International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)^[I] is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.^[1] The IPA is used by linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, foreign language teachers and students, singers, actors, lexicographers, and translators.^[2][3]

The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are distinctive in spoken language: phonemes, intonation, and the separation of words and syllables.^[1] To represent additional qualities of speech such as tooth-gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palate, an extended set of symbols called the Extensions to the IPA is used.^[2]

Occasionally symbols are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of 2008, there are 107 distinct letters, 52 diacritics, and 4 prosody marks in the IPA proper.

History

Main article: History of the IPA

In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would come to be known (from 1897 onwards) as the International Phonetic Association (in French, l’Association phonétique internationale).^[4] The original alphabet was based on a spelling reform for English known as the Romic alphabet, but in order to make it usable for other languages, the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language.^[5] For example, the sound [ʃ] (sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter <c> in English, but with the letter <x> in French.^[4] However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, thus providing the base for all future revisions.^[4][6]

Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989. A minor revision took place in 1993, with the addition of four mid-central vowels^[2] and the removal of symbols for voiceless implosives.^[7] The alphabet was last revised in May 2005, with the addition of a symbol for the labiodental flap.^[8] Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories, and modifying typefaces.^[2]

Extensions of the alphabet are relatively recent; “Extensions to the IPA” was created in 1990 and officially adopted by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association in 1994.^[9]

Description

A diagram illustrating the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The general principle of the IPA is to provide one symbol for each distinctive sound (or speech segment).^[10] This means that it does not use letter combinations to represent single sounds,^[III] or single letters to represent multiple sounds (the way <x> represents [ks] or [gz] in English). There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values (as <c> does in English and other European languages), and finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them (a property known as "selectiveness"^[2]).^[IV]

Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 represent consonants and vowels, 31 are diacritics that are used to further specify these sounds, and 19 are used to indicate such qualities as length, tone, stress, and intonation.^[II]

Letterforms

The symbols chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet.^[V] For this reason, most symbols are either Latin or Greek letters, or modifications thereof. However, there are symbols that are neither: for example, the symbol denoting the glottal stop, <ʔ>, has the form of a "gelded" question mark, and was originally an apostrophe.^[VI] In fact, there are a few symbols, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, <ʕ>, which, though modified to blend with the Latin alphabet, were inspired by glyphs in other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter <ﻉ>‎, `ain).^[7]

Despite its preference for letters that harmonize with the Latin alphabet, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted symbols that do not have this property. For example, before 1989, the IPA symbols for click consonants were <​ʘ>, <​ʇ>, <​ʗ>, and <​ʖ>, all of which were derived either from existing symbols, or from Latin and Greek letters. However, except for <ʘ>, none of these symbols was widely used among Khoisanists or Bantuists, and as a result, they were replaced by the less Latin-like but more widespread symbols <ʘ​>, <ǀ>, <ǃ>, <ǂ>, and <ǁ> at the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989.^[11]

Although the IPA diacritics are fully featural, there is little systemicity in the letter forms. A retroflex articulation is consistently indicated with a right-swinging tail, as in <ɖ ʂ ɳ>, and implosion by a top hook, <ɓ ɗ ɠ>, but other pseudo-featural elements are due to haphazard derivation and coincidence. For example, all nasal consonants but uvular <ɴ> are based on the form <n>: <m ɱ n ɲ ɳ ŋ>. However, the similarity between <m> and <n> is a historical accident, <ɲ> and <ŋ> are derived from ligatures of gn and ng, and <ɱ> is an ad hoc imitation of <ŋ>. In none of these is the form consistent with other letters that share these places of articulation.

Symbols and sounds

The International Phonetic Alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet, using as few non-Latin forms as possible.^[4] The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most consonants taken from the Latin alphabet would correspond to “international usage”.^[4] Hence, the letters <b>, <d>, <f>, (hard) <ɡ>, (non-silent) <h>, (unaspirated) <k>, <l>, <m>, <n>, (unaspirated) <p>, (voiceless) <s>, (unaspirated) <t>, <v>, <w>, and <z> have the values used in English; and the vowels from the Latin alphabet (<a>, <e>, <i>, <o>, <u>) correspond to the sound values of Latin: [i] is like the vowel in machine, [u] is as in rule, etc. Other letters may differ from English, but are used with these values in other European languages, such as <j>, <r>, and <y>.

This inventory was extended by using capital or cursive forms, diacritics, and rotation. There are also several derived or taken from the Greek alphabet, though the sound values may differ. For example, <ʋ> is a vowel in Greek, but an only indirectly related consonant in the IPA. Three of these (<β>, <θ> and <χ>) are used unmodified in form; for others (including <ɣ>, <ɛ>, <ɸ>, and <ʋ>) subtly different glyph shapes have been devised, which are encoded in Unicode separately from their "parent" letters.

The sound values of modified Latin letters can often be derived from those of the original letters.^[12] For example, letters with a rightward-facing hook at the bottom represent retroflex consonants; and small capital letters usually represent uvular consonants. Apart from the fact that certain kinds of modification to the shape of a letter generally correspond to certain kinds of modification to the sound represented, there is no way to deduce the sound represented by a symbol from the shape of the symbol (unlike, for example, in Visible Speech).

Beyond the letters themselves, there are a variety of secondary symbols which aid in transcription. 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 that are often employed.

Usage

Further information: Phonetic transcription

Ébauche is a French term meaning "outline" or "blank".

Although the IPA offers over a hundred symbols for transcribing speech, it is not necessary to use all relevant symbols at the same time; it is possible to transcribe speech with various levels of precision. The most precise kind of phonetic transcription, in which sounds are described in as much detail as the system allows, without any regard for the linguistic significance of the distinctions thus made, is known as narrow transcription. Anything else is termed broad transcription, though "broad" is obviously a relative term. Both kinds of transcriptions are generally enclosed in brackets,^[1] but broad transcriptions are sometimes enclosed in slashes instead of brackets.

Two phonetic transcriptions of the word "international," demonstrating two distinctly different pronunciations.

Broad transcription only distinguishes sounds which are considered different by speakers of a language. Sounds that may be pronounced differently between styles and dialects or depending on neighbouring sounds can be considered the "same" sound in the sense that they are allophones of the same phoneme. When a word is written as phonemes, it is usually enclosed in slashes. For example, the pronunciation of the English word "little" may be transcribed broadly using the IPA as /lɪtl/, and this broad (imprecise) transcription is a correct (accurate) description of many, if not all, pronunciations. This broad transcription merely identifies the separate phonetically relevant components of the word, and it does not indicate the variety of corresponding sounds. On the other hand, the narrow transcription (placed between square brackets) specifies the way each sound is pronounced. A more narrow transcription of "little" would be different depending on the way it is said: [lɪɾɫ] (General American), [lɪʔɫ] (Cockney), or [lɪːɫ] are just a few possibilities.

Neither broad nor narrow transcription using the IPA provides an absolute description; rather, they provide relative descriptions of phonetic sounds. This is especially true with respect to the IPA vowels: there exists no hard and fast mapping between IPA symbols and formant frequency ranges, and in fact one set of formant frequencies may correspond to two different IPA symbols, depending on the phonology of the language in question.

Educational initiative

There is some interest in using native speakers to produce sound and video files of all the IPA speech sounds. Such a project would encompass a large subset of the world's languages. This would aid linguistic and anthropologic research, as well as help teach language learning. A standard reference IPA could preserve examples of speech sounds. For education, the IPA can help standardize resources which prepare students and children for language acquisition through familiarization and subsequent imitation of the breadth of human speech sounds.^[13] Research by Flege, Mackay and Piske (2002) and Sebastián-Gallés, Echeverría and Bosch (2005) have shown that early exposure to extra phonetic sounds and uses improves later comprehension and pronunciation (accent).

Use

Linguists

Although IPA is popular for transcription by linguists, it is also common to use Americanist phonetic notation or IPA together with some nonstandard symbols, for reasons including reducing the error rate on reading handwritten transcriptions or (arguable) awkwardness of IPA in some situations. The exact practice may vary somewhat between languages and even individual researchers, so authors should include a chart or other explanation of their choices.^[14]

Dictionaries

Many British dictionaries, among which are learner's dictionaries such as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, now use the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the pronunciation of words.^[15] However, most American (and some British) volumes use their own conventions supposed to be more intuitive for readers unfamiliar with the IPA. For example, the pronunciation-representation systems in many American dictionaries (such as Merriam-Webster) use "y" for IPA [j] and "sh" for IPA [ʃ], reflecting common representations of those sounds in written English.^[16] (In IPA, [y] represents the sound of the French u (as in tu), and [sh] represents the pair of sounds in grass hut.)

One of the benefits of using an alternative to the IPA is the ability to use a single symbol for a sound pronounced differently in different dialects. For example, the American Heritage Dictionary uses ŏ for the vowel in cot (kŏt) but ô for the one in caught (kôt).^[17] Some American speakers pronounce the vowels ŏ and ô the same way (for example, like IPA [ɒ] in the Boston dialect); for those speakers who maintain the distinction, depending on the accent, the vowel in cot may vary from [ɑ] to [a], while the vowel in caught may vary from [ɔ] to [ɑ], or may even be a diphthong. Using one symbol for the vowel in cot (instead of having different symbols for different pronunciations of the o) enables the dictionary to provide meaningful pronunciations for speakers of most dialects of English.

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.^[18]

Orthographies and capital variants

See also: Latin characters in Unicode

IPA symbols have been incorporated into the standard orthographies of various languages, notably in Subsaharan Africa but in other regions as well. These include for example: Hausa; Fula; Akan; Gbe languages; and Manding languages.

An example of capital letter forms for IPA symbols is Kabiyé of northern Togo, which has Ɔ Ɛ Ɖ Ŋ Ɣ Ʃ Ʊ (or Ʋ) (capital ɔ ɛ ɖ ŋ ɣ ʃ ʊ (or ʋ)): MBƱ AJƐYA KIGBƐNDƱƱ ŊGBƐYƐ KEDIƔZAƔ SƆSƆƆ TƆM SE. Other IPA-paired capitals include Ɑ Ɓ Ƈ Ɗ Ə/Ǝ Ɠ Ħ Ɯ Ɱ Ɲ Ɵ Ʈ Ʒ Ɽ.

The abovementioned and other capital forms are supported by Unicode, but appear in Latin ranges other than the IPA extensions.

Letters

The International Phonetic Alphabet divides its letter symbols into three categories: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.^[19][20] Each character is assigned a number, to prevent confusion between similar letters (such as ɵ and θ), for example in printing manuscripts. Different categories of sounds are assigned different ranges of numbers.

Pulmonic consonants

Main article: Consonant

A pulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the glottis (the space between the vocal cords) or oral cavity (the mouth) and either simultaneously or subsequently letting out air from the lungs. Pulmonic consonants make up the majority of consonants in the IPA, as well as in human language. All consonants in the English language fall into this category.^[21]

The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation, meaning how the consonant is produced, and columns that designate place of articulation, meaning where in the vocal tract the consonant is produced. The main chart includes only consonants with a single place of articulation.

Notes

• Asterisks (*) next to symbols mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the respective articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
• Daggers (†) mark IPA symbols that have recently been added to Unicode. As of Unicode 5.1.0, this is the case of the labiodental flap, symbolized by a right-hook v: . These will display properly with a recent version of Charis SIL, Doulos SIL or DejaVu Sans fonts installed.
• In rows where some symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except breathy-voiced [ɦ]). However, [ʔ] cannot be voiced, and the voicing of [ʡ] is ambiguous.^[22] 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 may be treated as specifically dental, alveolar, or post-alveolar, as appropriate for that language, without diacritics.
• Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
• The symbols [ʁ, ʕ, ʢ] represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
• In many languages, such as English, [h] and [ɦ] are not actually glottal, fricatives, or approximants. Rather, they are bare phonation.^[23]
• It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives [ʃ ʒ], [ɕ ʑ], and [ʂ ʐ].

Coarticulation

Coarticulated consonants are sounds that involve two simultaneous places of articulation (are pronounced using two parts of the vocal tract). In English, the [w] in "went" is a coarticulated consonant, because it is pronounced by rounding the lips and raising the back of the tongue. Other languages, such as French and Swedish, have different coarticulated consonants.

Note

• [ɧ] is described as a "simultaneous [ʃ] and [x]".^[24] However, this analysis is disputed. (See voiceless palatal-velar fricative for discussion.)

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,^[1] because a great number of ligatures would be required to represent all affricates this way. Alternatively, a superscript notation for a consonant release is sometimes used to transcribe affricates, for example tˢ for t͡s, paralleling kˣ ~ k͡x. The symbols for the palatal plosives, <c ɟ>, are often used as a convenience for [t͡ʃ d͡ʒ] 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: ts͡, tʃ͡, tɕ͡, dz͡, dʒ͡, dʑ͡, tɬ͡, kp͡, ɡb͡, ŋm͡.

Non-pulmonic consonants

Non-pulmonic consonants are sounds whose airflow is not dependent on the lungs. These include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages of Africa) and implosives (found in languages such as Swahili).

Notes

• Clicks are double articulated and have traditionally been described as having a forward 'release' and a rear 'accompaniment', with the click letters representing the release. Therefore all clicks would require two letters for proper notation: [k͡ǂ, ɡ͡ǂ, ŋ͡ǂ, q͡ǂ, ɢ͡ǂ, ɴ͡ǂ] etc., or [ǂ͡k, ǂ͡ɡ, ǂ͡ŋ, ǂ͡q, ǂ͡ɢ, ǂ͡ɴ]. When the dorsal articulation is omitted, a [k] may usually be assumed. However, recent research disputes the concept of 'accompaniment'.^[25] In such approaches, the click letter represents both articulations, there is no velar-uvular distinction, and the accompanying letter represents the manner of the click: [ǂ, ^ɡǂ, ^ŋǂ] etc.
• Symbols for the voiceless implosives [ƥ, ƭ, ƈ, ƙ, ʠ] are no longer supported by the IPA, though they remain in Unicode. Instead, the IPA uses the voiced equivalent with a voiceless diacritic: [ɓ̥, ʛ̥], etc.
• Although not confirmed from any language, and therefore not explicitly recognized by the IPA, a retroflex implosive, [ᶑ], is supported in the Unicode Phonetic Extensions Supplement, added in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard, or can be created as a composite [ɗ̡].
• The ejective symbol often stands in for a superscript glottal stop in glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as [mˀ], [lˀ], [wˀ], [aˀ]. These may also be transcribed as creaky [m̰], [l̰], [w̰], [a̰].

Vowels

Main article: Vowel

An X-Ray shows the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ]

Tongue positions of cardinal front vowels with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness

The IPA defines a vowel as a sound which occurs at a syllable center.^[26] Below is a chart depicting the vowels of the IPA. The IPA maps the vowels according to the position of the tongue.

The vertical axis of the chart is mapped by vowel height. Vowels pronounced with the tongue lowered are at the bottom, and vowels pronounced with the tongue raised are at the top. For example, [ɑ] (said as the "a" in "palm") is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. However, [i] (said as the vowel in "meet") is at the top because the sound is said with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth.

In a similar fashion, the horizontal axis of the chart is determined by vowel backness. Vowels with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth (such as [ɛ], the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as [ʌ], the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.

In places where vowels are paired, the right represents a rounded vowel (in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.

• View the vowel chart as an image

[ e• d• enlarge]	Front	Near-front	Central	Near-back	Back
Close	i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ  ʏ   ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ
Near‑close
Close‑mid
Mid
Open‑mid
Near‑open
Open

Notes

• [a] officially represents a front vowel, but there is little distinction between front and central open vowels, and [a] is frequently used for an open central vowel.^[14]
• [ʊ] and [ɪ] were written as <ɷ> and <ɩ> respectively in older versions of the IPA.

Diacritics

Diacritics are small markings which are placed around the IPA letter in order to show a certain alteration or more specific description in the letter's pronunciation.^[27] Sub-diacritics (markings normally placed below a letter or symbol) may be placed above a symbol having a descender (informally called a tail), e.g. ŋ̊.^[27]

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: tˢ (fricative release), bʱ (breathy voice), ˀa (glottal onset), ᵊ (epenthetic schwa), o^ʊ (diphthongization). Additional diacritics were introduced in the Extensions to the IPA, which were designed principally for speech pathology.