International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardized set of symbols for transcribing spoken sounds across languages. The International Phonetic Association maintains its chart and conventions.

Phonetics: The study of speech sounds, including how they are produced, transmitted, and perceived. The IPA is a shared notation system developed for describing the sounds studied by phonetics.
Broad transcription: A transcription that records selected sound distinctions while omitting fine phonetic detail. It uses IPA symbols economically, often representing phonemic contrasts rather than every pronunciation detail.
International Phonetic Association: An organization founded in 1886 to promote phonetic transcription and the teaching of pronunciation. It designed and maintains the alphabet and publishes its official chart.
Pronunciation dictionary: A reference work that gives pronunciations of words, often using phonetic transcription. IPA entries can show pronunciations that ordinary spelling leaves ambiguous.
Phonetic respelling: A pronunciation aid that approximates speech sounds using familiar spelling conventions. Unlike IPA, respelling relies on readers’ existing knowledge of a particular orthography.
Phoneme: A speech sound category that distinguishes words in a particular language. IPA transcription can represent phonetic detail or mark phonemes between slashes.
Narrow transcription: A transcription that records fine phonetic details of how speech sounds are produced. IPA diacritics and precise symbol choices allow narrow descriptions of actual pronunciations.
Paul Passy: A French linguist and phonetician who helped found the International Phonetic Association. Passy helped organize the association whose members developed the IPA.
Language documentation: The recording and analysis of a language’s structures and use, especially for future study. IPA transcription helps document the sounds of languages without relying on their spelling systems.
X-SAMPA: An ASCII-based system for representing IPA symbols using sequences of ordinary keyboard characters. It encodes IPA distinctions in plain text when IPA characters are unavailable.

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