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.

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.




How the sounds of English are
represented by the IPA
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
|