The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a system of phonetic notation devised by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) used in spoken human language. It is intended as a notational standard for the phonemic and phonetic representation of all spoken languages.
This page gives a general overview of the symbols used in the IPA. As it is used for all languages, it would be impractical to explain to English speakers how to pronounce all of the sounds. Therefore, the symbols are grouped based on the features they have, or the parts of the mouth used to pronounce them. A dental consonant, for example, is pronounced using the teeth, while a bilabial consonant uses both lips.
Pages explaining the pronunciation of individual languages can be found inCategory:Pronunciation by language. General guidance for the presentation of pronunciations on Wiktionary is atWiktionary:Pronunciation.
There are two main types of brackets used in the International Phonetic Alphabet:/ ... / and[ ... ].
/ ... / is used forphonemic transcriptions, whereallophones in a specific language are all assigned into a single abstractphoneme, while[ ... ] is forphonetic transcriptions.
For example, the English wordspin andspin can be transcribed phonemically as/pɪn/ and/spɪn/, since the⟨p⟩ is recognized as the same sound by English speakers. However, when pronounced, the⟨p⟩ is aspirated in the former case but not the latter, resulting in phonetic transcriptions like[pʰɪn] and[spɪn].
| Clicks | Voiced implosives | Ejectives | |||
| ʘ | Bilabial click release | ɓ | Bilabial voiced implosive | ʼ | For example: |
| ǀ | Dental click release | ɗ | Alveolar voiced implosive | pʼ | Bilabial ejective stop |
| ǃ | (Post)alveolar click release | ᶑ | Retroflex voiced implosive | tʼ | Alveolar ejective stop |
| ǂ | Palatal click release | ʄ | Palatal voiced implosive | kʼ | Velar ejective stop |
| 𝼊 | Retroflex click release | ɠ | Velar voiced implosive | sʼ | Alveolar ejective fricative |
| ǁ | Lateral click release | ʛ | Uvular voiced implosive | t͡ʃʼ | Post-alveolar ejective affricate |
| Front | N.-front | Central | N.-back | Back | |
| Close | |||||
| Near-close | |||||
| Close-mid | |||||
| Mid | |||||
| Open-mid | |||||
| Near-open | |||||
| Open | |||||
| ʍ | Voiceless labial-velar fricative |
| w | Voiced labial-velar approximant |
| ɥ | Voiced labial-palatal approximant |
| ɕʑ | Alveolo-palatal fricatives |
| ɧ | Simultaneousʃ andx |
| ˈ | Primary stress (indicated before the stressed element) |
| ˌ | Secondary stress (indicated before the stressed element) |
| ː | Long |
| ˑ | Half-long |
| ˘ | Extra-short |
| . | Syllable break |
| ǀ | Minor (foot) group |
| ǁ | Major (intonation) group |
| ‿ | Linking (absence of a break) |
| ˥ | ꜒ | Extra-high (top) tone |
| ˦ | ꜓ | Mid-high tone |
| ˧ | ꜔ | Mid tone |
| ˨ | ꜕ | Mid-low tone |
| ˩ | ꜖ | Extra-low (bottom) tone |
| ꜛ | ꜜ | Upstep anddownstep |
Tone letters may come before or after a word or syllable. In the IPAHandbook, they come before to indicate prosodic pitch in Portuguese, and after to indicate lexical tone in Cantonese.
They may also face left or right. The distinction is used fortone sandhi.
Upstep and downstep always come before the syllable.
Diacritics may be placed above a symbol with a descender, e.g. ŋ̊.
| ̥ | Voiceless | ̤ | Breathy voiced | ̪ | Dental |
| ̬ | Voiced | ̰ | Creaky voiced | ̺ | Apical |
| ʰ | Aspirated | ̼ | Linguolabial | ̻ | Laminal |
| ̹ | More rounded | ʷ | Labialized | ̃ | Nasalized |
| ̜ | Less rounded | ʲ | Palatalized | ⁿ | Nasal release |
| ̟ | Advanced | ˠ | Velarized | ˡ | Lateral release |
| ̠ | Retracted | ˁ | Pharyngealized | ̚ | No audible release |
| ̈ | Centralized | ̴ | Velarized or pharyngealized | ||
| ̽ | Mid-centralized | ̝ | Raised (ɹ̝ = voiced alveolar fricative) | ||
| ̩ | Syllabic | ̞ | Lowered (β̞ = voiced bilabial approximant) | ||
| ̯ | Non-syllabic | ̘ | Advanced tongue root | ||
| ˞ | Rhoticity | ̙ | Retracted tongue root | ||
| ͍ | Labial spreading | ͈ | Strong articulation | ͊ | Denasal |
| ͆ | Dentolabial | ͉ | Weak articulation | ͋ | Nasal escape |
| ̪͆ | Interdental/Bidental | \ | Reiterated articulation | ͌ | Velopharyngeal friction |
| ͇ | Alveolar | ͎ | Whistled articulation | ↓ | Ingressive airflow |
| ̼ | Linguolabial | ͢ | Sliding articulation | ↑ | Egressive airflow |
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