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International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Origin
The IPA was first published in 1888 by the Association Phonétique Internationale (International Phonetic Association), a group of French language teachers founded by Paul Passy.

The aim of the organisation was to devise a system for transcribing the sounds of speech which was independent of any particular language and applicable to all languages.

A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was used a a model for the IPA.

Uses

  • The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words.

  • The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten languages

  • The IPA is used in some foreign language text books and phrase books to transcribe the sounds of languages which are written with non-latin alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learning to speak English.

IPA consonants

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one on the right represents a voiced consonant, while the one on the left is unvoiced. Shaded areas denote articulations judged to be impossible.

IPA vowels

IPA various symbols

IPA diacritics

IPA suprasegmentals & tone marks

How the sounds of English are represented by the IPA

books  Recommended books about phonetics and phonology

Links
Free IPA fonts
http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts/phonetic.html
http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~ling/KULDIPA.html
http://www.sil.org/computing/fonts/encore-ipa.html

IPA, International Phonetic Association
http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA

Online phonetics course from the Department of Linguistics of the University of Lausanne
http://www.unil.ch/ling/phon/index.html (Français)
http://www.unil.ch/ling/phonetique/api-eng.html (English)

Online phonetics course from the University of Manitoba
http://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/linguistics/russell/138/course.htm

ASCII - how to represent the IPA with ordinary letters
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/ascii-ipa.html

Other alphabets
Armenian | Avestan | Bassa (Vah) | Beitha Kukju | Coptic | Cyrillic | Elbsan | Etruscan | Fraser | Georgian (Asomtavruli & Nuskha-khucuri) | Georgian (Mkhedruli) | Glagolitic | Gothic | Greek | Hungarian Runes | International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) | Irish | Korean | Latin | Manchu | Mongolian | N'Ko | Old Church Slavonic | Ogham | Old Italic | Old Permic | Orkhon | Pollard Miao | Runic | Santali | Somali | Tai Lue | Thaana