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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) requires specific names for the symbols and diacritics used in the alphabet.
It is often desirable to distinguish an IPA symbol from the sound it is intended to represent, since there is not a one-to-one correspondence between symbol and sound in broad transcription. The symbol's names and phonetic descriptions are described in the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. The symbols also have nonce names in the Unicode standard. In some cases, the Unicode names and the IPA names do not agree. For example, IPA calls ɛ "epsilon", but Unicode calls it "small letter open E".
The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are used for unmodified symbols. In Unicode, some of the symbols of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA[ clarification needed ]; the others use the symbols from the Greek section.
Examples:
IPA symbol name | phonetic description | Unicode name | |
---|---|---|---|
p | (lowercase) p | voiceless bilabial stop | LATIN SMALL LETTER P |
x | (lowercase) x | voiceless velar fricative | LATIN SMALL LETTER X |
r | (lowercase) r | coronal trill | LATIN SMALL LETTER R |
β | beta | voiced bilabial fricative | GREEK SMALL LETTER BETA |
ɛ | epsilon | open-mid front unrounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN E |
ɣ | gamma | voiced velar fricative | LATIN SMALL LETTER GAMMA |
θ | theta | voiceless dental fricative | GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA |
χ | chi | voiceless uvular fricative | GREEK SMALL LETTER CHI |
ɸ | phi [1] | voiceless bilabial fricative | LATIN SMALL LETTER PHI |
ʊ | upsilon [2] | near-close near-back rounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER UPSILON |
Note
The IPA standard includes some small capital letters, such as ʀ and ɢ, although it is common to refer to these symbols as simply "capital" or "cap" letters, because the IPA standard does not include any full-size capital letters.
A few letters have the forms of cursive or script letters. Examples:
IPA symbol name | phonetic description | Unicode name | |
---|---|---|---|
ɑ | single-story a | open back unrounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER ALPHA |
ɡ | single-story g [1] | voiced velar stop | LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G |
ʋ | cursive v [2] | labiodental approximant | LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH HOOK |
Note
Ligatures are called precisely that, although Unicode often mistakenly calls them "digraphs". Examples:
IPA symbol name | phonetic description | Unicode name | |
---|---|---|---|
æ | lower-case A-E ligature | near-open front unrounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER AE |
œ | lower-case O-E ligature | open-mid front rounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE |
ɮ | L-Ezh ligature | voiced coronal lateral fricative | LATIN SMALL LETTER LEZH |
Note that "œ" can alternatively be called ethel, and similarly "æ" can be called ash.
Many letters are turned, or rotated 180 degrees. Examples:
IPA symbol name | phonetic description | Unicode name | |
---|---|---|---|
ʎ | turned Y | palatal lateral approximant | LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED Y |
ɥ | turned H | labial-palatal approximant | LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED H |
ɒ | turned script A | open back rounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED ALPHA |
ʌ | turned V [1] | open-mid back unrounded vowel | LATIN SMALL TURNED V |
ɔ | open O [2] | open-mid back rounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER OPEN O |
A few letters are reversed (flipped on a vertical axis):
IPA symbol name | phonetic description | Unicode name | |
---|---|---|---|
ɘ | reversed e | close-mid central unrounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED E |
ɜ | reversed epsilon | open-mid central unrounded vowel | LATIN SMALL LETTER REVERSED OPEN E |
ʕ | reversed glottal stop [1] | voiced pharyngeal fricative | LATIN LETTER PHARYNGEAL VOICED FRICATIVE |
A couple letters are inverted (flipped on a horizontal axis): ʁinverted small capital R and the obsolete ʖinverted glottal stop. (ʍ could also be called an inverted w, but turned w is more common.)
When a horizontal stroke is added, it is called a crossbar, as in ħ barred h , ɵ barred o , ʢreversed barred glottal stop or barred ayin, and ɟbarred dotless j or barred gelded j (apparently never 'turned f').
One letter instead has a slash through it: ø slashed o .
The implosives have hook tops: ɓ hook-top b , ɗ hook-top d , etc., as does ɦhook-top h.
Such an extension at the bottom of a letter is called a tail. It may be specified as left or right depending on which direction it turns, as in ɳright-tail n, ɻright-tail turned r, ɲleft-tail n, ʐtail z (or just retroflex z), etc. Note that ŋ is called eng or engma , ɱmeng, and ꜧheng.
When the tail loops over itself, it's called curly: ʝcurly-tail j, ɕcurly-tail c.
There are also a few unique modifications: ɬbelted l, ɞclosed reversed epsilon (there was once also a ɷclosed omega), ɰright-leg turned m, ɺturned long-leg r (there was once also a long-leg r), ǁdouble pipe, and the obsolete ʗstretched c.
Several non-English letters have traditional names: çc cedilla , ð eth (also spelled edh), ŋengma or eng, ə schwa (also spelled shwa), ǃexclamation mark, ǀpipe.
Other symbols are unique to the IPA, and have developed their own quirky names: ɾfish-hook r, ɤram's horns, ʘbull's eye, ʃ esh (apparently never 'stretched s'), ʒ ezh (sometimes confused with yogh ), ɧhook-top heng.
The ʔ is usually called by the sound it represents, glottal stop. This is not normally a problem, because this symbol is seldom used to represent anything else. However, to specify the symbol itself, it is sometimes unofficially called a gelded question mark. This latter name is derived from its original form as a dotless question mark in a fashion reminiscent of gelding.
Diacritics are alternately named after their function. This would mean that the bridge is called the dental sign, the under-stroke is the syllabicity sign, and the up tack is the raising sign.
D, or d, is the fourth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is dee, plural dees.
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek διακριτικός, from διακρίνω. The word diacritic is a noun, though it is sometimes used in an attributive sense, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritics, such as the acute ⟨ó⟩, grave ⟨ò⟩, and circumflex ⟨ô⟩, are often called accents. Diacritics may appear above or below a letter or in some other position such as within the letter or between two letters.
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.
R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ar, plural ars, or in Ireland or.
T, or t, is the twentieth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is tee, plural tees.
The circumflex is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from Latin: circumflexus "bent around"—a translation of the Ancient Greek: περισπωμένη.
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Unicode has subscripted and superscripted versions of a number of characters including a full set of Arabic numerals. These characters allow any polynomial, chemical and certain other equations to be represented in plain text without using any form of markup like HTML or TeX.
The letter Ʊ, called horseshoe or sometimes bucket, inverted omega or Latin upsilon, is a letter of the International Phonetic Alphabet used to transcribe a near-close near-back rounded vowel. Graphically, the lower case is a turned small-capital Greek letter omega (Ω) in many typefaces, and historically it derives from a small-capital Latin U (ᴜ), with the serifs exaggerated to make them more visible. However, Geoffrey Pullum interpreted it as an IPA variant of the Greek letter upsilon (υ) and called it Latin upsilon, the name that would be adopted by Unicode, though in IPA an actual Greek upsilon is also used for the voiced labiodental approximant; Pullum called this letter script V and Unicode calls it V with hook.
L, or l, is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is el, plural els.
The palatal hook (◌̡) is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent palatalized and prevelar consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and is distinguished from various other hooks indicating retroflexion, etc. Theoretically, it could be used on all IPA consonant letters, – even on those used for palatal consonants, – but it is not attested on all of the IPA letters of its era. It was withdrawn by the IPA in 1989, in favour of a superscript j following the consonant.
J, or j, is the tenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its usual name in English is jay, with a now-uncommon variant jy.
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I, or i, is the ninth letter and the third vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is i, plural ies.
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In typesetting, the hook or tail is a diacritic mark attached to letters in many alphabets. In shape it looks like a hook and it can be attached below as a descender, on top as an ascender and sometimes to the side. The orientation of the hook can change its meaning: when it is below and curls to the left it can be interpreted as a palatal hook, and when it curls to the right is called hook tail or tail and can be interpreted as a retroflex hook. It should not be mistaken with the hook above, a diacritical mark used in Vietnamese, or the rhotic hook, used in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
IPA Braille is the modern standard Braille encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as recognized by the International Council on English Braille.
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 Phonetic Symbol Guide is a book by Geoffrey Pullum and William Ladusaw that explains the histories and uses of the symbols of various phonetic transcription conventions. It was published in 1986, with a second edition in 1996, by the University of Chicago Press. Symbols include letters and diacritics of the International Phonetic Alphabet and Americanist phonetic notation, though not of the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. The Guide was consulted by the International Phonetic Association when they established names and numerical codes for the International Phonetic Alphabet and was the basis for the characters of the TIPA set of phonetic fonts.