Official chart
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association. It is not a complete list of all possible speech sounds in the world's languages, only those about which stand-alone articles exist in this encyclopedia.
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Legend: unrounded • rounded |
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Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced, to the left are voiceless. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ◌̋ | ˥ | ꜒ | Extra-high (top) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ◌́ | ˦ | ꜓ | High |
| ◌̄ | ˧ | ꜔ | Mid |
| ◌̀ | ˨ | ꜕ | Low |
| ◌̏ | ˩ | ꜖ | Extra-low (bottom) |
| ꜜ◌ | Downstep | ||
| ꜛ◌ | Upstep | ||
| ◌̌ | ˩˥ | ꜖꜒ | Rising (low to high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| ◌̂ | ˥˩ | ꜒꜖ | Falling (high to low) |
| ◌᷄ | ˧˥ | ꜔꜒ | High rising |
| ˨˦ | ꜕꜓ | Mid rising | |
| ◌᷅ | ˩˧ | ꜖꜔ | Low rising |
| ◌᷇ | ˥˧ | ꜒꜔ | High falling |
| ˦˨ | ꜓꜕ | Mid falling | |
| ◌᷆ | ˧˩ | ꜔꜖ | Low falling |
| ◌᷈ | ˧˥˨,˨˦˨,˩˧˩ | ꜔꜒꜕,꜕꜓꜕,꜖꜔꜖ | Rising–falling (Peaking) |
| ◌᷉ | ˥˧˥,˦˨˦,˧˩˧ | ꜒꜔꜒,꜓꜕꜓,꜔꜖꜔ | Falling–rising (Dipping) |
| ◌̥ | ◌̊ | 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 | ◌ˤ | Pharyngealized | ◌̚ | No audible release | ||||||||||||||
| ◌̈ | Centralized | ◌̴ | Velarized or pharyngealized | ◌ᵊ | Mid central vowel release | |||||||||||||||
| ◌̽ | Mid-centralized | ◌̝ | ◌˔ | Raised | ◌ᶿ | Voiceless dental fricative release | ||||||||||||||
| ◌̩ | ◌̍ | Syllabic | ◌̞ | ◌˕ | Lowered | ◌ˣ | Voiceless velar fricative release | |||||||||||||
| ◌̯ | ◌̑ | Non-syllabic | ◌̘ | ◌꭪ | Advanced tongue root | ◌ʼ | Ejective | |||||||||||||
| ◌˞ | Rhoticity | ◌̙ | ◌꭫ | Retracted tongue root | ◌͡◌ ◌͜◌ | Affricate or double articulation | ||||||||||||||
| ˈ | Primary stress |
|---|---|
| ˌ | Secondary stress |
| ː | Long |
| ˑ | Half-long |
| ◌̆ | Extra-short |
| | | Minor (foot) group |
| ‖ | Major (intonation) group |
| . | Syllable break |
| ‿ | Linking (absence of a break) |
| ↗︎ | Global rise |
| ↘︎ | Global fall |
| [ ] | Phonetic transcription |
|---|---|
| / / | Phonemic transcription |
| { } | Prosodic notation |
| ( ) | Indistinguishable utterance |
| ⸨ ⸩ | Sound obscured |
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like and semivowels like and, as well as lateral approximants like.
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in the case of German ; or the side of the tongue against the molars, in the case of Welsh. This turbulent airflow is called frication.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.
Labial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. The two common labial articulations are bilabials, articulated using both lips, and labiodentals, articulated with the lower lip against the upper teeth, both of which are present in English. A third labial articulation is dentolabials, articulated with the upper lip against the lower teeth, normally only found in pathological speech. Generally precluded are linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue contacts the posterior side of the upper lip, making them coronals, though sometimes, they behave as labial consonants.
A labialized velar or labiovelar is a velar consonant that is labialized, with a -like secondary articulation. Examples are, which are pronounced like a, with rounded lips, such as the labialized voiceless velar plosive and labialized voiced velar plosive, obstruents being common among the sounds that undergo labialization.
Pharyngealization is a secondary articulation of consonants or vowels by which the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted during the articulation of the sound.
In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation and articulation, it is one of three main components of speech production. The airstream mechanism is mandatory for most sound production and constitutes the first part of this process, which is called initiation.
In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the active articulator and passive articulator. Standard Spanish ⟨rr⟩ as in perro, for example, is an alveolar trill.
A pharyngeal consonant is a consonant that is articulated primarily in the pharynx. Some phoneticians distinguish upper pharyngeal consonants, or "high" pharyngeals, pronounced by retracting the root of the tongue in the mid to upper pharynx, from (ary)epiglottal consonants, or "low" pharyngeals, which are articulated with the aryepiglottic folds against the epiglottis at the entrance of the larynx, as well as from epiglotto-pharyngeal consonants, with both movements being combined.
In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is.
The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for pedagogical purposes. The Association was established in Paris in 1886 by French and British language teachers led by Paul Passy. The prototype of the alphabet appeared in Phonetic Teachers' Association (1888b). The Association based their alphabet upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet, which in turn was based on the Phonotypic Alphabet of Isaac Pitman and the Palæotype of Alexander John Ellis.
Doubly articulated consonants are consonants with two simultaneous primary places of articulation of the same manner. They are a subset of co-articulated consonants. They are to be distinguished from co-articulated consonants with secondary articulation; that is, a second articulation not of the same manner. An example of a doubly articulated consonant is the voiceless labial–velar plosive, which is a and a pronounced simultaneously. On the other hand, the voiceless labialized velar plosive has only a single stop articulation, velar, with a simultaneous approximant-like rounding of the lips. In some dialects of Arabic, the voiceless velar fricative has a simultaneous uvular trill, but this is not considered double articulation either.
In phonetics, secondary articulation occurs when the articulation of a consonant is equivalent to the combined articulations of two or three simpler consonants, at least one of which is an approximant. The secondary articulation of such co-articulated consonants is the approximant-like articulation. It "colors" the primary articulation rather than obscuring it. Maledo (2011) defines secondary articulation as the superimposition of lesser stricture upon a primary articulation.
The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA, are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the International Phonetic Alphabet for the phonetic transcription of disordered speech. Some of the symbols are used for transcribing features of normal speech in IPA transcription, and are accepted as such by the International Phonetic Association.
Unicode supports several phonetic scripts and notation systems through its existing scripts and the addition of extra blocks with phonetic characters. These phonetic characters are derived from an existing script, usually Latin, Greek or Cyrillic. Apart from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), extensions to the IPA and obsolete and nonstandard IPA symbols, these blocks also contain characters from the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet and the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet.
Dania is the traditional linguistic transcription system used in Denmark to describe the Danish language. It was invented by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen and published in 1890 in the Dania, Tidsskrift for folkemål og folkeminder magazine from which the system was named.
The voiceless upper-pharyngeal plosive or stop is a rare consonant.
The voiced upper-pharyngeal plosive or stop is a rare consonant.
