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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) 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, lexicographers, and translators.[2]
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.[3] 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 Extended IPA is commonly used.[2]
As of 2005, there are 107 distinct letters and 56 diacritics and suprasegmentals in the IPA proper. Occasionally symbols are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association.
The very different NATO phonetic alphabet, which assigns words such as "Alpha, Bravo..." to letters for easy understanding over noisy communication channels, is sometimes informally referred to as the "International Phonetic Alphabet". This article deals only with the IPA specified by the International Phonetic Association.
The IPA was created in 1886, when a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would come to be known as the International Phonetic Association. Their original intention was to create a set of symbols which could have different values from language to language.[4] For example, the sound (sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter <c> in English but with the letter <x> in French.[5] However, it was eventually decided to create a uniform alphabet for all languages.[5] The first official version of the IPA was released in 1888, two years after the formation of the International Phonetic Association,[6] based upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet,[7][8] which in turn was formed from the Phonotypic alphabet of Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis.[9]
Since its creation, the organization of vowels and consonants in the IPA has remained largely the same. However, the alphabet itself has undergone a few revisions. The IPA Kiel Convention in 1989 made many changes to the earlier 1932 version. A minor revision took place in 1993, with the addition of the mid-central vowel[2] and the removal of symbols for voiceless implosives,[10] and the alphabet was last revised in May 2005, when a symbol for the labiodental flap was added.[11] 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; the Extended IPA was created in 1991 and revised to 1997. Also, the VoQS (Voice Quality Symbols) were proposed in 1995 to provide a system for more detailed transcription of voice production.[12]
The general principle of the IPA is to provide one symbol for each sound (or speech segment). This means that the IPA does not use letter combinations unless the sound being represented can be regarded as a sequence of two or more sounds. The IPA also does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them (a property known as "selectiveness"[2]), and it does not use letters that represent multiple sounds, the way <x> represents the consonant cluster in English. Additionally, in the IPA no letters have sound values that are context-dependent, such as
The symbols of the IPA are 107 letters for consonants and vowels,[13] 31 diacritics which further specify those sounds, and 19 suprasegmentals, which indicate such qualities as length, tone, stress, and intonation.
The symbols chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. 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 has the form of a "gelded" question mark, and was originally an apostrophe. Indeed, some symbols, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative , though modified to look more Latin, were inspired by glyphs in other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter , `ain).[10]
Despite its preference for letters that harmonize with the Latin alphabet, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted symbols that seem to have nothing to do with Roman letters. For example, prior to 1989, the IPA symbols for click consonants were , , , and , all of which are clearly derived from Latin and Greek letters, as well as punctuation marks. However, except for , none of these symbols was reflective of contemporary practice among Khoisanists (who use symbols for click consonants the most frequently). As a result, they were replaced by the more iconic symbols , , , , and at the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989.[14]
The majority of the symbols in the IPA have been deliberately based on the letter forms of the Latin alphabet, using as few non-Latin forms as possible.[5] The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most consonants taken from the Latin alphabet would correspond to their pronunciation in the majority of European languages (including English).[5] These consonants are , , , (hard) , , , , , , (voiceless) , , , and . The other consonants from the Latin alphabet, , , , , , , , and , correspond to the sounds these letters represent in various other languages:
The vowels from the Latin alphabet (, , , , ) correspond to the vowels of Spanish. is like the vowel in machine, is as in 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 . Although , , , and denote beta-like, epsilon-like, phi-like, and chi-like sounds, they do not correspond to them exactly. The letter , though visually similar to the Greek vowel letter <υ>, upsilon, is actually a consonant.
The sound-values of modifications of Latin letters can usually be derived from those of the original letters.[15] 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 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 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.
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 accuracy. The most accurate 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,[16] but broad transcriptions are sometimes enclosed in slashes instead of brackets.
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 American pronunciation of the English word "little" may be transcribed broadly using the IPA as . The broad transcription (placed between slashes) merely identifies the separate sounds in the word, and does not bother to indicate how it was said. 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: , , or are just a few possibilities.
Many British English 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.[17] 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)[18] use "y" for IPA and "sh" for IPA , reflecting common representations of those sounds in written English. (In IPA, represents the sound of the German ü, and 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).[19] American regional dialects without the caught-cot merger generally pronounce cŏt like IPA (with an open central unrounded vowel) and côt like IPA (with an open back rounded vowel), whereas those with the merger pronounce the vowels ŏ and ô the same way (for example, like IPA in the Boston dialect). 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.[20]
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. This would aid linguistic and anthropologic research, as well as help teach language learning. Specifically, the development of a reference standard using the IPA (mirroring the idea of the Rosetta Stone) could be used in order to preserve intact examples of the sounds of human language. For education, the IPA can help standardize resources which prepare students and very young children (ages 6-36 months) for universal language acquisition through familiarization and subsequent imitation of the breadth of human speech sounds.[21]
The International Phonetic Alphabet divides its letter symbols into three categories: pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.[22]
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.[23]
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.
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.
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. Alternatively, a superscript notation for a consonant release is sometimes used to transcribe affricates, 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.
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).
The IPA defines a vowel as a sound which occurs at a syllable center.[27] 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, (said as the "a" in "palm") is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. However, (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 , the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as , the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.
In places where vowels are paired, the right represents a rounded vowel (in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.
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.[28] 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. .[28]
The dotless i, <>, 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<sup></sup> (diphthongization). More advanced diacritics were developed in the Extended IPA for more specific pronunciation encoding.
aWith aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is also voiced. Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice. bSome linguists restrict this breathy-voice diacritic to sonorants, and transcribe obstruents as .
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:
These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, such as prosody, tone, length, and stress, which often operate on syllables, words, or phrases: that is, elements such as the intensity, pitch, and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the rhythm and intonation of speech.[29] Although most of these symbols indicate distinctions that are phonemic at the word level, symbols also exist for intonation on a level greater than that of the word.[29]
The IPA inherited alternate symbols from various traditions, but eventually settled on one for each sound. The other symbols are now considered obsolete. An example is which has been standardised to . 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; they are now written respectively.
There are also unsupported or ad hoc symbols from local traditions that find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with affricates such as for (the "tl" in "Nahuatl").
While the IPA does not itself have a set of capital letters, 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 Kabiyé of northern Togo, which has (capital ). Other IPA-inspired capitals supported by Unicode include .
The Extended IPA, also often abbreviated as extIPA, is a group of symbols whose original purpose was to accurately transcribe disordered speech. At the IPA Kiel Convention in 1989, a group of linguists drew up the initial set of symbols for the Extended IPA.[30] The Extended IPA was first published in 1990, and modified over the next few years before its official publication in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association in 1994 allowed it to be officially adopted by the ICPLA.[31] While its original purpose was to transcribe disordered speech, 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 peculiarities in an individual's voice, such as nasalized voicing.[2]
Aside from the extIPA, another set of symbols is used for voice quality (VoQS), such as whispering.
The remaining blank cells on the IPA chart can be filled without too much difficulty if the need arises. Some ad hoc symbols have appeared in the literature, for example for the retroflex lateral flap and the voiceless lateral fricative series, the epiglottal trill, and the labiodental plosives. (See the grey symbols in the PDF chart.) Diacritics can supply much of the remainder, which would indeed be appropriate if the sounds were allophones.[32]
Consonant sounds are created by adding diacritics to letters with similar sound values. 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). Other taps can be written as extra-short plosives or laterals, e.g. , though in some cases the diacritic would need to be written below the letter. A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted , 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.[33] 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 and are near-close and open central vowels, respectively. The only known vowels that cannot be represented in this scheme are the compressed vowels, which would require a dedicated diacritic, such as .
An IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it is intended to represent since there is not a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound in broad transcription. While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association states that no official names exist for symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each character that are commonly used.[34] 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 usually used for unmodified symbols. Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as , may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol, and sometimes based on the sound that it represents. 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.
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. Notable systems include Kirshenbaum, SAMPA, and X-SAMPA. The usage of mapping systems has been declining as technical support for Unicode spreads.
There are also many personal or idiosyncratic extensions, such as Luciano Canepari's <sup><small>can</small></sup>IPA.
<div class="references-small" style="-moz-column-count:2; column-count:2;"> <ol style="list-style-type:upper-roman"> <li> "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself (from the phrase 'International Phonetic Alphabet') that resistance seems pedantic. Context usually serves to disambiguate the two usages."[35]</li>
<li> There are 7 basic tone marks, which are combined for contour tones; eight of these combinations are in common use.</li>
<li> In contrast, English sometimes uses combinations of two letters to represent single sounds, such as the digraphs sh and th for the sounds and /, respectively.</li>
<li> 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 such sounds with dedicated symbols. Instead, it provides a single symbol (in this case, ) for both sounds. Strictly speaking, this makes the IPA a phonemic alphabet, not a phonetic one.[36]</li>
<li> "The non-roman letters of the International Phonetic Alphabet have been designed as far as possible to harmonize well with the roman letters. The Association does not recognise makeshift letters; It recognises only letters which have been carefully cut so as to be in harmony with the other letters."[37]</li>
<li> Technically, the symbol could be considered Latin-derived, since the question mark may have originated as "Qo", an abbreviation of the Latin word quæstio, "question".</li>
<li> For example, [p] is called "Lower-case P" and [χ] is "Chi."[38]</li> </ol> </div>
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Most IPA symbols are not included in Times New Roman, the default font for Latin scripts in Internet Explorer for Windows. To properly view IPA symbols in that browser, you must set it to use a font which includes the IPA extensions characters. Such fonts include Lucida Sans Unicode, which comes with Windows XP; Gentium, Charis (SIL), Doulos (SIL), DejaVu Sans, or TITUS Cyberbit, which are freely available; or Arial Unicode MS, which comes with Microsoft Office.
On this page, we have forced Internet Explorer to use such a font by default, so it should appear correctly, but this hasn't yet been done to all the other pages containing IPA. This also applies to other pages using . Bear this in mind if you see error symbols such as "蚟" in articles.
Special symbols should display properly without further configuration with Mozilla Firefox, Konqueror, Opera*, Safari and most other recent browsers.
*At the default font size for normal-sized Wikipedia text, Opera for Windows renders the two different symbols "ː" and "ɪ" identically. Enlarge or reduce the font to distinguish between the two symbols. </div>
(K)ok-chè Im-phiau
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