International Phonetic Alphabet

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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA in Spanish, API in French and IPA in English) is a system of phonetic notation created by linguists. Its purpose is to establish, in a regularized, precise and unique way, the representation of the speech sounds of any language, and in the professional field it is frequently used by linguists, speech therapists, therapists, foreign language teachers, lexicographers and translators. its basic form (as of 2005) has approximately 107 basic symbols and 55 modifiers.

The symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet are divided into three categories: letters (indicating “basic” sounds), diacritics (specifying those sounds), and suprasegmentals (indicating qualities such as speed, pitch, and stress). These categories are divided into smaller sections: letters are divided into vowels and consonants, and diacritics and suprasegmentals are divided according to whether they indicate articulation, phonation, tone, intonation, or stress.

Although the AFI was created to represent only those speech qualities that are relevant to the language itself (such as tongue position, mode of articulation, and word and syllable spacing and stress), it has been created a new set of symbols as extensions of the International Phonetic Alphabet to mark speech qualities that do not have a direct effect on meaning (such as tooth gnashing, sigmatism, and sounds made by people with cleft lip and palate).

The AFI can be used to transcribe any language in the world. It is the most widely used phonetic alphabet in the world, although in the United States many linguists continue to prefer the symbols of the Americanist phonetic alphabet.

History

The history of the AFI begins in 1886, when a group of French and British teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would later be known as the International Phonetic Association (in French, l'Association Phonetique Internationale). His original intention was to create a set of symbols that could have different values for each language. For example, the sound /ʃ/ (sh) was originally represented by the letter <c> in English but with the letter <x> in French. However, it was eventually decided to create a single alphabet for all languages. The first official version of the IPA was published in 1888, two years after the formation of the International Phonetic Association, based on the rhomic alphabet of Henry Sweet, who in turn was inspired by the English phonotypic alphabet of Isaac Pitman and Alexander John Ellis.

Since its creation, the organization of vowels and consonants in the AFI has been basically the same. However, the alphabet itself has undergone a few modifications. The 1989 Kiel convention made many changes to the earlier version of 1932. A minor modification took place in 1993 with the addition of four symbols for central mid vowels and the removal of symbols for voiceless implosives. Finally, in May 2005 it was modified again, adding the symbol for the simple labiodental trill. Aside from adding and deleting symbols, IPA modifications have largely consisted of renaming symbols and categories and modifying example fonts.

Alphabet extensions, devised primarily for the transcription of speech disorders, are relatively recent, created in 1990 and modified in 1997.

Description

Diagram illustrating the International Phontic Alphabet

The general principle of the IPA is to award a symbol for each sound (or segment of speech). This means that the AFI does not use letter combinations unless the represented sound can be seen as a sequence of two or more sounds. The IPA also usually does not have separate letters for two sounds if no known language distinguishes between them, and does not use letters to represent multiple sounds, in the way that <x> represents the set of consonants [ks] in Spanish. Furthermore, in the IPA no letter has context-dependent values, such as <c> in most European languages.

The IPA symbols are 107 letters for consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics specifying those sounds, and 19 suprasegmentals, indicating qualities such as duration, pitch, stress, and intonation.

Origin of the AFI signs

The symbols chosen for the IPA are made to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. For this reason, many symbols are represented by Latin or Greek letters, or modifications of these. However, there are symbols that are not: for example, the symbol for the glottal stop [ʔ] has the form of a "truncated" question mark, and was originally an apostrophe. In fact, some symbols, such as the voiced pharyngeal consonant [ʕ], although modified to appear Latin, they were inspired by glyphs from other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter <ﻉ>, `ain).

Despite its preference for letters that harmonize with the Latin alphabet, the International Phonetic Association has occasionally admitted symbols that seem unrelated to Roman letters. For example, prior to 1989, the IPA symbols for clicks were <ʘ>, < ʇ>, <ʗ>, and <ʖ>, which they are clearly derived from Latin and Greek letters, as well as punctuation marks. However, except for [ʘ], none of these symbols were representative of contemporary practice among phonetic specialists. Khoisan languages and some specialists in Bantu languages (who use the symbols for clicks more frequently). As a result, they were replaced by the more iconic symbols <ʘ>, <ǀ>, <ǃ>, <ǂ>, and <ǁ> at the AFI Convention in Kiel in 1989.

Symbols and sounds

The International Phonetic Alphabet has been deliberately based on the letters of the Latin alphabet, using as few non-Latin forms as possible. The Association created the IPA so that the sounds of most consonants taken from the Latin alphabet would correspond to "international use". These consonants are [b], [d], [ f], [ɡ], [k], [l], [m], [n], [p], [s], [t], [v], and [z]. The other consonants of the Latin alphabet, [c], [h], [j], [q], [r], [w], [x], and [y ], correspond to the sounds they represent in other languages:

AFI	pronounced as in
c	kinyarwanda, IAST transliteration of the Sanskrit, Irish (in some contexts)
h	Most Germanic languages
j	Most Germanic and Slavic languages. Like and French yeux or English plasterAnd a sound a little stronger than the i of Spanish widow.
q	Quechua de Cuzco-Collao, aimara and inuktitut
r	Slavic languages, most romance languages, as in Spanish rr in Dog.
w	English. Like u in Spanish Strike
x	Russian tax on Cyrillic alphabet, as j in Spanish.
and	German, Dutch, Finnish, Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian languages; Ancient Greek ≤ YES (ipsilon, upsilon), as in the u French and in most cases such as ü German.

The vowels of the Latin alphabet ([a], [e], [i], [o], [u]) correspond to the vowels of Spanish, except for the vowels [e], [a] and [o] which in Spanish are more open (centralized in the case of [a ]) and have to be written with a diacritic for proper transcription (although for practical purposes this is ignored).

The symbols taken from the Greek alphabet are [β], [ɣ], [ɛ], [θ], [ɸ], and [χ]. Of these, the only ones that closely correspond to the Greek letters from which they were taken are [ɣ] and [θ]. Although [β], [ɛ], [ɸ], and [χ] indicate sounds similar to beta, epsilon, fi (phi) and ji (chi), they do not correspond exactly. The letter [ʋ], although visually similar to the Greek vowel <υ>, ípsilon (upsilon), is actually a consonant.

AFI	pronounced as in
β	Kinyarwanda, limburgués, Portuguese, Turkish, riparian...
▪	Arabic, Danish, Spanish, Dutch Belgian, Basque...
‐	English, Galician, Catalan, Italian, French, German, Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish...
θ	Albanian, Corn, English, Galician, Spanish, Greek...
	Ainu, Japanese, Turkman...
χ	Abkhaz, Afrikaans, German, Arabic, Spanish, Dutch standard, Portuguese, Swedish Malmö...
	German, Danish, ferocious, Finnish, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish...
λ (d replacing))	Xhosa, Zulu...

The phonic values of the modifications of the graphemes of the Latin characters can be easily inferred from the original letters. For example, letters with a right-turned hook at the bottom represent retroflex consonants; small caps usually note uvular consonants. Apart from the fact that certain kinds of modifications in the shape of the letters correspond to certain kinds of modifications of the sound they represent, there is no way of deducing the phonic value that a symbol represents solely from the shape of that symbol (in contrast to what what happens in visible speech).

In addition to the letters themselves, there are a variety of secondary symbols that can be used in transcription. Diacritics can be combined with IPA letters to transcribe phonetic values of secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features, such as stress and tone.

Letters

The International Phonetic Alphabet divides its letter symbols into three categories: infraglottal or egressive (pulmonic) consonants, supraglottal or ingressive (non-pulmonic) consonants, and vowels.

Infraglottal or egressive (pulmonic) consonants

Egressive consonants are those that are articulated by exhaling air from the lungs. Almost all the consonants are in this category, ordered in the following table so that the columns indicate the point of articulation; the ranks, the manner of articulation. The consonants on the left represent voiceless sounds and the consonants on the right represent a voiced sound.

In October 2005, the International Phonetic Association approved a new phonetic symbol for the first time in 12 years; It is the simple labiodental trill, a sound present in languages spoken in central and southeastern Africa that until then was transcribed as [v̆] (fricative labiodental symbol with extra short diacritic). The symbol is described as "v with right hook" and can be seen on the AFI page. [1]. Unicode 5.1 defines this symbol at U+2C71: LATIN SMALL LETTER V WITH RIGHT HOOK.

Coarticulation

Coarticulate consonants are sounds in which two individual consonants are pronounced at the same time.

Notes

• []] is described as a "[CHUCKLES] and [x] Simultaneous." However, this analysis is controversial.

There are other coarticulate consonants usually denoted by diacritics.

Double articulated affricates and stops

The affricates and double-articulated stops are represented by two symbols joined by a slur bar, either below or above the symbols. The six most common affricates are alternately represented by slurs, although it does not represent official IPA usage, due to the large number of slurs that would be required to represent all affricates in this way. A third form of transcription of affricates that is sometimes seen is the use of flown characters, for example t^s for t͡s, following the model of k^x ~ k͡x. The symbols for palatal stops, [c, ɟ] are often used for convenience for [t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ] or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with great care.

Supraglottal or ingressive (non-pulmonary) consonants

Ejective consonants can be stops, affricates and fricatives. Ejectives are always voiceless in the AFI

Vowels

Front vowel and back vowel

Comparison of language positions in previous vowels: closed [i], semi-closed [e], semi-open [‐] and the central vocal [a]. The cardinal front vowels are illustrated with the highest point indicated.

Comparison of the positions of the tongue in subsequent vowels: closed [u], semi-closed [o], semi-open [.] and the central vocal [a].

X-ray x-ray showing the articulation of sounds [i, u, a, ⋅]

The IPA defines a vowel as a sound that occurs in the nucleus of a syllable. Below is a table representing the proper signed vowels in the IPA. The AFI locates the vowels on a two-dimensional graph according to the position of the tongue. The two dimensions according to this chart are anteriority (front/central/back vowel) and height or opening (close/semi-close/semi-open/open vowel, etc.). These two dimensions correspond respectively to the second formant and the first formant, found in the spectrogram of these sounds:

• The vertical axis of the table is determined by the height of the vowel. The vowels pronounced with the lower tongue are at the base, and the vowels pronounced with the raised tongue are at the top. For example, [GRUNTS] is at the base because the tongue is low in this position. However, [i] is at the top because the sound is pronounced with the tongue lifted to the ceiling of the mouth.

• Similarly, the horizontal axis is determined by the bottom of the vowel. The vowels with the tongue moved to the front of the mouth (like [) are to the left of the table, while those in which it moves backwards (like [ cheers]) are placed to the right of the table.

• Where the vowels are in pairs, the right represents a rounded vowel while the left is the unrounded equivalent. This rounding is associated with the third trainer (which is less prominent in most languages).
• In some languages such as Guaraní or French there are nasal vowels (the same but pronounced nose).

Diacritics

Diacritics are small marks that are placed around the letter AFI to show a certain alteration or more specific description in the pronunciation of the letter. Sub-diacritics (marks normally placed under a letter or symbol) may be placed above a symbol with a descendant, e.g. ŋ̊.

The i without a period, <ı>, is used when the period would interfere with the diacritic. Other IPA symbols may appear as diacritics to represent phonetic detail: tˢ (fricative output), bʱ (mumbled voice), ˀa (glottal beginning), ᵊ (epentetic schwa), oᶷ (diphthongization). More advanced diacritics were developed in the Extended AFI for more specific pronunciation encoding.

Diacritics of silagen
♫ ♫	Silábica	e 『	No silabica
Diacritics of consonant realization
th dh	Aspired	d̚	Without perceptible release
dn	Nose release	dl	Side overlap
Fonation Diacritics
n n d̥	Sorda	YEAH.	Sonora
b a a a	Moving voice	b a a a	Bitched voice
Joint Diacritics
d t	Dental	d t	Linguolabial
d t	Apical	g d d̻	Laminal
u t t t	Advanced	##	Retract
ë ä	Centralized	e	Centralized medium
e ɹ ɹ ɹ ɹ	Lifted (TEN = non-syllbant alveolar
e e β	Low (β̞ = approximate bilabial)
Co-articulation Diacritics
x x	More rounded	xww	Less rounded
tw dw	Labialized	tj dj	Palatalized
t luminous d	Speed	d t	Faringealized
	Speed or Faringealized
e oo	Raice of advanced language	e oo	Retracted tongue root
. precision	Nasalized		Rotation

Notes

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

[t]	sorda	[d]]	murmured voice
[d]]	loose voice	[d]	voice modal
[d]]	hard voice	[d]]	voice cried
[closed]	Glotal closure

Suprasegmentals

Duration, accent, and rhythm
.	Primary Accent (used before accented syllable)	▪	Secondary welcome (used before accented syllable)
▪	Consonant geminated or long vowel		Semilarga
♥	Extra brief	.	Silábica break
	Absence of rupture
Intonation
日本語	Lower		Higher
︎ Open	Global rise	︎ Open	Global downturn
Tones
e or	Extra high	ê	Fallen
E or	High	ě	Up
ē or	Media
è or	Low	↓e ()e)	Descending
or	Extra	↑e ()e)	Ascendant