International Phonetic Alphabet
WS
name=International Phonetic Alphabet | type=Alphabet | languages=Reserved for special use in any language | time=1888 to the present | fam1=Romic Alphabet | fam2=Phonotypic Alphabet | sample=RPGA international.jpg | image_size=200px }} : "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 by linguists. It is used by phoneticians, linguists, speech and language therapists, speech scientists, dialectogists, foreign language teachers, lexicographers and translators, often on a day-to-day basis.[MacMahon, Michael. "Phonetic Notation." The World's Writing Systems. Oxford University Press, 1996: New York, New York.] The alphabet 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.[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).]
The IPA was originally formed in order to analyze all relevant qualities of language (such as individual words, syllables, and phonemes) while ignoring all irrelevant ones (such as voice quality).
For a treatment of the English language using the IPA, see International Phonetic Alphabet for English.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. 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 organization of vowels and consonants has largely remained the same, with the consonants always being grouped by the place of articulation, and the vowels being grouped by the tongue's position. | A diagram explaining the International Phonetic Alphabet. |
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 formationThe IPA divides up sounds into two groups: consonants and vowels.
For instance, flaps and taps are two different kinds of articulation, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a 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.Relationship between symbols and soundsThe symbols chosen for the IPA are generally drawn from the Latin and Greek alphabets, or are modifications of Latin or Greek letters[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.]. There are also a few symbols derived from Latin punctuation, such as the glottal stop , which was originally an apostrophe, but was later given the form of a "gelded" question mark to have the visual impact of the other consonants. On the other hand, some symbols, such as , though Latin in form, were inspired by glyphs in other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter <ﻉ> `ain). In a few cases, the International Phonetic Association has ruled in favor of symbols not inspired by any particular writing system; 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 roughly to those of French, and are also close to those of most other European languages: such consonants include , , , , , , , , , (unvoiced) , , , and . The other symbols from the Latin alphabet, , , , , , , , and , correspond to sounds these letters represent in various other languages:
* has the value of IAST ;
* and have the value of English h and w, respectively;
* has the Slavic and Germanic value of , that of English y in yoke;
* has the value of q in most Arabic transliteration systems;
* has the value of rr and initial r in Spanish and Italian;
* has the value of j in modern Spanish and х in Cyrillic;
* has the Scandinavian and Old English value: Finnish y, German y or ü, French u, Dutch uu, and the Classical Greek Υ (Upsilon).
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.
Symbols derived from the Greek alphabet include , , , , , , and . Of these, the only ones that closely correspond to the Greek letters they are derived from are , , and . , , and denote b-like, f-like, and χ-like sounds, but do not represent these exact sounds. represents a u-like sound, but is otherwise fairly distant from the original Greek letters υ upsilon.
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.Varying professions use the IPA in order to transcribe human speech.
Phonetic transcriptions using the IPA are usually enclosed in square brackets ([]). Phonemic transcriptions are enclosed in slashes (/ /).The International Phonetic Alphabet divides its symbols into three categories: Pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.Consonants (pulmonic)Pulmonic consonants make up for the majority of consonants in the IPA, as well as human speech. A pulmonic consonant is made by obstructing or molding the mouth or glottis while letting out air from the lungs. All consonants in the english language are pulmonic, as well as all European and Asian languages.
The 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. The table can be viewed as an image here.Notes:
* Asterisks (*) mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
* Daggers (†) mark IPA symbols that do not yet have official Unicode support. Since May 2005, this is the case of the labiodental flap, symbolized by a right-hook v: [1]. 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 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.CoarticulationCoarticulated consonants are sounds in which two indivdual consonants are pronounced at the same time. In English, the [w] in "went" is a coarticulated consonant, as the lips are rounded while the back of the tongue is raised simultaneously. Other languages, such as French and Swedish, have different coarticulated consonants.
View this table as an image
| | Voiceless labialized velar approximant | | | Voiced labialized velar approximant | | | Voiced labialized palatal approximant | | | Voiceless palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) fricative | | | Voiced palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) fricative | | | Voiceless "palatal-velar" fricative |
Notes:
* is described as a "simultaneous and ". However, this analysis is disputed. See the article for discussion.Consonants (non-pulmonic)Non pulmonic consonants are sounds which are made without the lungs. These include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages of Africa) and implosives (found in languages such as Swahili).
View this table as an image
| 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 ().VowelsView the vowel chart as an image
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 articulationAffricates 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.
Image of the six common affricate ligatures and their official IPA equivalents| Tie bar | Ligature! 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 |
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: .The Extended IPA is a 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.
The Extended IPA has also been used to record certain pecululairities in an individual's voice, such as whispers, nasalized voicing, and whispering
*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 here.) 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 image 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 [e53, 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 are small markings which are placed around the IPA letter in order to show a certain alteration in the letter's pronunciation. Sub-diacritics (markings normally placed below a letter or symbol) 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 pronunciation encoding.
View the diacritic table as an image
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: 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 .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 [æ] 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.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.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.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 [j] and "sh" for IPA , 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 [r] and . 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.There is some interest in using native speakers to produce sound and video files of sufficient breadth to completely demonstrate all the speech sounds covered by the IPA. Such a project would encompass a large subset of the world's languages. The rationales for such projects are varied including:# Linguistic and anthropologic research# Development of a reference standard or Rosetta Stone (as such) in order to preserve intact examples of the sounds of human language# Development of resources to prepare students and especially very young children (ages 6-36 months) for univeral language acquisition through familiarization and subsequent imitation of the breadth of human speech sounds.
* International Phonetic Alphabet for English explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of English.
* International Phonetic Alphabet for Dutch explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of Dutch.
* IPA chart for English: simplified 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* 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. [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." München: 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.
* Hill, Kenneth C. (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 Association, 19 (2), 67-80.
* Jones, Daniel. (1989). English pronouncing dictionary (14 ed.). London: Dent.
* 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.
* Pullum, Geoffrey K.; & Laduslaw, William A. (1986). Phonetic symbol guide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-68532-2.Notes* Official home page of the IPA
* Learning the IPA for English
* French IPA characters
* Information on IPA by OmniglotFree 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)
**Pronounceable IPA chart
*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 samplesCharts* IPA chart source
* IPA Chart in Unicode and XHTML/CSS
* IPA number chart, at University of Victoria.UnicodeOfficial 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)
zh-yue:萬國音標
|
