Phonetic Symbol Guide

Last updated December 18, 2023

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

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^[1] and was the basis for the characters of the TIPA set of phonetic fonts.

List of symbols

The symbols included in the 2nd edition of the Guide are as follows. A number were adopted into Unicode 14 and 15 and have been available in SIL fonts since February 2023. Those not found in Unicode are marked with an asterisk.

a ȧ ä ᶏ ɐ ɑ α ɒ ɒ̇ ɒ̈ ꭤ æ æ̇ æ̈ ꜵ ᴀ A 4 ꜭ *[small cap Ɐ ] Æ *[small cap Ꜵ ] ʌ *[small cap Δ ]

b ḅ ƀ b̶ b̸ ь ъ ɓ ʙ β

c ć ꞓ ȼ č ç ƈ ɕ ʗ 𝼏 C

d đ ꟈ d̸ 𝼥 ɗ ɖ ᶑ ȸ ʣ ʤ ð δ D

e ë ę ᶒ ə ɚ ɘ ᴇ ᴇ̈ E ɛ ɛ̇ ᶓ ʚ ɜ ɝ ɞ

f ƒ ꜰ

ɡ g̸ ǥ ɠ g ɢ ʛ G ɣ γ *[palatal-hook γ] *[retroflex-hook γ] ɤ *(and its allograph

)

h ḥ ƕ ħ ɦ *[right-tail ɦ] ꜧ ɧ ɥ ʮ ʯ ʜ H

i ï ı ɨ ɪ ɪ̈ ᵻ I ι ɿ ʅ

j *[hook-top j] ɉ ʝ ǰ ɟ ʄ ᴊ

k ꝁ ƙ ʞ ᴋ 𝼐

l ɫ ƚ ɬ ɭ ɮ *(and its allograph

) ʟ L *[reversed ʟ] λ ƛ

m ɱ *[h-m ligature] ɯ ɰ ᴍ M

n ń *[left-arm n] π ƞ ñ ɲ ŋ η ɳ ɴ N

o ȯ ö ǫ ƍ σ O ♀ ⚲ ʘ ɵ θ ø 0︀ (and its variant ∅) ɸ œ ɶ ꝏ 8

ɔ ɔ̇ ɔ̈ *[turned ꞓ] ᶗ ꭢ ω ω̇ ω̈ *[turned ω] ɷ ꭥ ꭥ̇ ꭥ̈ ꭥ̶

p ᵽ ƥ *[straight allograph of ƍ ] ᴘ P ρ ƿ þ

q ʠ ȹ

r ɾ ɼ ɽ ɹ ɻ ɺ ʀ R ᴙ ʁ

s S š ʂ ʃ 𝼋 ƪ ʆ 𝼌

t ŧ 𝼪 ƫ ʈ ƭ ʇ 𝼍 ʦ ʧ

u u̇ ü ʉ *[half-barred u] ꞹ ʊ ᴜ ᴜ̇ ᵾ *[small cap ∩ ] U

v ʋ

w ◌̫ ẇ ẅ w̸ ʍ

x x̭ x̯ X χ

y ÿ ʎ ʏ

z ȥ ž ʑ ʐ ƻ ↊ ʒ ǯ ƺ ʓ ƹ ↋

ʔ ? 7 ʡ ʖ ƾ 𝼎 ʕ 9 ʢ

ǃ ǀ / ǂ ≠ ǁ ⫽ ⫻ # & *

Chao tone letters: ˩ ˨ ˧ ˦ ˥ etc.

IPA tone diacritics: ◌́ ◌̄ ◌̀ ◌̌ ◌̂ ◌᷉ etc.

◌̄ ˉ ˗ − ◌̠ ˍ + ◌̟ ◌̽ ˭

◌̪ ◌̺ ◌̻ ◌̝ ˔ ◌̞ ˕ ◌꭪ ◌꭫

ˈ ˌ ◌̩ ◌̚

↑ ↓ ↗ ↘ ˂ ˃ ◌͕ ⃖ (superscript ^←)

◌̇ ꞏ . ˑ ◌̣ ◌̈ ◌̤ ꞉ ː

ʼ ʽ ʻ , ⹁

◌̊ ◌̥ ◌̜ ˒ ◌̹

◌̃ ◌̴ ◌̰ ◌̼

◌́ ˊ ◌̀ ˋ ◌̂ ◌̭ ◌̌ ◌̬

◌̨ ◌̧ ◌̡ ◌˞ ◌̢

◌̆ ◌̑ ◌̯ ◌͡◌ ◌͜◌

Non-trivial Unicode support

Not all Unicode support is direct. Some typewriter substitutions made by overstriking a Latin letter with a virgule require composite encoding:

⟨b̸⟩, for a voiced bilabial fricative
⟨d̸⟩, for a voiced dental fricative
⟨g̸⟩, for a voiced velar fricative
⟨w̸⟩, used for Nahua [ɰᵝ]

Similarly ⟨ꭥ̶⟩, an unused proposal to replace Americanist ⟨ꭥ̇⟩.

The 'baby gamma' variant of the vowel letter ⟨ɤ⟩ is available as a character variant in fonts such as Gentium and Andika.

Several other symbols are graphic variants of Unicode characters:

p with a tail facing left ( ɋ) and reversed o with ogonek (ǫ). The first is an allograph in Doke of ⟨ƍ⟩ (turned delta δ), and the latter a misanalysis by the Guide of the same letter.
double virgule ⫽, a close-kerned // or italicized ǁ, is an allograph of ⟨ǁ⟩. It might be adequately rendered with U+2AFD⫽.
triple virgule ⫻, a close-kerned /// or italicized ⦀, used in a passing mention of retroflex clicks in the Cole article "Bushman Languages" in the 1966 Encyclopædia Britannica (4: 469). The symbol was removed from later editions. It might be adequately rendered with U+2AFB⫻. This is an allograph of a triple pipe, for which Unicode recommends using character U+2980 TRIPLE VERTICAL BAR DELIMITER ⟨⦀⟩.

A couple are more distinct graphically, but without a corresponding semantic distinction:

superscript spacing diacritic ⟨^←⟩, used to indicate clicks in Smalley (1963). This is similar to the subscript arrow U+02FF (˿) used to indicate clicks in the same way in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet. It could be encoded as a space plus U+20D6: ⟨ ⃖⟩.
hooktop j, an Americanist variant of ⟨ʄ⟩ in Smalley (1963) Manual of Articulatory Phonetics. Unlike ⟨ʄ⟩, in the Smalley letter the hook connects to the dot of the jay and so is detached from the body of the letter.

Rare symbols

The following are not supported by Unicode as of version 15.^[2]

Some of the symbols are idiosyncratic proposals by well-known scholars that never caught on:

Ef, thorn, and right-tail hooktop h Prokosch (1939) right-tail hooktop h.png — Ef, thorn, and right-tail hooktop h

a right-tail hooktop h (fusion of ⟨ɦ⟩ and ⟨ɳ ⟩: ), found for the velar fricative in the Germanic 'fortis' voiceless spirant series fþɦɳ, contrasting with the voiced series ƀðᵹ and the Indo-European 'lenis' spirants ɸθχ in Prokosch (1939) A Comparative Germanic Grammar. (See esp. p. 51.) Prokosch describes the symbol as a "modified h, since h is the usual spelling in all Germanic languages" (p. 83), though other authors simply write these sounds fþh.

A couple symbols were mentioned in the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association as recent suggestions for further improvement and were never adopted:

The h-m ligature for [m] H-m ligature.PNG — The h-m ligature for [m̥]

h-m ligature, approx. hm or _ɰ (turned ɰ) for [m̥]
turned small capital U, _U, for a generic vowel; now ⟨V⟩ is generally used.

The majority of the non-Unicode symbols were proposed by George Trager to improve the Bloch & Trager system of vowel transcription and other conventions of Americanist notation, but were never adopted:

inverted (turned) small capital ᴀ (_ᴀ) to replace æ̇; this had been the original IPA form of the letter that is now ⟨ɤ⟩.

The small-cap A-O ligature for [OE] Small capital A-O ligature.png — The small-cap A-O ligature for [ɶ]

small capital Ꜵ ligature (looks like an A-D ligature) to replace ɒ̈
small capital Δ to replace ᴇ̈
barred ɔ, _ꞓ (turned ꞓ) to replace ɔ̇
inverted (turned) ω, _ω, to replace ω̇
u with a bar on the left leg, u- , to replace u̇

The proposed letter for a dental nasal Front-bar n.png — The proposed letter for a dental nasal

a fusion of ᴛ + n (n with the arm of ᴛ to the left, approx. ꭋ n ) for the dental nasal [n̯]. It is similar in shape to U+1DF27𝼧 LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH MID-HEIGHT LEFT HOOK in Unicode 15, though with a flat left arm.
a reversed small capital L, ʟ (turned ᴦ or small-cap ⅃), for a labial lateral approximant; this is not a distinctive sound and the symbol was never used. However, it would potentially be used for an extIPA velodorsal lateral.

A couple have seen use in Slavic sources:

gamma with a palatal tail turning left, approx. γ̡, to replace γ̯
gamma with a retroflex tail turning right, approx. γ̢, to replace γ̣

Related Research Articles

Gamma is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop IPA:[ɡ]. In Modern Greek, this letter normally represents a voiced velar fricative IPA:[ɣ], except before either of the two front vowels, where it represents a voiced palatal fricative IPA:[ʝ]; while /g/ in foreign words is instead commonly transcribed as γκ).

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 standardized representation of speech sounds in written form. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.

A caron is a diacritic mark (◌̌) commonly placed over certain letters in the orthography of some languages to indicate a change of the related letter's pronunciation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digraph (orthography)</span> Pair of characters used to write one phoneme

A digraph or digram is a pair of characters used in the orthography of a language to write either a single phoneme, or a sequence of phonemes that does not correspond to the normal values of the two characters combined.

Ezh, also called the "tailed z", is a letter, notable for its use in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. For example, the pronunciation of "si" in vision and precision, or the ⟨s⟩ in treasure. See also the letter ⟨Ž⟩ as used in many Slavic languages, the Persian alphabet letter ⟨ژ⟩, the Cyrillic letter ⟨Ж⟩, and the Esperanto letter ⟨Ĵ⟩.

When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot refers to the glyphs "combining dot above", and "combining dot below" which may be combined with some letters of the extended Latin alphabets in use in a variety of languages. Similar marks are used with other scripts.

Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of indigenous languages of the Americas and for languages of Europe. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others, Slavic, Uralic, Semitic languages and for the languages of the Caucasus, of India, and of much of Africa; however, Uralists commonly use a variant known as the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

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.

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 Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nestor Setälä, a Finnish linguist.

Heng is a letter of the Latin alphabet, originating as a typographic ligature of h and ŋ. It is used for a voiceless y-like sound, such as in Dania transcription of the Danish language.

C, or c, is the third letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is cee, plural cees.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) requires specific names for the symbols and diacritics used in the alphabet.

Unicode supports several phonetic scripts and notations 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.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) possesses a variety of obsolete and nonstandard symbols. Throughout the history of the IPA, characters representing phonetic values have been modified or completely replaced. An example is ⟨ɷ⟩ for standard. Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that they should be indicated with diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series has been dropped.

IPA numbers are a legacy system of coding the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet. They were the organizational basis for XSAMPA and the IPA Extensions block of Unicode.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rotated letter</span> Printsetting and typographical technique

In the days of printing with movable type, it was common to rotate letter- and digit- sorts by 180° to create new symbols. This was done for example with the Palaeotype alphabet, the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), the Fraser script, and for some mathematical symbols. Perhaps the earliest instance of this that is still in use was turned e, ⟨ə⟩, for schwa in IPA. In the eighteenth-century Caslon metal fonts, the British pound sign (£) was set with a rotated italic uppercase J.

References

↑ Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 1999, p. 31, 161.
↑ Updated from Phonetic Symbol Guide at ScriptSource (⟨ꞹ⟩ was added to Unicode 11 as U+A7B9); additions in U14 and U15 are listed above.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 1999, p. 31, 161.

[2] Updated from Phonetic Symbol Guide at ScriptSource (⟨ꞹ⟩ was added to Unicode 11 as U+A7B9); additions in U14 and U15 are listed above.

[1]

[2]