Pullum & W. Ladusaw]. ''Language'', ''64'' (1), 143-144. * Hultzen, Lee S. (1958). [Review 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. * Geoffrey Pullum; & 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 indispensible foundation: A selection from the writings of Henry Sweet''. Henderson, Eug�nie 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. Phonetic alphabets zh-min-nan:Kok-ch� Im-phiau th:สัทอักษรสากล

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. User: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.-User:Stevertigo How's this? --User:Morwen ==IPA table in text== ===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		ɹ		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 �		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 ʑ	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. User: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. --User:Menchi 09:58, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC) ::: How does one set IE's font in this way? -- User:Chiapr ==Alpha Bravo Charlie== 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? --User: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. --User: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. --User:Neolux 10:04, 2 Aug 2003 (UTC) ::: Anytime. I've made it easier to see. Admittedly, the original disambiguity wasn't too revealing. --User:Menchi 10:05, Aug 2, 2003 (UTC) == 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. --User:Menchi 23:20, 7 Nov 2003 (UTC) == 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. User:Phthoggos 01:41, Feb 24, 2004 (UTC) :: There are a few books about the history of the IPA & much criticism. I will look up some sources for you (dont ask when though...). The IPA has gone through many edits thoughout its history -- many of the old charts are rather different from the present one. It would be interesting to compare them (maybe I should do this). The IPA has an obvious Eurocentric slant to it, most obviously in the choice of symbols. The IPA is essentially a creation of the British, although other European countries had influence in its development. There is a distinct Americanist tradition (sometimes APA, i.e. American Phonetic Alphabet) that is a bit different from the IPA. The Americanist transcription system was created mostly by missionaries & anthropological linguists to describe the indigenous American languages. The Americans encountered many sounds not present in Europe, and as a result the IPA was influenced significantly by the Americanist system. The Europeans didnt have access to as many languages & their various sounds. Colonists in Africa and the like gradually contributed to changing the IPA in order to account for the sounds in these langs. As you might have guessed, politics definitely had a role in shaping the chart. I am interested in learning about its history, too. Just havent had the time. Cheers! - User:Ish ishwar 09:09, 2004 Dec 17 (UTC) == Pronunciation guide == There is an English pronunciation chart for SAMPA chart for English. It would be helpful to have a similar chart here. Is that possible? (User:Dbenbenn) ---- 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. == Speech segments in relation to 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. --User:Spikey 04:25, 25 Dec 2003 (UTC) I'd like to repeat Spikey's question, above. Does "speech segment" mean phoneme? If so, why not put it in the article? :No, certainly not a phoneme, since phonemes can have several possible realisations in practice, each of which would require a different symbol if you want to represent the sound. IPA is the International ''Phonetic'' Alphabet, not a ''Phonemic'' Alphabet. :It can be used to represent phonemese if you aren't interested in the exact realisation, but I think that's not the underlying purpose. :A speech segment may possibly be a phone, though. -- User:Pne 10:09, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC) ==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. —User: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}" :According to the article on IPAssociation the purpose of the IPAlphabet is to serve as "a notational standard for the phonetic representation of all languages." User:Hyacinth 19:49, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC) ::: As mentioned directly above by Hyacinth, the IPA attempts to symbolize visually all linguistic sounds found in all the spoken languages of the world (excluding signed langs). So, this includes Mandarin & IE langs. It does not symbolize any non-linguistic sounds or communicative body movements (an interesting question is what kinds of "phonetic" alphabets are currently used for signed langs). Note that this assumes that sounds ''can'' be symbolized discretely (see the intro in the IPA's handbook for more info.) ::: IPA does not concern itself with different languages' orthographies (i.e. writing systems). It ''does'' concern itself with "spoken/heard and performed" language and attempts to symbolize this on paper. Linguists generally claim that language is primarily spoken (written being secondary) and therefore they work at describing & analyzing the spoken. So, the IPA has little to do with written language as used by the common folk. It is a descriptive and practical tool of linguists & other language users. It is widely used in linguistics, phonetics, and clinical speech pathology (although there are other transcription systems in practice). So, not just for "euro-centric hobbyists". You can find it in many international dictionaries, i.e. non-American (my English-Japanese & French-Japanese dictionaries published in Japan use IPA, but my unabridged Random House & my Spanish-English published in the US each use a system specific to itself). :::The IPA currently does not account for every known linguistic sound, but it probably does account for the majority of sounds (new sound are occasionally discovered by linguists every now & then -- it is estimated that linguists have encountered slightly more than half of the world's langs, which unfortunately are disappearing rather quickly). ::: Many linguists are dissatisfied with the IPA and use something different, esp. linguist fieldworkers. ::: Many languages use IPA symbols in their orthography (for instance, Akan/Twi, a language of Ghana). ::: I hope this helps. - User:Ish ishwar 10:44, 2004 Dec 17 (UTC) == New tables == has some nice updated tables we might want to use. --User:�var Arnfj�r� Bjarmason User:�var Arnfj�r� Bjarmason/ User talk:�var Arnfj�r� Bjarmason/ [ Bjarmason] User:�var Arnfj�r� Bjarmason/ 00:27, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC) == IPA Website == It's a website tha t shows how to pronounce the IPA symbols. http://www2.unil.ch/ling/english/ ==modified Latin letters correspond to a similar sound== Hi. I take a little issue with this paragraph which reads: : "Letters that have shapes that are modified Latin letters correspond to a similar sound. For example, all the retroflex consonants have the same symbol as the equivalent alveolar consonants, except with a rightward pointing hook coming out of the bottom." I don't find this to be really incorrect, but I find the statement plus example to be a little misleading in regards to the systematicness of the alphabet. Among the nasal, retroflex, ejective, and implosives there is common visual element tying together these consonant classes, the other classes do not have anything like above tying them together. So, the relationships between the specially created IPA characters and the Roman alpha characters are unpredictable. When describing the IPA it should be noted that the connection between the sound and the shape of the symbol is not regular. This contrasts with other phonetic alphabets that do have systematic correspondences. So in other words the "modified Latin letters" do correspond to non-modified Latin letters with similar sounds, but nature of the correspondence is different for most every correspondence. Cheers! --User:Ish ishwar 07:56, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC) : In contrast, however, sounds corresponding to modified Latin letters are ''all'' related in ''some'' way to the sounds corresponding to unmodified versions of those letters, so saying that they correspond to a similar sound only "sometimes" is simply false. On balance, misleading is better than false, but feel free to clarify the relationship between Latin letters and the modified letters in IPA. Perhaps examples that exemplify the non-sytematicity of the relationship instead of or in addition to the retroflexes? User:Nohat 08:36, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC) :: My edit was due to my initial interpretation of the first sentence which was something like: "modified Roman letters correspond to a similar sound, i.e. modified Roman letters are related to each other". I think your restatement is clearer. Peace - User:Ish ishwar 19:47, 2005 Jan 17 (UTC) == IPA reader software?? == Is there any IPA reader software or like? or any screen readers that can read IPA? TIA --User:Rrjanbiah 06:12, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC) ==no extIPA or VoQS== The article is sorely missing the charts of the extensions to the IPA (extIPA), the symbols used to transcribe disordered speech (by speech pathologists), and the Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS). Consult Ball et al. (1995) for more info. - User:Ish ishwar 00:30, 2005 Jan 29 (UTC) == For us Americans... == For many Americans (maybe people elsewhere too), it would be nice to compare IPA to the Merriam-Webster pronounciation guide (of course, they use something different in print than what is on their website...). Then there are the characters many U.S. schoolchildren use in their early years ("long a" ā, "short a" ă, etc.). I suppose these systems are probably too simplified to be of any use for linguists, but it just might help regular folks trolling around Wikipedia to understand IPA. Frankly, it always strikes me as odd whenever I see IPA or SAMPA linguistic marks in Wikipedia, but this is just because I'm totally unfamiliar with it and it's different from what I grew up with. User:Mulad —User:Mulad User talk:Mulad 17:06, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC) :The relation is mutual: for most non-Americans, all those legacy pronunciation writing systems like Merriam-Webster are completely incomprehensible. A comparison chart would be definitely helpful. User:EJ 11:21, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::How many different systems of phonetic transcription are there besides Merriam-Webster? User:Karmosin 11:37, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC) :::Something similar to the Webster usage is taught in Usonian elementary schools. At least the five basic vowel glyphs, and ''oo'', with either breves or macrons, plus schwa, ''ow'', ''oy'', are commonplace. The various systems usually only differ in how they treat the other low back vowels, voiced vs. voiceless ''th'', etc. I can add something for the basic forms, where they're mostly in agreement. User:Kwamikagami 06:18, 2005 May 29 (UTC) :::Actually, I don't know where to put it. How about here, and someone can move it to someplace more useful if they like? The basic idea is this: this is where English long and short vowels ended up after the Great Vowel Shift. The main exception is ''ū'', which represents what happened to French , since Old English ''ū'' came to be spelled ''ou, ow'' under French influence. So, the short vowels are what you hear in ''bit, bet, bat, bot, but'', and the long vowels are in ''bite, beet, bate, poke, puke''. The ''oo'' vowels are what you hear in ''foot, food''. Here's the elementary-school system. BTW, the stress marks go ''before'' the accented syllable: {| | IPA || Usonian short vowel || IPA || Usonian long vowel |- | || ǎ || () || ā |- | || ě || () || ē |- | || ǐ || || ī |- | || ǒ || () || ō |- | || oo-breve || () || oo-macron |- | ("") || ǔ || () || ū |- | || ow || || oy |} Of course, IPA is almost invariably written with the wrong symbol, , when transcribing English. (Vietnamese has an , English does not.) Also, will be for many speakers. This and are where you need to go beyond the simple breve-macron convention, with symbols like � and a, o with an over-dot. Since I don't control these vowels, it's a little hard to convert the full Webster system to IPA. Here's my best shot at the system used in ''Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary'', leaving out things I can't make heads or tails of, such as ''a'', ''aa'', and ''ai'', all of which are supposed to represent the ''a'' in ''bag'' for some speakers; and the diphthongs, which are straightforward. (When I say "a-dot", I mean an ''a'' with a single dot atop it, which isn't supported by Unicode.) : a, e, i: as the letters with breves above. ā, ē, ī, ō: as above. Schwa: (if unstressed), (if stressed); schwa-macron and əi: for ''r''-droppers; schwa-dot: or in unstressed syllables; ^ə: the following consonant is syllabic; ər: or ; �: ; a-dot: ; d‧ : a flapped t or d; hw: ; k: ; ⁿ: the preceding vowel is nasalized; ŋ: ; o-dot: ; �: ; �-macron: ; �: ; u-dot: ; u-e ligature: ; u-e ligature with macron: ; y�: as ''ū'' above; sh: ; ch: ; j: ; th: ; th: ; zh: . :--User:Kwamikagami 08:21, 2005 May 29 (UTC) == How to vastly improve the value of all phonetics articles to non-experts == It's easier than you might think. We have sound files for the different sounds of the IPA, why don't we simply link to these directly in articles?--User:Pharos 07:50, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC) :It would sound like Stephen Hawking on a bad day. It's hard to handle allophones. User:Joestynes 01:17, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::I Think it's a pretty decent idea; hearing the Pronunciations would be really helpful. Actually, if you go to the page for any particular sound, there is a recording of Peter Ladefoged making that sound. See e.g. velar nasal, voiceless retroflex fricative. User:Nohat 04:47, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC) :He kind ducked out on the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative and I've added a sound file I've recorded, though it might be a bit too cheerful to quite fit in. I'll make one that fits with the rest of Peter's recordings later. I've also recorded an almost complete Standard Swedish phonology over at commons:Commons:Category:Swedish pronunciation. :Peter's done a very thorough job, but I think his recordings would be easier to take note of with the Template:Audio. - User:Karmosin 23:27, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC) ::Well, he didn't make those recordings for Wikipedia. I copied them from [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/chapter1.html]. The copyright notice seemed to indicate use on Wikipedia was OK. Peter Ladefoged is one of the world's foremost experts on phonetics. See, for example, his books: [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=books&field-author=Peter%20Ladefoged/104-7920800-9407958] User:Nohat 23:36, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::Oh. And I thought he was just a wikipedian! Guess I still have a lot to learn about linguistics. But what do you think about applying the template to the phonetics articles? - User:Karmosin 23:47, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC) ::::I haven't seen that template before. I'm not opposed to its use. User:Nohat 11:14, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC) :::Sorry to be a killjoy but is this legitimate? Clearly a link to Ladefoged's excellent site is fine but is it OK to have copied his sound samples to the other pages? The "title page" simply says, "All the material on this site is copyright" [http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html] although there may be other statements I have not found. Has anyone asked Ladefoged if his sounds can be copied to Wikipedia? He'd probably be delighted! User:Thincat 11:33, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::When I first copied them there was a comment to the effect of these files can be used for any noncommercial purpose. The audio files should probably be properly tagged. I'll try to find the notice soon. User:Nohat 11:35, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC) ::::[http://web.archive.org/web/20030605224150/http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html] is the page as of 5-June-2003. It said "... material may be used in any way, provided that it is acknowledged. It should be cited as: UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive, 2003." It was unclear which usage statement went with which content, so I assumed his book publishers weren't claiming copyrights to the recordings. You are right, though, we should probably just ask for permission explicitly. User:Nohat 11:53, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC) ==misspelling on diacritic chart== Hi. "apital" is misspelled. should be "apical". — User:Ish_ishwar User_talk:Ish_ishwar 20:59, 2005 Mar 18 (UTC) == Join with IPA in Unicode? == There's been a suggestion that we use the material we have at IPA in Unicode here. Could there be a way to use both the tables as well as the images of the charts in the same article? User:Karmosin 16:31, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC) :I tend to keeping them separate. Quite some people will not be able see the IPA font properly, because they have computers, browsers or settings that are not compatible with the IPA font. They will still see the IPA page, with its graphical pictures, straight from the IPA handbook. The separate IPA in Unicode gives the same information. I use this page often in a separate window to cut and paste from. I am afraid merging the two would give a rather cluttered article. −User:Woodstone 18:59, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC) ::There is now a merger notice on the IPA Unicode article, put there by someone who believes that the tables should be removed from this article and placed as links (to avoid clutter), as IPA support is nearly universal. I've been tempted to start the merger myself. You might want to comment there. User:Kwamikagami 07:21, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC) I'm not sure what the point of the "article" IPA in Unicode is....... It should be merged. --User:Menchi 07:46, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) :I've been meaning to merge them for months, but I was worried it would be controversial. — User:Chameleon 08:38, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC) == Note to "description" section == Nohat sorted the consonants alphabetically. I guess he did not notice they were sorted more logically as in the IPA chart. I also do not understand his remark about complex German vowels. Ask any German to say a, e, i, o, u and you will get a perfect rendering of the corresponding IPA symbols. I am inclined to revert. −User:Woodstone 21:41, 2005 Apr 28 (UTC) :The order that they were in would only be meaningful to someone who already knows about IPA and what the letters stand for, which is not the intended audience of the sentence. Putting them in alphabetical order makes it easier for someone who is unfamiliar with IPA to note whether or not a letter they're thinking of is in the list. As for German vowels, the reason I removed the comment is because in written German, the letters a, e, i, o, and u often do NOT correspond to the sounds [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u], quite like they do in Italian or Spanish. For example, in the very common German words ''es, mit,'' and ''von'', the vowels do not correspond to [e], [i], and [o], respectively. So saying that the IPA vowels are like German vowels would be misleading at the very least. User:Nohat 04:36, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC) The first o in Italian "rosso" does not sound like [o] either, but more like the o in German "von". Similar for e in Italian "mensa" and (but less clear) for a in "carro". For i and u there are hardly any deviations both in German and Italian. Only in Italian these differences are usually not phonemic (but consider the contrast with "caro") whereas they often are in German. −User:Woodstone 09:24, 2005 Apr 29 (UTC) == Help - Genghis Khan pronunciation == The Genghis Khan article has a non-standard pronunciation guide - apparently of the Mongolian pronunciation so I'm not sure exactly what sounds it is supposed to represent. Could someone help, please? User:SteveW | User talk:SteveW 13:36, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Unfortunately I don't have any Mongol stuff with me, but no one else has answered this, so I'll give it a shot. I can only go by the Cyrillic, but I believe that's reasonably phonetic (actually, it's not a very good system, but I don't believe there are too many problems with this name). A reasonable approximation would probably be . The ''h'' and final ''n'' might actually be velar, and the ''ch'' might be like Mandarin ''j'', but that should at least be recognizable. User:Kwamikagami 06:44, 2005 May 29 (UTC) == Mixed feelings about IPA == My one misgiving about the use of IPA in articles, is that although it is internationally understood by linguists, it is not well understood by the majority of the public for whom Wikipedia is intended. It does create a standard, and a good idea of various sounds for comparison, but widely understood? I don't think so! User:MacRusgail 16:28, 5 May 2005 (UTC) :Fortunately, there are many pages on Wikipedia that describe all aspects of the alphabet in excruciating detail, including sound files, information about proper usage, and large pictures and detailed descriptions of the symbols. Anyone who is unfamiliar with IPA can learn everything they need to know about it right here. If you find that there is any information missing, please add it or let someone know it's missing so we can be sure our information is complete. User:Nohat 16:41, 5 May 2005 (UTC) ::But if you're using Wikipedia for quick reference, you'll hardly have time to delve through the excruciating details... I do not think it is as easy to learn as people claim. Linguists pick it up with ease, but it looks plain baffling to many of those with no linguistic experience... User:MacRusgail 17:05, 7 May 2005 (UTC) :::But there is no alternative other than uploading sound files, which you can do if you want. Non-standard transcription systems just confuse things. It's little bit as though you were saying, "ordinary people don't get the metric system, and they don't have time to learn about them on Wikipedia, so we should use ad hoc descriptions like 'it's about as long as your leg' instead of 'it measures 1 metre'." :::Of course, in that case there would be a third option: using feet and inches. But the equivalent option in phonetics — SAMPA — is even less widely understood by the populace. So, long live IPA and sound files, death to SAMPA and ad hoc transcriptions! User:Chameleon 17:38, 7 May 2005 (UTC) ::::One benefit to ''ad hoc'' transcription systems: they can be cross-dialectal, which the IPA cannot. If, for example, ''ew'' is the sound in ''dew'', then it doesn't matter whether or not you pronounce that like ''do'', you'll know what's meant. You'll automatically make the adjustments pertinent to your dialect. With the IPA, you'll need separate pronunciation guides for the US, UK, SA, Oz, and anyone else who feels unrepresented. What the IPA's great for is giving the local pronunciations of place names. User:Kwamikagami 08:30, 2005 May 29 (UTC) == Little IPA assist == Doing some disambiguation work and saw a request for someone who knows IPA to help on Talk:Mi'kmaq -- I don't, can someone here give him a quick assist? Thanks — User:CatherineMunro\^{User_talk:CatherineMunro} 14:14, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC) == New, compressed chart == In my view the new, compressed chart is not an improvement: *the font used is a rather primitive typewriter font *the character size is quite small and thus difficult to read *the whole chart will not fit on the screen of many users, so they will have to scroll both vertically and horizontally *what was wrong with the original IPA chart? I propose to revert, but I will snatch a copy for personal use first. −User:Woodstone 11:14, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC) :Well, please, leave the links to the new chart so other people can print it out as well. User:Thincat 12:45, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) ::Well, judging by the way it looks, since I'm the one who created the chart and the fonts used in it, I'd say yeah, it doesn't look very good like that, so I'll revert my change and just provide a link to it. I created it so it could fit on a computer screen all at once, and I chose a size of 1024x768 because that's the screen resolution that most computer users have their monitors set to, according to my own research. User talk:Denelson83 19:48, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) :::hi. i think that your idea is good — it is more convenient to see it in one screen (& it appears on one page in printed material). what if you change your fonts (to the liking of youself & others)? ::: i will mention one thing about the font: the IPA has historically encouraged adherence to their typeface, more or less. while your font currently does not deviate from their character shapes in general, your shapes of < w > & < ʍ > have rounded angles which differs from the IPA character. but of course, you dont have to agree with the IPA. and apparently the IPA is not being as strict as before (e.g. it accepts either < g > or < ɡ > now). peace — User:Ish_ishwar User_talk:Ish_ishwar 20:34, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC) :::: I actually take a little pride on that version of the IPA chart, since I created those fonts on my own, and they allowed me to construct the chart using a colour depth of one bit. Besides, my chart is only an "at-a-glance" version, so the font doesn't have to look exactly the same as that used by the International Phonetic Association. User talk:Denelson83 20:39, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC) :::::Small follow-up: I decided to take your advice, Ishwar, and I made the < w > & < ʍ > symbols a little more straight. User talk:Denelson83 01:19, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

International phonetic alphabet

#REDIRECT International_Phonetic_Alphabet

See other meanings of words starting from letter:

I

IA | IB | IC | ID | IE | IF | IG | IH | IJ | IK | IL | IM | IN | IO | IP | IR | IS | IT | IU | IW | IX | IY | IZ |

Words begining with International_Phonetic_Alphabet:

International_Phonetic_Alphabet
International_Phonetic_Alphabet
International_phonetic_alphabet
International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English
International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English
International_Phonetic_Alphabet_in_Unicode
International_phonetic_alphabet_symbols