Segments aretranscribed by one or more IPA symbols of two basic types:letters anddiacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a single letter:[t], or with a letter plus diacritics:[t̺ʰ], depending on how precise one wishes to be. Similarly, the French letter⟨t⟩ may be transcribed as either[t] or[t̻]:[t̺ʰ] and[t̻] are two different, though similar, sounds. Slashes are used to signalphonemic transcription; therefore,/t/ is more abstract than either[t̺ʰ] or[t̻] and might refer to either, depending on the context and language.[note 1]
Occasionally, letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005,[4] there are 107 segmental letters, an indefinitely large number of suprasegmental letters, 44 diacritics (not counting composites), and four extra-lexicalprosodic marks in the IPA. These are illustrated in the currentIPA chart, posted below in this article and on the International Phonetic Association's website.[5]
The original intent was to make it usable for other languages; the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language.[note 2] For example, the sound[ʃ] (thesh inshoe) was originally represented with the letter⟨c⟩ for English but with⟨x⟩ for French and German; with German,⟨c⟩ was used for the[x] sound ofBach.[6] With a growing number of transcribed languages this proved impractical, and in 1888 the values of the letters were made uniform across languages. This would provide the base for all future revisions.[6][8]
Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After relatively frequent revisions and expansions from the 1890s to the 1940s, the IPA remained nearly static until theKiel Convention in 1989, which substantially revamped the alphabet. A smaller revision took place in 1993 with the resurrection of letters formid central vowels[2] and the retirement of letters forvoiceless implosives.[9] The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for alabiodental flap.[10] Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely of renaming symbols and categories and in modifyingtypefaces.[2]
The official summary chart of the IPA, revised in 2020
The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound (phoneme).[note 3] This means that:
It does not usecombinations of letters to represent single sounds, the way English does with⟨sh⟩ and⟨ea⟩, nor single letters to represent multiple sounds, the way⟨x⟩ represents/ks/ or/ɡz/ in English.[note 4]
There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, the way English⟨c⟩ and⟨g⟩ have a "hard" and "soft" pronunciation.
The IPA does not generally have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as "selectiveness".[2][note 5] However, if a large number of phonemically distinct letters can be derived with a single diacritic, that may be used instead.[note 6]
The alphabet is designed for transcribing sounds (phones), notphonemes, though it is used for phonemic transcription as well. A few letters that did not indicate specific sounds have been retired – ⟨ˇ⟩, once used for the "compound" tone of Swedish and Norwegian, and ⟨ƞ⟩, once used for themoraic nasal of Japanese – though one remains: ⟨ɧ⟩, used for thesj-sound of Swedish. When the IPA is used for broad phonetic or for phonemic transcription, the letter–sound correspondence can be rather loose. The IPA has recommended that more 'familiar' letters be used when that would not cause ambiguity.[13] For example, ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ for[ɛ] and[ɔ], ⟨t⟩ for[t̪] or[ʈ], ⟨f⟩ for[ɸ], etc. Indeed, in the illustration of Hindi in the IPAHandbook, the letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ are used for/t͡ʃ/ and/d͡ʒ/.
Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters representconsonants andvowels, 31diacritics are used to modify these, and 17 additional signs indicatesuprasegmental qualities such aslength,tone,stress, andintonation.[note 7] These are organized into a chart; the chart displayed here is the official chart as posted at the website of the IPA.
Loop-tail ⟨g⟩ and open-tail ⟨ɡ⟩ are graphic variants. Open-tail ⟨ɡ⟩ was the original IPA symbol, but both are now considered correct. Seehistory of the IPA for details.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is based on theLatin script, and uses as few non-Latin letters as possible.[6] The non-Latin letters are meant to harmonize with the Latin letters.[note 8] For this reason, most letters are either Latin,Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting theglottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, originally had the form of aquestion mark with the dot removed. A few letters, such as that of thevoiced pharyngeal fricative, ⟨ʕ⟩, were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, theArabic letter⟨ﻉ⟩,ʿayn, via the reversed apostrophe).[9]
The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most letters would correspond to "international usage" (approximatelyClassical Latin).[6] Hence, the consonant letters ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨ɡ⟩, ⟨h⟩, ⟨k⟩, ⟨l⟩, ⟨m⟩, ⟨n⟩, ⟨p⟩, ⟨s⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨v⟩, ⟨w⟩, and ⟨z⟩ have more or less their word-initial values in English (g as ingill,h as inhill, thoughp t k are unaspirated as inspill, still, skill); and the vowel letters ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ correspond to the (long) sound values of Latin:[i] is like the vowel inmachine,[u] is as inrule, etc. Other Latin letters, particularly ⟨j⟩, ⟨r⟩ and ⟨y⟩, differ from English, but have their IPA values in Latin or other European languages.
Beyond the letters themselves, there are secondary symbols which aid in transcription.Diacritic marks can be combined with the letters to add tone and phonetic detail such assecondary articulation. There are also special symbols for prosodic features such as stress and intonation.
An example of a font that uses turned small-capital omega for the vowel letter⟨ʊ⟩. The glyph had originally been a small-capital⟨ᴜ⟩.
The basic Latin inventory was extended by adding small-capital and cursive forms, overlapping diacritics such as hooks, and rotation. The sound values of these letters are related to those of the original letters or to those of letters that they were modified to resemble.[note 9] For example,rotated letters were popular in the era ofmechanical typesetting, as they had the advantage of not requiring the casting of special type for IPA symbols, much as the sorts for⟨b⟩ and⟨q⟩,⟨d⟩ and⟨p⟩,⟨n⟩ and⟨u⟩, and⟨6⟩ and⟨9⟩ had traditionally often pulled double duty to reduce printers' costs.[citation needed] Thus rotated ⟨ɐəɹʍ⟩ recalla e r w, while rotated ⟨ɔɟɓɥɯʌʎ⟩ recallo j b y u/w ᴀ y/λ.[note 10]
There are several letters from the Greek alphabet, though their sound values may differ from Greek. For most Greek letters, subtly differentglyph shapes have been devised for the IPA, specifically ⟨ꞵ⟩, ⟨ɣ⟩, ⟨ɛ⟩, ⟨ɸ⟩, ⟨ꭓ⟩ and ⟨ʋ⟩, which are encoded inUnicode separately from their parent Greek letters. One, however – ⟨θ⟩ – has only its Greek form, while for ⟨ꞵ~β⟩ and ⟨ꭓ~χ⟩, both Greek and Latin forms are in common use.[16]
Among consonant letters, thesmall capital letters ⟨ɢʜʟɴʀʁ⟩, and also ⟨ꞯ⟩ inextIPA, indicate moreguttural sounds than their base letters – ⟨ʙ⟩ is a late exception. Among vowel letters, the small capitals ⟨ɪʏʊ⟩ indicate what had originally been considered morelax articulations than their base letters; ⟨ʊ⟩ had originally been ⟨ᴜ⟩.[17] Again, small-cap ⟨ɶ⟩ is a late exception.
There are two principal types ofbrackets used to set off (delimit) IPA transcriptions:
Symbol
Use
[ ... ]
Square brackets are used withphonetic notation, whether broad or narrow[18] – that is, for actual pronunciation, possibly including details of the pronunciation that may not be used for distinguishing words in the language being transcribed, but which the author nonetheless wishes to document. Such phonetic notation is the primary function of the IPA.
/ ... /
Slashes are used for abstractphonemic notation,[18] which note only features that are distinctive in the language, without any extraneous detail. This is typical of dictionaries, such as theOED. For example, while the 'p' sounds of Englishpin andspin are pronounced differently (and this difference would be meaningful in some languages), the difference is not meaningful in English. Thus,phonemically the words are usually analyzed as/ˈpɪn/ and/ˈspɪn/, with the same phoneme/p/. To capture the difference between them – theallophones of/p/ – they can be transcribed phonetically as[pʰɪn] and[spɪn]. Phonemic notation commonly uses IPA symbols that are rather close to the default pronunciation of a phoneme, but for legibility often uses simple and 'familiar' letters rather than precise notation, for example/r/ and/o/ for the English sounds[ɹʷ] and[əʊ̯], or/c/,/ɟ/ for[t͜ʃ],[d͜ʒ] as mentioned above.[13]
Parentheses are used for indistinguishable[18] or unidentified utterances. They are also seen for silent articulation (mouthing),[20] where the expected phonetic transcription is derived from lip-reading, and with periods to indicate silent pauses, for example(…) or(2sec). The latter usage is made official in theextIPA, with unidentified segments circled instead.[21]
In inventory charts, parentheses may indicate that a sound is a marginal phoneme (occurs in only a few morphemes), is only found in loanwords, or is not a phoneme but a notable allophone.[citation needed]
⸨ ... ⸩
Double parentheses indicate either a transcription of obscured speech or a description of the obscuring noise. The IPA specifies that they mark the obscured sound,[19] as in⸨2σ⸩, two audible syllables obscured by another sound. The current extIPA specifications prescribe double parentheses for the extraneous noise, such as ⸨cough⸩ for a cough by another person (not the speaker) or ⸨knock⸩ for a knock on a door, but the IPAHandbook identifies IPA and extIPA usage as equivalent.[22] Early publications of the extIPA explain double parentheses as marking "uncertainty because of noise which obscures the recording", and that within them "may be indicated as much detail as the transcriber can detect."[23]
All three of the above are provided by the IPAHandbook. The following are not, but may be seen in IPA transcription or in associated material (especially angle brackets):
Symbol
Field
Description
⟦ ... ⟧
Phonetics
Double square brackets are used for especially precise phonetic transcription, often finer than is normally practicable.[24] This is consistent with the IPA convention of doubling a symbol to indicate greater degree. Double brackets may indicate that a letter has its cardinal IPA value. For example,⟦a⟧ is an open front vowel, rather than the perhaps slightly different value (such as open central) that "[a]" may be used to transcribe in a particular language. Thus, two vowels transcribed for easy legibility as[e] and[ɛ] may be clarified as actually being⟦e̝⟧ and⟦e⟧;[ð] may be more precisely⟦ð̠̞ˠ⟧.[25] Double brackets may also be used for a specific token or speaker; for example, the pronunciation of a particular child as opposed to the adult pronunciation that is their target.[26]
Double slashes are used formorphophonemic transcription. This is also consistent with the IPA convention of doubling a symbol to indicate greater degree – in this case, more abstract than phonemic transcription.
Also commonly seen are the braces ofset theory, especially when enclosing the set of phonemes that constitute the morphophoneme, e.g.{t d} or{t|d} or{/t/, /d/} for a conflated/t/ and/d/. Braces have a conflicting use to delimit prosodic transcription within theVoice Quality Symbols, which are an extension of IPA used in extIPA, but are not otherwise used in IPA proper.
Other delimiters sometimes seen arepipes and double pipes taken fromAmericanist phonetic notation. However, these conflict with the pipes used in basic IPA prosodic transcription.[note 12]
Backslashes are used fordiaphonemic transcription, for example setting off pronunciations in dictionaries that do not target a specific preferred dialect.[note 13]
Other delimiters are double slashes, – the same notation as for morphophonology, – exclamation marks, and pipes.
Angle brackets[note 14] are used to mark both original Latin orthography andtransliteration from another script; they are also used to identify individualgraphemes of any script.[29][30] In IPA literature, they are used to indicate the IPA letters themselves rather than the sound values that they carry.
For example, ⟨cot⟩ would be used for the orthography of the English wordcot, as opposed to its pronunciation/ˈkɒt/. Italics are usual when words are written as themselves (as withcot in the previous sentence) rather than to specifically note their orthography. However, italics are sometimes ambiguous, and italic markup is not always accessible to sight-impaired readers who rely onscreen reader technology.
Double angle brackets may occasionally be useful to distinguish original orthography from transliteration, or the idiosyncratic spelling of a manuscript from the normalized orthography of the language.
Pipes are sometimes used instead of double angle brackets to denote the distinctallographs of a grapheme that are known asglyphs. For example, print|g| and script|ɡ| are two glyph variants of the grapheme⟨g⟩ of Latin script.[31]
Some examples of contrasting brackets in the literature:
In some English accents, the phoneme/l/, which is usually spelled as⟨l⟩ or⟨ll⟩, is articulated as two distinct allophones: the clear[l] occurs before vowels and the consonant/j/, whereas the dark[ɫ]/[lˠ] occurs before consonants, except/j/, and at the end of words.[32]
the alternations/f/ – /v/ in plural formation in one class of nouns, as inknife/naɪf/ – knives/naɪvz/, which can be represented morphophonemically as{naɪV} – {naɪV+z}. The morphophoneme{V} stands for the phoneme set{/f/,/v/}.[33]
[ˈf\faɪnəlzˈhɛldɪn(.)⸨knockondoor⸩bɑɹsə{𝑝ˈloʊnəandˈmədɹɪd𝑝}] —f-finals held in Barcelona and Madrid.[34]
IPA letters havecursive forms designed for use in manuscripts and when taking field notes, but theHandbook recommended against their use, as cursive IPA is "harder for most people to decipher".[35] Abraille representation of the IPA for blind or visually impaired professionals and students has also been developed.[36]
The authors of textbooks or similar publications often create revised versions of the IPA chart to express their own preferences or needs. The image displays one such version. All pulmonic consonants are moved to the consonant chart. Only the black symbols are on the official IPA chart; additional symbols are in grey. The grey fricatives are part of theextIPA, and the grey retroflex letters are mentioned or implicit in theHandbook. The grey click is a retired IPA letter that is still in use.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the alphabet in the form of a chart. (SeeHistory of the IPA.) Not all aspects of the alphabet can be accommodated in a chart of the size published by the IPA. Thealveolo-palatal andepiglottal consonants, for example, are not included in the consonant chart for reasons of space rather than of theory (two additional columns would be required, one between the retroflex and palatal columns and the other between the pharyngeal and glottal columns), and thelateral flap would require an additional row for that single consonant, so they are listed instead under the catchall block of "other symbols".[37] The indefinitely large number oftone letters would make a full accounting impractical even on a larger page, and only a few examples are shown, and even the tone diacritics are not complete; the reversed tone letters are not illustrated at all.
The procedure for modifying the alphabet or the chart is to propose the change in theJournal of the IPA. (See, for example, December 2008 on anopen central unrounded vowel[38] and August 2011 on central approximants.)[39] Reactions to the proposal may be published in the same or subsequent issues of the Journal (as in August 2009 on the open central vowel).[40][better source needed] A formal proposal is then put to the Council of the IPA[41][clarification needed] – which is elected by the membership[42] – for further discussion and a formal vote.[43][44]
Many users of the alphabet, including the leadership of the Association itself, deviate from its standardized usage.[45]TheJournal of the IPA finds it acceptable to mix IPA andextIPA symbols in consonant charts in their articles. (For instance, including the extIPA letter ⟨𝼆⟩, rather than ⟨ʎ̝̊⟩, in an illustration of the IPA.)[46]
Of more than 160 IPA symbols, relatively few will be used to transcribe speech in any one language, with various levels of precision. A precise phonetic transcription, in which sounds are specified in detail, is known as anarrow transcription. A coarser transcription with less detail is called abroad transcription. Both are relative terms, and both are generally enclosed in square brackets.[1] Broad phonetic transcriptions may restrict themselves to easily heard details, or only to details that are relevant to the discussion at hand, and may differ little if at all from phonemic transcriptions, but they make no theoretical claim that all the distinctions transcribed are necessarily meaningful in the language. The term 'broad' may furthermore carry implication that diacritics are avoided (at least as far as possible) or even that the transcription is restricted to the letters of theISO basic Latin alphabet.[47]
Phonetic transcriptions of the wordinternational in two English dialects
For example, the English wordlittle may be transcribed broadly as[ˈlɪtəl], approximately describing many pronunciations. A narrower transcription may focus on individual or dialectical details:[ˈɫɪɾɫ] inGeneral American,[ˈlɪʔo] inCockney, or[ˈɫɪːɫ] inSouthern US English.
Phonemic transcriptions, which express the conceptual counterparts of spoken sounds, are usually enclosed in slashes (/ /) and tend to use simpler letters with few diacritics. The choice of IPA letters may reflect theoretical claims of how speakers conceptualize sounds as phonemes or they may be merely a convenience for typesetting. Phonemic approximations between slashes do not have absolute sound values. For instance, in English, either the vowel ofpick or the vowel ofpeak may be transcribed as/i/, so thatpick,peak would be transcribed as/ˈpik,ˈpiːk/ or as/ˈpɪk,ˈpik/; and neither is identical to the vowel of the Frenchpique, which would also be transcribed/pik/. By contrast, a narrow phonetic transcription ofpick,peak,pique could be:[pʰɪk],[pʰiːk],[pikʲ].
IPA is popular for transcription by linguists. Some American linguists, however, use a mix of IPA withAmericanist phonetic notation orSinological phonetic notation or otherwise usenonstandard symbols for various reasons.[48] Authors who employ such nonstandard use are encouraged to include a chart or other explanation of their choices, which is good practice in general, as linguists differ in their understanding of the exact meaning of IPA symbols and common conventions change over time.
Many British dictionaries, including theOxford English Dictionary and somelearner's dictionaries such as theOxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and theCambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, now usethe International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the pronunciation of words.[49] However, most American (and some British) volumes use one of a variety ofpronunciation respelling systems, intended to be more comfortable for readers of English and to be more acceptable across dialects, without the implication of a preferred pronunciation that the IPA might convey. For example, the respelling systems in many American dictionaries (such asMerriam-Webster) use⟨y⟩ for IPA[ j] and⟨sh⟩ for IPA[ ʃ ], reflecting the usual spelling of those sounds in English.[50][51][note 15](In IPA,[y] represents the sound of the French⟨u⟩, as intu, and[sh] represents the sequence of consonants ingrasshopper.)
The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages withphonemic orthographies generally do not bother with indicating the pronunciation of most words, and tend to use respelling systems for words with unexpected pronunciations. Dictionaries produced in Israel use the IPA rarely and sometimes use theHebrew alphabet for transcription of foreign words.[note 16] Bilingual dictionaries that translate from foreign languages into Russian usually employ the IPA, but monolingual Russian dictionaries occasionally use pronunciation respelling for foreign words.[note 17] The IPA is more common in bilingual dictionaries, but there are exceptions here too. Mass-market bilingual Czech dictionaries, for instance, tend to use the IPA only for sounds not found inCzech.[note 18]
In the IPA itself, however, only lower-case letters are used. The 1949 edition of the IPA handbook indicated that an asterisk⟨*⟩ might be prefixed to indicate that a word was a proper name,[53] and this convention was used byLe Maître Phonétique, which was written in IPA rather than in English or French orthography, but it was not included in the 1999Handbook, which notes the contrary use of the asterisk as a placeholder for a sound or feature that does not have a symbol.[54]
The IPA has widespread use among classical singers during preparation as they are frequently required to sing in a variety of foreign languages. They are also taught by vocal coaches to perfect diction and improve tone quality and tuning.[55] Operalibrettos are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such asNico Castel's volumes[56] and Timothy Cheek's bookSinging in Czech.[57] Opera singers' ability to read IPA was used by the siteVisual Thesaurus, which employed several opera singers "to make recordings for the 150,000 words and phrases in VT's lexical database ... for their vocal stamina, attention to the details of enunciation, and most of all, knowledge of IPA".[58]
The International Phonetic Association organizes the letters of the IPA into three categories:pulmonic consonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and vowels.[note 19][60][61]
Pulmonic consonant letters are arranged singly or in pairs of voiceless (tenuis) and voiced sounds, with these then grouped in columns from front (labial) sounds on the left to back (glottal) sounds on the right. In official publications by the IPA, two columns are omitted to save space, with the letters listed among "other symbols" even though theoretically they belong in the main chart.[note 20] They are arranged in rows from full closure (occlusives: stops and nasals) at top, to brief closure (vibrants: trills and taps), to partial closure (fricatives), and finally minimal closure (approximants) at bottom, again with a row left out to save space. In the table below, a slightly different arrangement is made: All pulmonic consonants are included in the pulmonic-consonant table, and the vibrants and laterals are separated out so that the rows reflect the commonlenition pathway ofstop → fricative → approximant, as well as the fact that several letters pull double duty as both fricative and approximant;affricates may then be created by joining stops and fricatives from adjacent cells. Shaded cells represent articulations that are judged to be impossible or not distinctive.
Vowel letters are also grouped in pairs – of unrounded and rounded vowel sounds – with these pairs also arranged from front on the left to back on the right, and from maximal closure at top to minimal closure at bottom. No vowel letters are omitted from the chart, though in the past some of the mid central vowels were listed among the "other symbols".
Apulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing theglottis (the space between the vocal folds) ororal 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 English fall into this category.[63]
The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designatemanner of articulation, meaning how the consonant is produced, and columns that designateplace of articulation, meaning where in the vocal tract the consonant is produced. The main chart includes only consonants with a single place of articulation.
In rows where some letters appear in pairs (theobstruents), the letter to the right represents avoiced consonant, exceptbreathy-voiced[ɦ].[64] In the other rows (thesonorants), the single letter represents a voiced consonant.
While IPA provides a single letter for the coronal places of articulation (for all consonants but fricatives), these do not always have to be used exactly. When dealing with a particular language, the letters 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 letters[β,ð,ʁ,ʕ,ʢ] are canonically voiced fricatives but may be used for approximants.[note 21]
In many languages, such as English,[h] and[ɦ] are not actually glottal, fricatives, or approximants. Rather, they are barephonation.[66]
It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives[ʃʒ],[ɕʑ], and[ʂʐ].
[ʜ,ʢ] are defined as epiglottal fricatives under the "Other symbols" section in the official IPA chart, but they may be treated as trills at the same place of articulation as[ħ,ʕ] because trilling of thearyepiglottic folds typically co-occurs.[67]
Some listed phones are not known to exist asphonemes in any language.
Clicks have traditionally been described as consisting of a forward place of articulation, commonly called the click "type" or historically the "influx", and a rear place of articulation, which when combined with the quality of the click is commonly called the click "accompaniment" or historically the "efflux". The IPA click letters indicate only the click type (forward articulation and release). Therefore, all clicks require two letters for proper notation: ⟨k͡ǀ,ɡ͡ǀ,q͡ǀ⟩, etc., or with the order reversed if both the forward and rear releases are audible. The letter for the rear articulation is frequently omitted, in which case a ⟨k⟩ may usually be assumed. However, some researchers dispute the idea that clicks should be analyzed as doubly articulated, as the traditional transcription implies, and analyze the rear occlusion as solely a part of the airstream mechanism.[68] In transcriptions of such approaches, the click letter represents both places of articulation, with the different letters representing the different click types, and diacritics are used for the elements of the accompaniment: ⟨ǀ,ǀ̬,ǀ̃⟩, etc.
Letters for thevoiceless implosives ⟨ƥ,ƭ,ƈ,ƙ,ʠ⟩ are no longer supported by the IPA, though they remain in Unicode. Instead, the IPA typically uses the voiced equivalent with a voiceless diacritic: ⟨ɓ̥,ɗ̥⟩, etc.
The letter for theretroflex implosive,⟨ᶑ ⟩, is not "explicitly IPA approved",[69] but the IPA has endorsed the inclusion of ⟨ᶑ ⟩ and voiceless ⟨𝼉⟩ into Unicode.[citation needed]
The ejective diacritic is placed at the right-hand margin of the consonant, rather than immediately after the letter for the stop: ⟨t͜ʃʼ⟩, ⟨kʷʼ⟩. In imprecise transcription, it often stands in for a superscript glottal stop inglottalized but pulmonicsonorants, such as[mˀ],[lˀ],[wˀ],[aˀ] – also transcribable as creaky[m̰],[l̰],[w̰],[a̰].
Affricates andco-articulated stops are represented by two letters in sequence. For clarity, thisdigraph may be joined by a tie bar, which may appear either above or below the letters with no difference in meaning.[note 22] Affricates are optionally represented byligatures – e.g. ⟨ʧ,ʤ ⟩ – though this is no longer official IPA usage.[1] Alternatively, a superscript notation for a consonant release is sometimes used to transcribe affricates, for example ⟨tˢ⟩ for[t͜s], although in precise notation this would indicate a fricative release rather than an affricate. The letters for the palatal plosives ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ are often used as a convenience for[t͜ʃ] and[d͜ʒ] or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.[71]
Because in a true affricate the plosive element and the fricative element are homorganic, and the place of articulation of an affricate is most audible in the fricative element, the letter for the former will not always be precisely transcribed where such precision would be redundant. For example, while the Englishch sound is[t̠͡ʃ] in close transcription, the diacritic is commonly left off, for[t͡ʃ]. Similarly,[ʈ͡ʂ] and[ɖ͡ʐ] are more commonly written[t͡ʂ] and[d͡ʐ], and in the ligatures there is only a single retroflex hook.
Co-articulated consonants are sounds that involve two simultaneousplaces of articulation (are pronounced using two parts of thevocal tract). In English, the[w] in "went" is a coarticulated consonant, being pronounced by rounding the lips and raising the back of the tongue. Similar sounds are[ʍ] and[ɥ]. In some languages, plosives can be double-articulated, for example in the name ofLaurent Gbagbo.
[ɧ], theSwedishsj-sound, is described by the IPA as a "simultaneous[ʃ] and[x]", but it is unlikely such a simultaneous fricative actually exists in any language.[72]
Multiple tie bars can be used: ⟨a͡b͡c⟩ or ⟨a͜b͜c⟩. For instance, a pre-voiced velar affricate may be transcribed as ⟨g͡k͡x⟩
If a diacritic needs to be placed on or under a tie bar, thecombining grapheme joiner (U+034F) needs to be used, as in[b͜͏̰də̀bdʊ̀] 'chewed' (Margi). Font support is spotty, however.
With the implosives, authors may not bother to redundantly mark both letters as implosive, but instead write them as less-cluttered ⟨ɡ͡ɓ⟩ and even ⟨k͜ƥ⟩.
Tongue positions ofcardinal front vowels, with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness.X-ray photos show the sounds[i,u,a,ɑ].
The IPA defines a vowel as a sound which occurs at a syllable center.[73] 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 byvowel 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] (the first vowel infather) is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position.[i] (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 byvowel 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 arounded vowel (in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.
Diphthongs may be written as simple sequences of letters, but for clarity they are commonly specified with a non-syllabic diacritic, as in ⟨ui̯⟩ or ⟨u̯i⟩, or with a superscript for the on- or off-glide, as in ⟨uⁱ⟩ or ⟨ᵘi⟩. Sometimes a tie bar is used: ⟨u͜i⟩, especially when it is difficult to tell if the diphthong is characterized by an on-glide or an off-glide, or when it is variable.
Notes
⟨a⟩ officially represents a front vowel, but there is little if any distinction between front and central open vowels (seeVowel § Acoustics), and ⟨a⟩ is frequently used for an open central vowel.[48] If disambiguation is required, theretraction diacritic or thecentralized diacritic may be added to indicate an open central vowel, as in ⟨a̠⟩ or ⟨ä⟩.
Diacritics are used for phonetic detail. They are added to IPA letters to indicate a modification or specification of that letter's normal pronunciation.[74]
By being made superscript, any IPA letter may function as a diacritic, conferring elements of its articulation to the base letter.[75] Those superscript letters listed below are specifically provided for by the IPAHandbook; other uses can be illustrated with ⟨tˢ⟩ ([t] with fricative release), ⟨ᵗs⟩ ([s] with affricate onset), ⟨ⁿd⟩ (prenasalized[d]), ⟨bʱ⟩ ([b] with breathy voice), ⟨mˀ⟩ (glottalized[m]), ⟨sᶴ⟩ ([s] with a flavor of[ʃ], i.e. avoiceless alveolar retracted sibilant), ⟨oᶷ⟩ ([o] withdiphthongization), ⟨ɯᵝ⟩ (compressed[ɯ]). Superscript diacritics placed after a letter are ambiguous between simultaneous modification of the sound and phonetic detail at the end of the sound. For example, labialized ⟨kʷ⟩ may mean either simultaneous[k] and[w] or else[k] with a labialized release. Superscript diacritics placed before a letter, on the other hand, normally indicate a modification of the onset of the sound (⟨mˀ⟩ glottalized[m], ⟨ˀm⟩[m] with a glottal onset). (See§ Superscript IPA.)
^abWith aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is usually also voiced (voiced aspirated – but seevoiced consonants with voiceless aspiration). Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice over simple aspiration, such as ⟨b̤⟩. Some linguists restrict that diacritic tosonorants, such as breathy-voice ⟨m̤⟩, and transcribe voiced-aspirated obstruents as e.g. ⟨bʱ⟩.
^abcdefghThese diacritics-above were added to Unicode in September 2025. It may be some time before there is widespread font support.
^abcdefThe raising, lowering, advanced and retracted diacritics are sometimes seen with a third placement option, as spacing diacritics ⟨˔⟩, ⟨˕⟩, ⟨˖⟩, ⟨˗⟩ that avoid both descenders and ascenders, as seen here on ⟨ɭ˔⟩. Officially, however, these were retired from the IPA with the 1989 Kiel convention. Spacing ⟨◌꭪⟩, ⟨◌꭫⟩ were used similarly when they meant advanced and retracted, and they are occasionally seen with their modern values.
^Care must be taken that a superscript retraction sign is not mistaken for a macron for mid tone.
^abThese are relative to the cardinal value of the letter. They can also apply to unrounded vowels:[ɛ̜] is more spread (less rounded) than cardinal[ɛ], and[ɯ̹] is less spread than cardinal[ɯ].
A diacritic may be moved to avoid conflicts of space. One that is normally placed below a letter may be moved above it to avoid adescender or another diacritic, as with the voiceless ring on ⟨ŋ̊⟩, and vice versa with the tie bar on ⟨t͜s⟩, though the tie bar is basically in free variation.[74] Exceptions are the tilde,trema andcaron/wedge – and, in extIPA, the bridge – which are defined differently when placed above and below a letter.
A couple additional superscript letters are found for secondary articulation. In theHandbook, for example, ⟨ʱ⟩ is used for voiced aspiration. ⟨ᶣ⟩ is commonly seen with languages such asTwi where consonants may be simultaneously palatalized and labialized, while ⟨ˀ⟩ may be used for glottalized sounds without specifying whether they are ejective or havecreaky voice. ExtIPA provides ⟨ʶ⟩ foruvularization, and theVoice Quality Symbols provide a couple more. However, only limited set of IPA letters are used in this fashion; for all others, superscripting indicates more ambiguous shading of the sound.
The state of theglottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from open-glottis to closed-glottisphonation is:
These symbols describe the features of a language above thelevel of individual consonants and vowels, that is, at the level of syllable, word orphrase. These includeprosody, pitch,length,stress, intensity,tone and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as therhythm andintonation of speech.[77] Various ligatures of pitch/tone letters and diacritics are provided for by theKiel Convention and used in the IPAHandbook despite not being found in the summary of the IPA alphabet found on the one-page chart.
Undercapital letters below we will see how a carrier letter may be used to indicate suprasegmental features such as labialization or nasalization. Some authors omit the carrier letter, for e.g. suffixed[kʰuˣt̪s̟]ʷ or prefixed[ʷkʰuˣt̪s̟],[note 23] or place a spacing variant of a diacritic such as ⟨˔⟩ or ⟨˜⟩ at the beginning or end of a word to indicate that it applies to the entire word.[note 24]
^abThe pipes for intonation breaks should be a heavier weight than the letters for click consonants. Because fonts do not reflect this, the intonation breaks in the official IPA charts are set in bold typeface.
The old staveless tone letters, which are effectively obsolete, include high ⟨ˉe⟩, mid ⟨−e⟩ [not supported by Unicode], low ⟨ˍe⟩, rising ⟨ˊe⟩, falling ⟨ˋe⟩, low rising ⟨ˏe⟩ and low falling ⟨ˎe⟩.
Officially, thestress marks ⟨ˈˌ⟩ appear before the stressed syllable, and thus mark the syllable boundary as well as stress (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a period).[80] Occasionally the stress mark is placed immediately before the nucleus of the syllable, after any consonantal onset.[81] In such transcriptions, the stress mark does not mark a syllable boundary. The primary stress mark may bedoubled ⟨ˈˈ⟩ for extra stress (such as prosodic stress). The secondary stress mark is sometimes seen doubled ⟨ˌˌ⟩ for extra-weak stress, but this convention has not been adopted by the IPA.[80] Some dictionaries place both stress marks before a syllable, ⟨¦⟩, to indicate that pronunciations with either primary or secondary stress are heard, though this is not IPA usage.[note 30]
There are three boundary markers: ⟨.⟩ for a syllable break, ⟨|⟩ for a minor prosodic break and ⟨‖⟩ for a major prosodic break. The tags 'minor' and 'major' are intentionally ambiguous. Depending on need, 'minor' may vary from afoot break to a break in list-intonation to a continuing–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a comma), and while 'major' is often any intonation break, it may be restricted to a final–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a period). The 'major' symbol may also be doubled, ⟨‖‖⟩, for a stronger break.[note 31]
Although not part of the IPA, the following additional boundary markers are often used in conjunction with the IPA: ⟨μ⟩ for amora or mora boundary, ⟨σ⟩ for a syllable or syllable boundary, ⟨+⟩ for a morpheme boundary, ⟨#⟩ for a word boundary (may be doubled, ⟨##⟩, for e.g. a breath-group boundary),[83] ⟨$⟩ for a phrase or intermediate boundary and ⟨%⟩ for a prosodic boundary. For example, C# is a word-final consonant, %V a post-pausa vowel, and σC a syllable-initial consonant.
⟨ꜛꜜ⟩ are defined in theHandbook as "upstep" and "downstep", concepts from tonal languages. However, the upstep symbol can also be used forpitch reset, and the IPAHandbook uses it for prosody in the illustration for Portuguese, a non-tonal language.
Phonetic pitch and phonemic tone may be indicated by either diacritics placed over the nucleus of the syllable – e.g., high-pitch ⟨é⟩ – or byChao tone letters placed either before or after the word or syllable. There are three graphic variants of the tone letters: with or without a stave, and facing left or facing right from the stave. The stave was introduced with the 1989 Kiel Convention, as was the option of placing a staved letter after the word or syllable, while retaining the older conventions. There are therefore six ways to transcribe pitch/tone in the IPA: i.e., ⟨é⟩, ⟨˦e⟩, ⟨e˦⟩, ⟨꜓e⟩, ⟨e꜓⟩ and ⟨ˉe⟩ for a high pitch/tone.[80][84][85] Of the tone letters, only left-facing staved letters and a few representative combinations are shown in the summary on theChart, and in practice it is currently more common for tone letters to occur after the syllable/word than before, as in the Chao tradition. Placement before the word is a carry-over from the pre-Kiel IPA convention, as is still the case for the stress and upstep/downstep marks. The IPA endorses the Chao tradition of using the left-facing tone letters, ⟨˥˦˧˨˩⟩, for underlying tone, and the right-facing letters, ⟨꜒꜓꜔꜕꜖⟩, for surface tone, as occurs intone sandhi, and for the intonation of non-tonal languages. In the Portuguese illustration in the 1999Handbook, for example, tone letters are placed before a word or syllable to indicate prosodic pitch (equivalent to[↗︎] global rise and[↘︎] global fall, but allowing more precision), and in the Cantonese illustration they are placed after a word/syllable to indicate lexical tone. Theoretically therefore prosodic pitch and lexical tone could be simultaneously transcribed in a single text, though this is not a formalized distinction.
Rising and falling pitch, as incontour tones, are indicated by combining the pitch diacritics and letters in the table, such as grave plus acute for rising[ě] and acute plus grave for falling[ê]. Only six combinations of two diacritics are supported, and only across three levels (high, mid, low), despite the diacritics supporting five levels of pitch in isolation. The four other explicitly approved rising and falling diacritic combinations are high/mid rising[e᷄], low rising[e᷅], high falling[e᷇], and low/mid falling[e᷆].[note 32]
The Chao tone letters, on the other hand, may be combined in any pattern, and are therefore used for more complex contours and finer distinctions than the diacritics allow, such as mid-rising[e˨˦], extra-high falling[e˥˦], etc. There are 20 such possibilities. However, in Chao's original proposal, which was adopted by the IPA in 1989, he stipulated that the half-high and half-low letters ⟨˦˨⟩ may be combined with each other, but not with the other three tone letters, so as not to create spuriously precise distinctions. With this restriction, there are 8 possibilities.[86]
The old staveless tone letters tend to be more restricted than the staved letters, though not as restricted as the diacritics. Technically they support as many distinctions as the staved letters,[note 33] but in the decades prior to the Kiel Convention only three pitch levels were provided for level tones, and only two for contour tones. Unicode supports default or high-pitch ⟨ˉˊˋˆˇ˜˙⟩ and low-pitch ⟨ˍˏˎꞈˬ˷⟩. Only a single mid-pitch tone is supported: ⟨˴⟩. The IPA had also used dots forneutral tones, but the corresponding dotted Chao tone letters were not adopted at the Kiel Convention.
Although tone diacritics and tone letters are presented as equivalent on the chart, "this was done only to simplify the layout of the chart. The two sets of symbols are not comparable in this way."[87] Using diacritics, a high tone is ⟨é⟩ and a low tone is ⟨è⟩; in tone letters, these are ⟨e˥⟩ and ⟨e˩⟩. One can double the diacritics for extra-high ⟨e̋⟩ and extra-low ⟨ȅ⟩; there is no parallel to this using tone letters. Instead, tone letters have mid-high ⟨e˦⟩ and mid-low ⟨e˨⟩; again, there is no equivalent among the diacritics. Thus in a three-register tone system, ⟨éēè⟩ are equivalent to ⟨e˥e˧e˩⟩, while in a four-register system, ⟨e̋éèȅ⟩ may be equivalent to ⟨e˥e˦e˨e˩⟩.[80]
The correspondence breaks down even further once they start combining. For more complex tones, one may combine three or four tone diacritics in any permutation,[80] though in practice only generic peaking (rising-falling)e᷈ and dipping (falling-rising)e᷉ combinations are used. Chao tone letters are required for finer detail (e˧˥˧,e˩˨˩,e˦˩˧,e˨˩˦, etc.). Although only 10 peaking and dipping tones were proposed in Chao's original, limited set of tone letters, phoneticians often make finer distinctions, and indeed an example is found on the IPA Chart.[note 34] The system allows the transcription of 112 peaking and dipping pitch contours, including tones that are level for part of their length.
Original (restricted) set of Chao tone letters[note 35]
More complex contours are possible. Chao gave an example of[꜔꜒꜖꜔] (mid-high-low-mid) from English prosody.[86]
Chao tone letters generally appear after each syllable, for a language with syllable tone (e.g. ⟨a˧vɔ˥˩⟩) or after the phonological word, for a language withword tone (e.g. ⟨avɔ˧˥˩⟩ for the same change in pitch). The IPA gives the option of placing the tone letters before the word or syllable (⟨˧a˥˩vɔ⟩, ⟨˧˥˩avɔ⟩), and illustrates this for prosody, but it is rare for lexical tone. Reversed tone letters may be used to clarify that they apply to the following rather than to the preceding syllable (⟨꜔a꜒꜖vɔ⟩, ⟨꜔꜒꜖avɔ⟩). The staveless letters are not directly supported by Unicode, but some fonts allow the stave in Chao tone letters to be suppressed.
IPA diacritics may be doubled to indicate an extra degree (greater intensity) of the feature indicated.[88] This is a productive process, but apart from extra-high and extra-low tones being marked by doubled high- and low-tone diacritics, ⟨ə̋,ə̏⟩, the majorprosodic break ⟨‖⟩ being marked as a doubled minor break ⟨|⟩, and a couple other instances, such usage is not enumerated by the IPA.
For example, the stress mark may be doubled (or even tripled, as may be the prosodic-break bar, ⟨⦀⟩) to indicate an extra degree of stress, such as prosodic stress in English.[89] An example in French, with a single stress mark for normal prosodic stress at the end of eachprosodic unit (marked as a minor prosodic break), and a double or even triple stress mark for contrastive/emphatic stress:[ˈˈɑ̃ːˈtre|məˈsjø‖ˈˈvwalamaˈdam‖]Entrez monsieur, voilà madame.[90] Similarly, a doubled secondary stress mark ⟨ˌˌ⟩ is commonly used for tertiary (extra-light) stress, though a proposal to officially adopt this was rejected.[91] In a similar vein, the effectively obsolete staveless tone letters were once doubled for an emphatic rising intonation ⟨˶⟩ and an emphatic falling intonation ⟨˵⟩.[92]
Length is commonly extended by repeating the length mark, which may be phonetic, as in[ĕeeˑeːeːˑeːː] etc., as in Englishshhh![ʃːːː], or phonemic, as in the "overlong" segments ofEstonian:
(Normally additional phonemic degrees of length are handled by the extra-short or half-long diacritic, i.e. ⟨eeˑeː⟩ or ⟨ĕeeː⟩, but the first two words in each of the Estonian examples are analyzed as typically short and long,/eeː/ and/nnː/, requiring a different remedy for the additional words.)
Delimiters are similar: double slashes indicate extra phonemic (morpho-phonemic), double square brackets especially precise transcription, and double parentheses especially unintelligible.
Nasalization, as inPalantla Chinantec lightly nasalized/ẽ/ vs heavily nasalized/ẽ̃/,[94] though some care can be needed to distinguish this from theextIPA diacritic forvelopharyngeal frication in disordered speech,/e͌/, which has also been analyzed as extreme nasalization.
Especially lowered, e.g.[t̞̞] (or[t̞˕], if the former symbol does not display properly) for/t/ as a weak fricative in some pronunciations ofregister.[96]
Especially retracted, e.g.[ø̠̠] or[s̠̠],[note 38][88][97] though some care might be needed to distinguish this from indications of alveolar or alveolarized articulation inextIPA, e.g.[s͇].
Especially guttural, e.g.[ɫ] (velarized l),[ꬸ] (pharyngealized l).[98]
The transcription ofstrident andharsh voice as extra-creaky/a᷽/ may be motivated by the similarities of these phonations.
TheextIPA provides combining parentheses for weak intensity, which when combined with a doubled diacritic indicate an intermediate degree. For instance, increasing degrees of nasalization of the vowel[e] might be written ⟨eẽ᪻ẽẽ̃᪻ẽ̃⟩.
As notedabove, IPA letters are often used quite loosely in broad transcription if no ambiguity would arise in a particular language. Because of that, IPA letters have not generally been created for sounds that are not distinguished in individual languages. A distinction between voiced fricatives and approximants is only partially implemented by the IPA, for example. Even with the relatively recent addition of the palatal fricative ⟨ʝ⟩ and the velar approximant ⟨ɰ⟩ to the alphabet, other letters, though defined as fricatives, are often ambiguous between fricative and approximant. For forward places, ⟨β⟩ and ⟨ð⟩ can generally be assumed to be fricatives unless they carry a lowering diacritic. Rearward, however, ⟨ʁ⟩ and ⟨ʕ⟩ are perhaps more commonly intended to be approximants even without a lowering diacritic. ⟨h⟩ and ⟨ɦ⟩ are similarly either fricatives or approximants, depending on the language, or even glottal "transitions", without that often being specified in the transcription.
Another common ambiguity is among the letters for palatal consonants. ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ are not uncommonly used as a typographic convenience for affricates, typically[t͜ʃ] and[d͜ʒ],[99] while ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ʎ⟩ are commonly used for palatalized alveolar[n̠ʲ] and[l̠ʲ]. To some extent this may be an effect of analysis, but it is common to match up single IPA letters to the phonemes of a language, without overly worrying about phonetic precision.
It has been argued that the lower-pharyngeal (epiglottal) fricatives ⟨ʜ⟩ and ⟨ʢ⟩ are better characterized as trills, rather than as fricatives that have incidental trilling.[100] This has the advantage of merging the upper-pharyngeal fricatives[ħ,ʕ] together with the epiglottal plosive[ʡ] and trills[ʜʢ] into a single pharyngeal column in the consonant chart. However, inShilha Berber the epiglottal fricatives are not trilled.[101][102] Although they might be transcribed ⟨ħ̠ʕ̠⟩ to indicate this, the far more common transcription is ⟨ʜʢ⟩, which is therefore ambiguous between languages.
Among vowels, ⟨a⟩ is officially a front vowel, but is more commonly treated as a central vowel. The difference, to the extent it is even possible, is not phonemic in any language.
For all phonetic notation, it is good practice for an author to specify exactly what they mean by the symbols that they use.
Superscript IPA letters are used to indicate secondary aspects of articulation. These may be aspects of simultaneous articulation that are considered to be in some sense less dominant than the basic sound, or may be transitional articulations that are interpreted as secondary elements.[103] Examples includesecondary articulation; onsets, releases, aspiration and other transitions; shades of sound; light epenthetic sounds and incompletely articulated sounds. Morphophonemically, superscripts may be used for assimilation, e.g. ⟨aʷ⟩ for the effect of labialization on a vowel/a/, which may be realized as phonemic/o/.[104] The IPA andICPLA endorse Unicode encoding of superscript variants of all contemporary segmental letters in the IPA proper and of all additional fricatives in extIPA, including the "implicit" IPA retroflex letters ⟨ꞎ𝼅𝼈ᶑ𝼊 ⟩.[46][75][105]
Superscripts are often used as a substitute for the tie bar, for example ⟨tᶴ⟩ for[t͜ʃ] and ⟨kᵖ⟩ or ⟨ᵏp⟩ for[k͜p]. However, in precise notation there is a difference between a fricative release in[tᶴ] and the affricate[t͜ʃ], between a velar onset in[ᵏp] and doubly articulated[k͜p].[106]
Superscript letters can be meaningfully modified bycombining diacritics, just as baseline letters can. For example, a superscript dental nasal in ⟨ⁿ̪d̪⟩, a superscript voiceless velar nasal in ⟨ᵑ̊ǂ⟩, and labial-velar prenasalization in ⟨ᵑ͡ᵐɡ͡b⟩. Although the diacritic may seem a bit oversized compared to the superscript letter it modifies, e.g. ⟨ᵓ̃⟩, this can be an aid to legibility, just as it is with the composite superscript c-cedilla ⟨ᶜ̧⟩ and rhotic vowels ⟨ᵊ˞ᶟ˞⟩. Superscript length marks can be used to indicate the length of aspiration of a consonant, e.g.[pʰtʰ𐞂kʰ𐞁]. Another option is to use extIPA parentheses and a doubled diacritic: ⟨p⁽ʰ⁾tʰkʰʰ⟩.[46]
A number of IPA letters and diacritics have been retired or replaced over the years. This number includes duplicate symbols, symbols that were replaced due to user preference, and unitary symbols that were rendered with diacritics or digraphs to reduce the inventory of the IPA. The rejected symbols are now considered obsolete, though some are still seen in the literature.
The IPA once had several pairs of duplicate symbols from alternative proposals, but eventually settled on one or the other. An example is the vowel letter ⟨ɷ⟩, rejected in favor of ⟨ʊ⟩. Affricates were once transcribed with ligatures, such as ⟨ʧʤ ⟩ (and others, some of which are not found in Unicode). These have been officially retired but are still used. Letters for specific combinations of primary and secondary articulation have also been mostly retired, with the idea that such features should be indicated with tie bars or diacritics: ⟨ƍ⟩ for[zʷ] is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosives, ⟨ƥƭƈƙʠ ⟩, were dropped soon after their introduction and are now usually written ⟨ɓ̥ɗ̥ʄ̊ɠ̊ʛ̥ ⟩. The original set of click letters, ⟨ʇ,ʗ,ʖ,ʞ⟩, was retired but is still sometimes seen, as the current pipe letters ⟨ǀ,ǃ,ǁ,ǂ⟩ can cause problems with legibility, especially when used with brackets ([ ] or / /), the letter ⟨l⟩ (small L), or theprosodic marks ⟨|,‖⟩. (For this reason, some publications which use the current IPA pipe letters disallow IPA brackets.)[107]
Individual non-IPA letters may find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with:
Affricates, such as the Americanistbarred lambda ⟨ƛ⟩ for[t͜ɬ] or ⟨č⟩ for[t͜ʃ ].[note 39]
TheKarlgren letters for Chinese vowels, ⟨ɿ,ʅ ,ʮ,ʯ ⟩.
Digits or combinations of digits and letters for tonal phonemes that haveconventional numbers in a local tradition, such as thefour tones of Standard Chinese. This may be more convenient for comparison between related languages and dialects than a phonetic transcription would be, because tones vary more unpredictably than segmental phonemes do.
Digits for tone levels, which are simpler to typeset, though the lack of standardization can cause confusion – e.g. ⟨1⟩ is high tone in some languages, but low tone in others; and ⟨3⟩ may be high, medium, or low tone, depending on the local convention.
Iconic extensions of standard IPA letters that are implicit in the alphabet, such as retroflex ⟨ᶑ⟩ and ⟨ꞎ⟩. These are referred to in theHandbook and have been included in Unicode at IPA request.
Even presidents of the IPA have used para-IPA notation, such as resurrecting the old diacritic ⟨◌̫⟩ for purely labialized sounds (not simultaneously velarized), the lateral fricative letter ⟨ꞎ ⟩, and either the old dot diacritic ⟨ṣẓ⟩ or the novel letters ⟨ ᶘᶚ⟩ for the not-quite-retroflex fricatives of Polishsz, ż and of Russianш, ж.
In addition, it is common to seead hoc typewriter substitutions, generally capital letters, for when IPA support is not available, e.g. S for ⟨ ʃ ⟩. (See alsoSAMPA andX-SAMPA substitute notation.)
Chart of the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet (extIPA), as of 2025
TheExtensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated "extIPA" and sometimes called "Extended IPA", are symbols whose original purpose was to accurately transcribedisordered speech. At theKiel Convention in 1989, a group of linguists drew up the initial extensions,[note 40] which were based on the previous work of the PRDS (Phonetic Representation of Disordered Speech) Group in the early 1980s.[109] The extensions were first published in 1990, then modified, and published again in 1994 in theJournal of the International Phonetic Association, when they were officially adopted by theICPLA.[110] While the original purpose was to transcribe disordered speech, linguists have used the extensions to designate a number of sounds within standard communication, such as hushing, gnashing teeth, and smacking lips,[2] as well as regular lexical sounds such aslateral fricatives that do not have standard IPA symbols.
In addition to the Extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, there are the conventions of theVoice Quality Symbols, which include a number of symbols for additional airstream mechanisms and secondary articulations in what they call "voice quality".
(a) A reconstructed form, deeper (more ancient) than a single⟨*⟩, used when reconstructing even further back from already-starred forms.
(b) An ungrammatical form. A less common convention than⟨*⟩ (b), this is sometimes used when reconstructed and ungrammatical forms occur in the same text.[111]
⟨×⟩,⟨✗⟩
An ungrammatical form. A less common convention than⟨*⟩ (b), this is sometimes used when reconstructed and ungrammatical forms occur in the same text.[112]
⟨?⟩
A doubtfully grammatical form.
⟨%⟩
A generalized form, such as a typical shape of awanderwort that has not actually been reconstructed.[113]
⟨#⟩
A word boundary – e.g.⟨#V⟩ for a word-initial vowel.
⟨$⟩
Aphonological word boundary; e.g.⟨H$⟩ for a high tone that occurs in such a position.
⟨+⟩
Amorpheme boundary; e.g.⫽ˈnɛl+t⫽ for Englishknelt.
⟨_⟩
The location of a segment – e.g.⟨V_V⟩ for an intervocalic position, or⟨_#⟩ for word-final position.
⟨~⟩
Alternation or contrast[citation needed] – e.g.[f]~[v] or[f~v] for variation between[f] and[v], noting that a/uː/~/ʊ/ contrast is maintained or lost, or indicating the change of a root in e.g.⫽ˈniːl~ˈnɛl+t⫽ for Englishkneel ~knelt.
⟨∅⟩
A null segment or morpheme. This may indicate the absence of an affix, e.g. ⟨kæt-∅⟩ for where an affix might appear but does not (cat instead ofcats), or a deleted segment that leaves a feature behind, such as ⟨∅ʷ⟩ for an theoretical labialized segment that is only realized as labialization on adjacent segments.[104]
Full capital letters are not used as IPA symbols, except as typewriter substitutes (e.g. N for ⟨ŋ⟩, S for ⟨ ʃ ⟩, O for ⟨ɔ⟩ – seeSAMPA). They are, however, often used in conjunction with the IPA in two cases:
for(archi)phonemes and fornatural classes of sounds (that is, as wildcards). TheextIPA chart, for example, uses capital letters as wildcards in its illustrations.
Wildcards are commonly used in phonology to summarize syllable or word shapes, or to show the evolution of classes of sounds. For example, the possible syllable shapes of Mandarin can be abstracted as ranging from/V/ (an atonic vowel) to/CGVNᵀ/ (a consonant-glide-vowel-nasal syllable with tone), andword-final devoicing may be schematized asC →C̥/_#. They are also used inhistorical linguistics for a sound that is posited but whose nature has not been determined beyond some generic category such as {nasal} or {uvular}. In speech pathology, capital letters represent indeterminate sounds, and may be superscripted to indicate they are weakly articulated: e.g.[ᴰ] is a weak indeterminate alveolar,[ᴷ] a weak indeterminate velar.[114]
There is a degree of variation between authors as to the capital letters used, but these are ubiquitous in English-language material:[115]
⟨Cᴳ⟩ for a consonant with a glide as secondary articulation (e.g. ⟨Cʲ⟩ for {palatalized consonant} or ⟨Cʷ⟩ for {labialized consonant})
⟨D̪⟩ for {dental consonant}
⟨H⟩, ⟨M⟩, ⟨L⟩ are also commonly used for high, mid and low tone, with ⟨LH⟩ for rising tone and ⟨HL⟩ for falling tone, rather than transcribing them overly precisely with IPA tone letters or with ambiguous digits.[note 45] When distinguishing five levels of pitch, ⟨xH⟩ and ⟨xL⟩ may be used for 'extra high' and 'extra low'. Arbitrary sequences of letters such as ⟨ABCD⟩ may be used for tone phonemes, especially when comparing across related languages.
Typical examples of archiphonemic use of capital letters are:[citation needed]
⟨I⟩ for the Turkish harmonic vowel set{iyɯu}[note 46]
⟨D⟩ for the conflated flapped middle consonant of American Englishwriter andrider
⟨N⟩ for thehomorganic syllable-coda nasal of languages such as Spanish and Japanese (essentially equivalent to the wild-card usage of the letter)
⟨R⟩ in cases where a phonemic distinction between trill/r/ and flap/ɾ/ is conflated, as in Spanishenrejar/eNreˈxaR/ (then is homorganic and the firstr is a trill, but the secondr is variable).[117]
Similar usage is found forphonemic analysis, where a language does not distinguish sounds that have separate letters in the IPA. For instance,Castillian Spanish has been analyzed as having phonemes/Θ/ and/S/, which surface as[θ] and[s] in voiceless environments and as[ð] and[z] in voiced environments (e.g.hazte/ˈaΘte/ →[ˈaθte], vshazme/ˈaΘme/ →[ˈaðme], orlas manos/laSˈmanoS/ →[lazˈmanos]).[118]
⟨V⟩, ⟨F⟩ and ⟨C⟩ have completely different meanings asVoice Quality Symbols, where they stand for "voice" (VoQS jargon forsecondary articulation),[note 47] "falsetto" and "creak". These three letters may take diacritics to indicate what kind of voice quality an utterance has, and may be used as carrier letters to extract a suprasegmental feature that occurs on all susceptible segments in a stretch of IPA. For instance, the transcription ofScottish Gaelic[kʷʰuˣʷt̪ʷs̟ʷ]'cat' and[kʷʰʉˣʷt͜ʃʷ]'cats' (Islay dialect) can be made more economical by extracting the suprasegmental labialization of the words:Vʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟] andVʷ[kʰʉˣt͜ʃ].[119] The conventional wildcards ⟨X⟩ or ⟨C⟩ might be used instead of VoQS ⟨V⟩ so that the reader does not misinterpret ⟨Vʷ⟩ as meaning that only vowels are labialized (i.e.Xʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟] for all segments labialized,Cʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟] for all consonants labialized), or the carrier letter may be omitted altogether (e.g.ʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟],[ʷkʰuˣt̪s̟] or[kʰuˣt̪s̟]ʷ). (See§ Suprasegmentals for other transcription conventions.)
This summary is to some extent valid internationally, but linguistic material written in other languages may have different associations with capital letters used as wildcards. For example, in German ⟨K⟩ and ⟨V⟩ are used forKonsonant'consonant' andVokal'vowel'; in Russian, ⟨С⟩ and ⟨Г⟩ are used forсогласный (soglasnyj,'consonant') andгласный (glasnyj,'vowel'). In French, tone may be transcribed with ⟨H⟩ and ⟨B⟩ forhaut'high' andbas'low';[120] Russian appears to be the opposite, with ⟨В⟩ forвысокий (vysokij,'high') and ⟨Н⟩ forнизкий (nizkij,'low').
The epiglottal trill is arguably covered by the generally trilled epiglottal "fricatives" ⟨ʜʢ⟩. Ad hoc letters for near-close central vowels, ⟨ᵻᵿ⟩, are used in some descriptions of English, though those are specificallyreduced vowels – forming a set with the IPA reduced vowels ⟨əɐ⟩ – and the simple points in vowel space are easily transcribed with diacritics: ⟨ɪ̈ʊ̈⟩ or ⟨ɨ̞ʉ̞⟩. Diacritics are able to fill in most of the remainder of the charts.[note 48] If a sound cannot be transcribed, an asterisk ⟨*⟩ may be used, either as a letter or as a diacritic (as in ⟨k*⟩ sometimes seen for theKorean "fortis" velar).
Representations of consonant sounds outside of the core set are created by adding diacritics to letters with similar sound values. The Spanish bilabial and dental approximants are commonly written as lowered fricatives,[β̞] and[ð̞] respectively.[note 49] Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives can be written as raised lateral approximants,[ɭ˔ʎ̝ʟ̝], though the extIPA also provides ⟨𝼅⟩ for the first of these. A few languages such asBanda 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 letter and the advanced diacritic,[ⱱ̟].[122]Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written[ʙ̪] (bilabial trill and the dental sign), and the labiodental plosives are now universally ⟨p̪b̪⟩ rather than thead hoc letters ⟨ȹȸ⟩ once found in Bantuist literature. Other taps can be written as extra-short plosives or laterals, e.g.[ ɟ̆ɢ̆ʟ̆], though in some cases the diacritic would need to be written below the letter. Aretroflex trill can be written as a retracted[r̠], just as non-subapical retroflex fricatives and uvular laterals[ʟ̠qʟ̠̊˔ʼ] sometimes are. The palatal trill, while not strictly impossible, is very difficult to pronounce and has no formal symbol in the IPA or ExtIPA because it is not found in any known language.
The vowels are similarly manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering.[note 50] For example, the unrounded equivalent of[ʊ] can be transcribed as mid-centered[ɯ̽], and the rounded equivalent of[æ] as raised[ɶ̝] or lowered[œ̞] (though for those who conceive of vowel space as a triangle, simple[ɶ] already is the rounded equivalent of[æ]). True mid vowels are lowered[e̞ø̞ɘ̞ɵ̞ɤ̞o̞] or raised[ɛ̝œ̝ɜ̝ɞ̝ʌ̝ɔ̝], while centered[ɪ̈ʊ̈] and[ä] (or, less commonly,[ɑ̈]) are near-close and open central vowels, respectively.
The only known vowels that cannot be represented in this scheme are vowels with unexpectedroundedness. For unambiguous transcription, such sounds would require dedicated diacritics. Possibilities include ⟨ʏʷ⟩ or ⟨ɪʷ⟩ for protrusion and ⟨uᵝ⟩ (or VoQS ⟨ɯᶹ⟩) for compression. However, these transcriptions suggest that the sounds are diphthongs, and so while they may be clear for a language like Swedish where they are diphthongs, they may be misleading for languages such as Japanese where they are monophthongs.TheextIPA 'spread' diacritic ⟨◌͍⟩ is sometimes seen for compressed ⟨u͍⟩, ⟨o͍⟩, ⟨ɔ͍⟩, ⟨ɒ͍⟩, though again the intended meaning would need to be explained or they would be interpreted as being spread the way that cardinal⟦i⟧ is. For protrusion (w-like labialization without velarization), Ladefoged & Maddieson use the old IPA omega diacritic for labialization, ⟨◌̫⟩, for protruded ⟨y᫇⟩, ⟨ʏ̫⟩, ⟨ø̫⟩, ⟨œ̫⟩. This is an adaptation of an old IPA convention of rounding an unrounded vowel letter likei with a subscript omega (⟨◌̫⟩) and unrounding a rounded letter likeu with a subscript turned omega.[124]Its inverse, a turned omega diacritic ⟨◌⟩, was adopted into Unicode in 2025 and is under consideration to mark compression in extIPA.[125]Kelly & Local use a combiningw diacritic ⟨◌ᪿ⟩ for protrusion (e.g. ⟨yᷱøᪿ⟩) and a combiningʍ diacritic ⟨◌ᫀ⟩ for compression (e.g. ⟨uᫀoᫀ⟩).[126] Because their transcriptions are manuscript, these are effectively the same symbols as the old IPA diacritics, which indeed are historically cursivew andʍ. However, the more angular ⟨◌ᫀ⟩ of typescript might misleadingly suggest the vowel is protruded and voiceless (like[ʍ]) rather than compressed and voiced.
In both print and speech, an IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it transcribes because IPA letters very often do not have their cardinal IPA values in practice. This is commonly the case in phonemic and broad phonetic transcription, making articulatory descriptions of IPA letters, such as "mid front rounded vowel" or "voiced velar stop", inappropriate as names for those letters. While theHandbook of the International Phonetic Association states that no official names exist for its symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each.[127] The symbols also havenonce names in theUnicode standard. In many cases, the names in Unicode and the IPAHandbook differ. For example, theHandbook calls ⟨ɛ⟩ "epsilon", while Unicode calls it "small letter open e".
The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are usually used for unmodified letters.[note 51] Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as ⟨ʕ⟩, may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol or on the sound that it represents. In Unicode, some of the letters of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the characters from the Greek block.
For diacritics, there are two methods of naming. For traditional diacritics, the IPA notes the name in a well known language; for example, ⟨é⟩ is "e-acute", based on the name of the diacritic in English and French. Non-traditional diacritics are often named after objects they resemble, so ⟨d̪⟩ is called "d-bridge".
After theKiel Convention in 1989, most IPA symbols were assigned an identifying number to prevent confusion between similar characters during the printing of manuscripts. The codes were never much used and have been superseded by Unicode.
The sequence⟨˨˦˧꜒꜔꜓k͜𝼄a͎̽᷅ꟸ⟩ in the fonts Gentium, Andika, Brill, Noto Serif, DejaVu Sans and Calibri. All but DejaVu align diacritics well. Asterisks are characters not supported by that font. In Noto and DejaVu, the red tone letters do not link properly, and in DejaVu the stacked diacritics overstrike each other. This is a test sequence: Noto and Calibri support most IPA adequately.
Many typefaces have support for IPA characters, but good diacritic rendering remains rare.[129]Web browsers generally do not need any configuration to display IPA characters, provided that a typeface capable of doing so is available to the operating system.
Typefaces that provide full IPA and nearly full extIPA support, including properly rendering the diacritics, includeGentium,Charis SIL,Doulos SIL, andAndika developed bySIL International. Indeed, the IPA chose Doulos to publish their chart in Unicode format.In addition to the level of support found in commercial and system fonts, these fonts support the full range of old-style (pre-Kiel) staveless tone letters, through acharacter variant option that suppresses the stave of the Chao tone letters. They also have an option to maintain the[a] ~[ɑ] vowel distinction in italics. The only notable gaps are with the extIPA: the combining parentheses, which enclose diacritics, are not supported, nor is the enclosing circle that marks unidentified sounds, and which Unicode considers to be acopy-edit mark and thus not eligible for Unicode support.
The basic LatinNoto fonts commissioned byGoogle also have significant IPA support, including diacritic placement, only failing with the more obscure IPA and extIPA characters and superscripts of theLatin Extended-F andLatin Extended-G blocks. The extIPA parentheses are included, but they do not enclose diacritics as they are supposed to.
DejaVu is the second free Unicode font chosen by the IPA to publish their chart. It was last updated in 2016 and so does not support the Latin F or G blocks. Stacked diacritics tend to overstrike each other.
Calibri, the former default font ofMicrosoft Office, has nearly complete IPA support with good diacritic rendering, though it is not as complete as some free fonts (see image at right). Other widespread Microsoft fonts, such asArial andTimes New Roman, have poor support.
Brill has complete IPA and extIPA coverage of characters added to Unicode by 2020, with good diacritic and tone-letter support. It is a commercial font but is freely available for non-commercial use.[131]
Several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols toASCII characters. Notable systems includeSAMPA andX-SAMPA. The usage of mapping systems in on-line text has to some extent been adopted in the context input methods, allowing convenient keying of IPA characters that would be otherwise unavailable on standard keyboard layouts.
IETF language tags have registeredfonipa as a variant subtag identifying text as written in IPA.[132]Thus, an IPA transcription of English could be tagged asen-fonipa.For the use of IPA without attribution to a concrete language,und-fonipa is available.
Online IPA keyboard utilities are available, though none of them cover the complete range of IPA symbols and diacritics. Examples are theIPA 2018 i-charts hosted by the IPA,[133]IPA character picker by Richard Ishida at GitHub,[134]Type IPA phonetic symbols at TypeIt.org,[135] and anIPA Chart keyboard by Weston Ruter also at GitHub.[136] In April 2019, Google'sGboard forAndroid added an IPA keyboard to its platform.[137][138] For iOS there are multiple free keyboard layouts available, such as theIPA Phonetic Keyboard.[139]
^The inverted bridge minus under the⟨t̺ʰ⟩ specifies it asapical (pronounced with the tip of the tongue), and the superscripth shows that it isaspirated (breathy); the rectangle under⟨t̻⟩ specifies that it islaminal (pronounced with the blade of the tongue). These details cause the English/t/ to sound different from the French/t/.
^"Originally, the aim was to make available a set of phonetic symbols which would be givendifferent articulatory values, if necessary, in different languages."[7]
^"From its earliest days [...] the International Phonetic Association has aimed to provide 'a separate sign for each distinctive sound; that is, for each sound which, being used instead of another, in the same language, can change the meaning of a word' [...] what became widely known in the twentieth century as the phoneme."[12]
^exceptions areaffricates anddiphthongs, which may be written as either simple sequences, such as⟨ts⟩ and⟨au⟩, or with tie bars or diacritics such as⟨t͜s⟩ and⟨au̯⟩ to clarify that they are single sounds.
^For instance,flaps and taps are two different kinds ofarticulation, but since no language has (yet) been found to make a distinction between, say, analveolar flap and an alveolar tap, the IPA does not provide such sounds with dedicated letters. Instead, it provides a single letter – in this case, [ɾ] – for both. Strictly speaking, this makes the IPA a partiallyphonemic alphabet, not a purelyphonetic one.
^This exception to the rules was made primarily to explain why the IPA does not make a dental–alveolar distinction, despite one being phonemic in hundreds of languages, including most of the continent of Australia.Americanist Phonetic Notation makes (or at least made) a distinction between apical⟨t d s z n l⟩ and laminal⟨τ δ ς ζ ν λ⟩, which is easily applicable to alveolar vs dental (when a language distinguishes apical alveolar from laminal dental, as in Australia), but despite several proposals to the Council, the IPA never voted to accept such a distinction.There are however other common phonemic distinctions that are made with diacritics, such as ⟨ʰ⟩ for aspirated consonants – a phonemic distinction made by thousands of languages – and ⟨ʲ⟩ forpalatalized consonants, which were once transcribed by distinct letters in the IPA until those letters were retired in favor of the diacritic.
^There are three basic tone diacritics and five basic tone letters, both sets of which may be compounded.
^"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 recognize makeshift letters; It recognizes only letters which have been carefully cut so as to be in harmony with the other letters."[14]
^"The new letters should be suggestive of the sounds they represent, by their resemblance to the old ones."[15]
^Originally,[ʊ] was written as a small capital U. However, this was not easy to read, and so it was replaced with a turned small capital omega. In modern typefaces, it often has its own design, called a "horseshoe".
^In addition, ⟨ɱ⟩ is anad hoc derivation of ⟨m⟩ in imitation of ⟨ŋ⟩.
^For example, single and double pipe symbols are used for minor and major prosodic breaks. Although theHandbook specifies the prosodic symbols as being "thick" vertical lines, which would in theory be distinct from simple ASCII pipes used as delimiters (and similar toDania transcription), this was an idea to keep them distinct from the otherwise similar pipes used asclick letters, and is almost never found in practice.[27] TheHandbook assigns the prosodic pipe the Unicode encodings U+007C, which is the simple ASCII symbol, and the double pipe U+2016.[28]
^For example,Merriam-Webster dictionaries usebackslashes\ ... \ to demarcate their in-house diaphonemic transcription system. This contrasts with theOxford English Dictionary, which uses/ ... / to transcribe a specific target accent.
^The proper angle brackets in Unicode are the mathematical symbols (U+27E8 and U+27E9). Chevrons ‹...› (U+2039, U+203A) are sometimes substituted, as in Americanist phonetic notation, as are the less-than and greater-than signs <...> (U+003C, U+003E) found on ASCII keyboards.
^Monolingual Hebrew dictionaries use pronunciation respelling for words with unusual spelling; for example, theEven-Shoshan Dictionary respellsתָּכְנִית as⟨תּוֹכְנִית⟩ because the word uses thekamatz katan.
^For example,Sergey Ozhegov's dictionary adds [нэ́] in brackets to the French loan-wordпенсне (pince-nez) to indicate that the final⟨е⟩ does notiotate the preceding⟨н⟩.
^"In accordance with long-established Czech lexicographical tradition, a modified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is adopted in which letters of the Czech alphabet are employed."[52]
^"Segments can usefully be divided into two major categories, consonants and vowels."[59]
^They were moved "for presentational convenience [...] because of [their] rarity and the small number of types of sounds which are found there."[62]
^"A symbol such as[β], shown on the chart in the position for a voiced bilabial fricative, can also be used to represent a voiced bilabial approximant if needed."[65]
^It is traditional to place the tie bar above the letters. It may be placed below to avoid overlap with ascenders or diacritic marks, or simply because it is more legible that way, as in Niesler; Louw; Roux (2005). "Phonetic analysis of Afrikaans, English, Xhosa and Zulu using South African speech databases".[70]
^Cf. the/ʷ.../ and/ʲ.../ transcriptions inErnst-Kurdi, Eszter (2017)."The Phonology of Mada". SIL Yaoundé.
^The IPAHandbook variously defines the "linking" symbol as marking the "lack of a boundary"[78] or "absence of a break",[28] and givesFrench liaison and Englishlinking r as examples. It more generally means that the consonant ending one word forms a syllable with the vowel beginning the following word, across an orthographic space. However, theHandbook illustration for Croatian uses it to tie atonicclitics to tonic words, with no resulting change in implied syllable structure.
^abThe global rise and fall arrows come before the affected syllable or prosodic unit, like stress and upstep/downstep. This contrasts with the Chao tone letters (listed below), which most commonly come after. One will occasionally see a horizontal arrow ⟨→⟩ for global level pitch (only dropping due todowndrift), e.g. in Julie Barbour (2012)A Grammar of Neverver. Additionally, some fonts display the arrows asemoji by default, if ︎ is not appended.
^abThere is not a one-to-one correspondence between tone/pitch diacritics and tone/pitch letters. When pitch is transcribed with diacritics, the three pitches ⟨éēè⟩ are taken as the basic levels and are called 'high', 'mid' and 'low'. Contour tones combine only these three and are called ⟨e᷇⟩ 'high-mid' etc. The more extreme pitches, which do not form contours, are ⟨e̋⟩ 'extra-high' and ⟨ȅ⟩ 'extra-low', usingdoubled diacritics. When transcribed with tone letters, however, combinations of all five levels are possible. Thus, ⟨e˥e˧e˩⟩ may be called 'high', 'mid' and 'low', with ⟨e˦e˨⟩ being 'near-high' and 'near-low', analogous to descriptions of vowel height. In a three-level transcription, ⟨éēè⟩ are identified with ⟨e˥e˧e˩⟩, but in a five-level transcription, ⟨e̋ȅ⟩ are identified with ⟨e˥e˩⟩.[79]
^abThe peaking and dipping diacritics are uncommon and are not illustrated in the IPAHandbook. An example is/kla᷈/ 'properly' inMian.
^Although any combination of tone diacritics is theoretically possible, such as ⟨e᪰⟩ for a falling–rising–falling tone, any others than those illustrated are rare. Double acute – grave is found for an extra-high falling tone in Valentin Vydrin, 2020,Dan. In Vossen & Dimmendaal (eds.)The Oxford Handbook of African Languages; and double acute – macron is found for an extrahigh-to-mid tone in Roger Blench, 2025,Tone Systems in the Bantoid Languages. Neither is supported by Unicode.
^Russian and Lithuanian sources and commonly use the characterU+2E3D⸽VERTICAL SIX DOTS for a less-than-minor break, such as the slight break in list intonation (e.g. the very slight break between digits in a telephone number).U+2E3E⸾WIGGLY VERTICAL LINE is used for an unexpected interruption in or a sharp change of intonation.[82]
^A work-around sometimes seen when a language has more than one rising or falling tone, and the author wishes to avoid the poorly legible diacritics ⟨e᷄,e᷅,e᷇,e᷆⟩ but does not wish to employ tone letters, is to restrict the generic rising ⟨ě⟩ and falling ⟨ê⟩ diacritics to the higher-pitched of the rising and falling tones, say/e˥˧/ and/e˧˥/, and to resurrect the retired (pre-Kiel) IPA subscript diacritics ⟨e̗⟩ and ⟨e̖⟩ for the lower-pitched rising and falling tones, say/e˩˧/ and/e˧˩/. When a language has either four or six level tones, the two middle tones are sometimes transcribed as high-mid ⟨e̍⟩ (non-standard) and low-mid ⟨ē⟩. Non-standard ⟨e̍⟩ is occasionally seen combined with acute and grave diacritics or with the macron to distinguish contour tones that involve the higher of the two mid tone levels.
^See for examplePe Maung Tin (1924). "bɜˑmiːz".Le Maître Phonétique. 2 (39) (5):4–5.JSTOR44704085. where five pitch levels are distinguished.
^The example has changed over the years. In the chart included in the 1999 IPAHandbook, it was[˦˥˦], and since the 2018 revision of the chart it has been[˧˦˨].
^Chao did not include tone shapes such as[˨˦˦],[˧˩˩], which rise or fall and then level off (or vice versa). Such tone shapes are, however, frequently encountered in the modern literature.
^In Chao's Sinological convention, a single tone letter ⟨˥⟩ is used for a high tone on achecked syllable, and a double tone letter ⟨˥˥⟩ for a high tone on an open syllable. Such redundant doubling is not used in theHandbook, where the tones of Cantonese[si˥] 'silk' and[sɪk˥] 'color' are transcribed the same way. If the author wishes to indicate a difference in phonetic or phonemic length, the IPA accomplishes that with the length marks ⟨◌̆◌ˑ◌ː⟩ rather than through the tone letters.
^Sometimes the obsolete transcription ⟨kʻ⟩ (with a turned apostrophe) for weak aspiration vs. ⟨kʰ⟩ for strong aspiration is still seen.
^The motivation for this may vary. Some authors find the tie bars displeasing but the lack of tie bars confusing (i.e. ⟨č⟩ for/t͡ʃ/ as distinct from/tʃ/), while others simply prefer to have one letter for each segmental phoneme in a language.[citation needed]
^"At the 1989 Kiel Convention of the IPA, a sub-group was established to draw up recommendations for the transcription of disordered speech."[108]
^As inAfrasianist phonetic notation. ⟨S⟩ is particularly ambiguous. It has been used for 'stop', 'fricative', 'sibilant', 'sonorant' and 'semivowel'. On the other hand, plosive/stop is frequently abbreviated ⟨P⟩, ⟨S⟩ or (with non-tonal languages) * ⟨T⟩. The illustrations given here use, as much as possible, letters that are capital versions of members of the sets they stand for: IPA[n] is a nasal and ⟨N⟩ is any nasal;[p] is a plosive,[f] a fricative,[s] a sibilant,[l] both a lateral and a liquid,[r] both a rhotic and a resonant, and [ʞ] a click. ⟨¢⟩ is an obstruent in Americanist notation, where it stands for[ts]. Alternative wildcards for 'glide', ⟨J⟩ and ⟨W⟩, partly fit this pattern, but are much less common than ⟨G⟩ in English-language sources.
^In the context of⟨CRV-⟩ syllables, the⟨R⟩ is understood to include liquids and glides but to exclude nasals, as in Bennett (2020: 115) 'Click Phonology', in Sands (ed.),Click Consonants, Brill
^{Close vowel} may instead be ⟨U⟩, and ⟨O⟩ may stand for {obstruent}.
^Or glottal~pharyngeal ⟨H⟩, as in Afrasianist phonetic notation.
^Somewhat more precisely, ⟨LM⟩ and ⟨MH⟩ are sometimes used for low and high rising tones, and ⟨HM⟩, ⟨ML⟩ for high and low falling tones; occasionally ⟨R⟩ for 'rising' or ⟨F⟩ for 'falling' is seen.
^For other Turkic languages, ⟨I⟩ may be restricted to{ɯi} (that is, toı i), ⟨U⟩ tou ü, ⟨A⟩ toa e (ora ä), etc.
^VoQS ⟨V⟩ does not mean phonetic voicing, nor a vowel; for example, in VoQS ⟨Ṽ⟩ is "nasal voice" (that is,nasalization), not a nasal vowel as it would be read in IPA notation.
^"Diacritics may also be employed to create symbols for phonemes, thus reducing the need to create new letter shapes."[121]
^Duckworth, Martin; Allen, George; Hardcastle, William; Ball, Martin (1990). "Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for the transcription of atypical speech".Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics.4 (4): 278.doi:10.3109/02699209008985489.ISSN0269-9206.
^Basbøll, Hans (2005).The Phonology of Danish. The Phonology of the World's Languages. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 45, 59.ISBN978-0-19-824268-0.
^Sproat, Richard William (2000).A Computational Theory of Writing Systems. Studies in Natural Language Processing. Cambridge University Press. p. 26.ISBN978-0-521-66340-3.
^Meletis, Dimitrios; Dürscheid, Christa (2022).Writing Systems and Their Use: An Overview of Grapholinguistics. De Gruyter Mouton. p. 64.ISBN978-3-11-075777-4.
^Tench, Paul (11 August 2011).Transcribing the Sound of English: A Phonetics Workbook for Words and Discourse. Cambridge University Press. p. 61.doi:10.1017/cbo9780511698361.ISBN978-1-107-00019-3.
^Martin J. Ball; Joan Rahilly (August 2011). "The symbolization of central approximants in the IPA".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.41 (2). Cambridge Journals Online:231–237.doi:10.1017/s0025100311000107.S2CID144408497.
^See "Illustrations of the IPA" in theHandbook for individual languages (which for example may use⟨/c/⟩ as a phonemic symbol for what is phonetically realized as[tʃ], or superscript variants of IPA letters that are not officially defined).
^Ganiev, Ž. V. (2012).Sovremennyj ruskij jazyk. Flinta/Nauka.ISBN9785976510449.
^Evans, Nicholas (1995).A grammar of Kayardild: with historical-comparative notes on Tangkic. Mouton Grammar Library. Mouton de Gruyter.ISBN978-3-11-012795-9.
^Barker, Geoffrey (2005).Intonation Patterns in Tyrolean German: an Autosegmental-Metrical Analysis. Berkeley Insights in Linguistics and Semiotics. Peter Lang Verlag. p. 11.ISBN978-0-8204-6837-2.
^Alderete, John; Jebbour, Abdelkrim; Kachoub, Bouchra; Wilbee, Holly."Tashlhiyt Berber grammar synopsis"(PDF). Simon Fraser University.Archived(PDF) from the original on 28 December 2021. Retrieved20 November 2021.
^abH. Ekkehard Wolff (2023: xxiv)Lexical Reconstruction in Central Chadic: A Comparative Study of Vowels, Consonants and Prosodies. Cambridge University Press.
^Quilis, Antonio (2012).Principios de fonología y fonética españolas. Cuadernos de lengua española (in Spanish) (1st ed.). Madrid: Arco Libros. p. 65.ISBN978-84-7635-250-2.
^Paulian, Christiane (1975).Le Kukuya: langue teke du Congo; phonologie, classes nominales. Bibliothèque de la SELAF (in French). Peeters Publishers.ISBN978-2-85297-008-3.
^Olson, Kenneth S.; Hajek, John (1999). "The phonetic status of the labial flap".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.29 (2):101–114.doi:10.1017/s0025100300006484.S2CID14438770.
Martin J. Ball. 2024.Changes to certain extIPA diacritics.Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, vol. 38, no. 7, 692–695.
International Phonetic Association (1899). "tsum alfabeːt des mf".Le Maître Phonétique.14 (2):37–39.JSTOR44707763.
International Phonetic Association (1900). "Exposé des Principes de L'Association Phonétique Internationale".Le Maître Phonétique.15:1–20.JSTOR44749210.
Ball, Martin J.; John H. Esling; B. Craig Dickson (1995). "The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality".Journal of the International Phonetic Association.25 (2):71–80.doi:10.1017/S0025100300005181.S2CID145791575.
Hill, Kenneth C.; Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William (March 1988). "Review ofPhonetic Symbol Guide by G. K. Pullum & W. Ladusaw".Language.64 (1):143–144.doi:10.2307/414792.JSTOR414792.
Ladefoged, Peter; Morris Halle (September 1988). "Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet".Language.64 (3):577–582.doi:10.2307/414533.JSTOR414533.
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