International Phonetic Alphabet

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

This article is about the alphabet officially used in linguistics. The NATO phonetic alphabet ("alpha bravo") has been informally and nonstandardly called the International Phonetic Alphabet as well.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a phonetic alphabet 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 phonetic representation of all languages. Most of its symbols are taken from the Roman alphabet or derived from it, some are taken from the Greek alphabet, and some are apparently unrelated to any standard alphabet.

It was originally developed by British and French phoneticians 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 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.

Description

The sound-values of the consonants that are identical to those in the Latin alphabet in most cases correspond to English usage. [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g], [m], [n], [f], [v], [s], [h], [z], [l], [w].

The vowel symbols that are identical to those in the Latin alphabet ([a], [e], [i], [o], [u]) correspond roughly to the vowels of Spanish or Italian. [i] is like the vowel in meet, [u] like the vowel in food, etc.

Most of the other symbols that are shared with the Latin alphabet, like [j], [r], [c], and [y], correspond to sounds those letters represent in other languages. [j] has the sound value of English y in yoke (= German or Dutch j); whereas [y] has the Scandinavian or Old English value of the letter (= German y or ü or French u). The general principle is to use one symbol for one speech segment, avoiding letter combinations such as sh and th in English orthography.

Letters that have shapes that are modified Latin letters usually 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.

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.

When characters from the IPA phonetic alphabet are embedding in another script they are isolated from the rest of the text with either slashes ("/") or square brackets ("[" and "]"). Linguists use brackets when a narrow phonetic transcription is given, for example the English word "huge" would be [çjudʒ]. Slashes denote a phonological transcription:"huge" would be /hjudʒ/.

Chart

A text approximation of this page is available at IPA in Unicode.

Download the IPA chart in PDF 1000 pixel wide PNG of the entire chart

See also

• International Phonetic Alphabet for English explains those IPA symbols used to represent the phonemes of English.
• IPA in Unicode
• X-SAMPA and Kirshenbaum, two common methods of mapping IPA designations into ASCII
• Unicode and HTML/IPA Extensions

External links

• Official home page of the IPA
• Peter Ladefoged's Course in Phonetics (with sound files)
  • Pronouncable IPA chart
• IPA chart source
• IPA Chart in Unicode and XHTML/CSS
  • Interactive symbol selector
• WikiTeX supports editing IPA sequences directly in Wiki articles.
• Free IPA font (Unicode, substitute for Times Roman)

References

• Daniel Jones, English pronouncing dictionary, London, Dent, 14th ed., 1989.
• Geoffrey K. Pullum and William A. Laduslaw, Phonetic symbol guide, Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1986, ISBN 0-226-68532-2.

ar:الفبائية صوتية دولية ca:Alfabet fonètic internacional da:International Phonetic Alphabet de:Internationales Phonetisches Alphabet eo:Internacia Fonetika Alfabeto es:Alfabeto Fonético Internacional fr:Alphabet phonétique international hu:IPA is:Alþjóðlega hljóðstafrófið it:Alfabeto fonetico internazionale ja:国際音声字母 nl:International Phonetic Alphabet pl:International Phonetic Alphabet pt:Alfabeto fonético internacional tt:Xalıqara Yañğırış Älifbası