Conlang:International Phonetic Alphabet

IPA stands for  I nternational P honetic A lphabet. A way to represent in printing or script the sounds of different languages.

To represent sounds in computer environments, mainly ASCII, for both human and machines, there is SAMPA.

Single articulation
The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation and columns that designate place of articulation. The main chart only includes consonants with a single place of articulation.

Notes:
 * Asterisks (*) mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
 * Daggers (†) mark IPA symbols that do not yet have official Unicode support. Since May 2005, this is the case of the labiodental flap, symbolized by a right-hook v: [[Image:Labiodental flap (Gentium).png|20px|Labiodental flap]] (Proposal to add this symbol to Unicode)
 * In rows where some symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except for breathy-voiced ). However, cannot be voiced. In the other rows (the sonorants), the single symbol represents a voiced consonant.
 * Although there is a single symbol for the coronal places of articulation for all consonants but fricatives, when dealing with a particular language, the symbols are treated as specifically alveolar, post-alveolar, etc., as appropriate for that language.
 * Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
 * The symbols represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
 * It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives, , and.
 * The labiodental nasal is not known to exist as a phoneme in any language.

Coarticulation
Notes:
 * is described as a "simultaneous and ". However, this analysis is disputed.
 * To be complete, this chart should also include the semi-palatalized postalveolar (palato-alveolar) fricatives and.
 * The miscellaneous portion of the chart, as published by the IPA, includes additional symbols that would have been included in the main consonant chart were it not for difficulties in typesetting on a printed page. In this article, which does not suffer from such problems, they have been included in the main chart above.

Consonants (non-pulmonic)
Notes:
 * All clicks are doubly articulated and require two symbols: a velar or uvular stop, plus a symbol for the release:, etc. When the dorsal articulation is omitted, a may usually be assumed.
 * Symbols for the voiceless implosives are no longer supported by the IPA. Instead, the voiced equivalent is used with a voiceless diacritic:, etc.
 * Although not confirmed from any language, and therefore not "explicitly recognized" by the IPA, a retroflex implosive, , is supported in the Unicode Phonetic Extensions Supplement, added in version 4.1 of the Unicode Standard, or can be created as a composite.
 * The ejective symbol is often seen for glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as, but these are more properly transcribed as creaky.

Vowels
Notes:
 * Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel, as does (at least prototypically). All others are unrounded.
 * is not confirmed as a distinct phoneme in any language.
 * is officially a front vowel, but there is little distinction between front and central open vowels, and is frequently used for an open central vowel.

Affricates and double articulation
Affricates and doubly articulated stops are represented by two symbols joined by a tie bar, either above or below the symbols. The six commonest affricates are optionally represented by ligatures, though this is no longer official IPA usage, due to the great number of ligatures that would be required to represent all affricates this way. A third affricate transcription sometimes seen uses the superscript notation for a consonant release, for example for, paralleling  ~. The symbols for the palatal plosives, are often used as a convenience for  or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.

Note:
 * If your browser uses Arial Unicode MS to display IPA characters, the following incorrectly formed sequences may look better due to a bug in that font:.

Extended IPA
The Extended IPA was designed for disordered speech. However, some of the symbols (especially diacritics, below) are occasionally used for transcribing normal speech as well.

View a pdf file here.

The last symbol may be used with the alveolar click for, a combined alveolar and sublaminal click or "cluck-click".

Tone
IPA allows for the use of either tone diacritics or tone letters to indicate tones.

Note:
 * With regard to tone diacritics, Unicode encodes marks for some contour tones, but not all. In Unicode version 4.1, only hacek (rising) and circumflex (falling) diacritics were encoded. Subsequent versions may also include six additional diacritics for contour tones, such as the macron-acute and the grave-acute-grave ligatures. Note that contour tone diacritics are not encoded as sequences of level tone diacritics in Unicode.
 * With regard to tone letters, Unicode does not have separate encodings for contour tones. Instead, sequences of level tone letters are used, with proper display dependent on the font, usually by means of OpenType font rendition: or . (These are probably not displaying correctly in your browser. See the [[media:IPA suprasegmentals 2005.png|image]] for a sample of how they should appear.) Since few fonts support combination tone letters (see the external links for one that is free), a common solution is to use the old system of superscript numerals from '1' to '5', for example [e53, e312]. However, this depends on local linguistic tradition, with '5' generally being high and '1' being low for Asian languages, but '1' being high and '5' low for African languages. An old IPA convention sometimes still seen is to use sub-diacritics for low contour tones:  for low-falling and low-rising.
 * The upstep and downstep modifiers are superscript arrows. Unicode version 4.1 does not encode these, though subsequent versions will. The arrows for upstep and downstep should not be confused with the full-height arrows, which are used to indicate airflow direction.

Diacritics
Sub-diacritics may be placed above a symbol with a descender, i.e. . The dotless i, <ı>, is used when the dot would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA symbols may appear as diacritics to represent phonetic detail: (fricative release),  (breathy voice),  (glottal onset),  (epenthetic schwa), oundefined (diphthongization).

Notes:

The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from an open to a closed glottis phonation are:

Extended IPA diacritics
[[Media:ExtIPA.png|The letters and diacritics of the ExtIPA]]

The ExtIPA has widened the use of some of the regular IPA diacritics, such as for pre-aspiration, or  for a linguolabial sibilant, as well as adding some new ones. Some of the ExtIPA diacritics can be used for non-disordered speech as well, for example for the unusual airstream mechanisms of Damin.

One modification is the use of subscript parentheses around the phonation diacritics to indicate partial phonation; a single parenthesis at the left or right of the voicing indicates that it is partially phonated at the beginning or end of the segment. For example, is a partially voiced [s],  shows partial initial voicing, and  partial final voicing; also  is a partially devoiced [z],  shows partial initial devoicing, and partial final devoicing. These conventions may be convenient for representing various voice onset times.

Phonation diacritics may also be prefixed or suffixed rather than placed directly under the segment to represent relative timing. For instance, is a pre-voiced [z], a post-voiced [z], and is an [a] with a creaky offglide.

Other ExtIPA diacritics are,

In addition to these symbols, a subscript indicates that an articulation is laterally offset to the left or right, and a double exclamation mark indicates 'ventricular' phonation, though it is not clear how this differs from 'harsh' phonation.

Prosodic notation
The ExtIPA also makes use of musical notation for the tempo and dynamics of connected speech. These are subscripted on the insides of a {brace} notation that indicates that they are comments on the prosody.

Pauses are indicated with periods or numbers inside parentheses.