!NEW! Download Phonetic Chart
Astri Hirons
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association. It is not a complete list of all possible speech sounds in the world's languages, only those about which stand-alone articles exist in this encyclopedia.
This phonemic chart uses symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet. IPA symbols are useful for learning pronunciation. The symbols on this chart represent the 44 sounds used in British English speech (Received Pronunciation or RP, an educated accent associated with but not exclusive to south-east England).
This version of the phoemic chart is based on the familiar Adrian Underhill layout. Learners and teachers may want to print a copy of this phonemic chart to keep close at hand for reference. See full size (will print on A4 or US Letter)
Occasionally, letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005,[4] there are 107 segmental letters, an indefinitely large number of suprasegmental letters, 44 diacritics (not counting composites), and four extra-lexical prosodic marks in the IPA. Most of these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA.[5]
Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics are used to modify these, and 17 additional signs indicate suprasegmental qualities such as length, tone, stress, and intonation.[note 4] These are organized into a chart; the chart displayed here is the official chart as posted at the website of the IPA.
Beyond the letters themselves, there are a variety of secondary symbols which aid in transcription. Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA letters to add phonetic detail such as tone and secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for prosodic features such as stress and intonation.
Other symbols sometimes seen for morphophonemic transcription are pipes and double pipes, from Americanist phonetic notation; and braces from set theory, especially when enclosing the set of phonemes that constitute the morphophoneme, e.g. t d or d or /t/, /d/. Only double slashes are unambiguous: both pipes and braces conflict with IPA prosodic transcription.[note 7] See morphophonology for examples.
The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the alphabet in the form of a chart. (See History of the IPA.) Not all aspects of the alphabet can be accommodated in a chart of the size published by the IPA. The alveolo-palatal and epiglottal consonants, for example, are not included in the consonant chart for reasons of space rather than of theory (two additional columns would be required, one between the retroflex and palatal columns and the other between the pharyngeal and glottal columns), and the lateral flap would require an additional row for that single consonant, so they are listed instead under the catchall block of "other symbols".[35] The indefinitely large number of tone letters would make a full accounting impractical even on a larger page, and only a few examples are shown, and even the tone diacritics are not complete; the reversed tone letters are not illustrated at all.
Of more than 160 IPA symbols, relatively few will be used to transcribe speech in any one language, with various levels of precision. A precise phonetic transcription, in which sounds are specified in detail, is known as a narrow transcription. A coarser transcription with less detail is called a broad transcription. Both are relative terms, and both are generally enclosed in square brackets.[1] Broad phonetic transcriptions may restrict themselves to easily heard details, or only to details that are relevant to the discussion at hand, and may differ little if at all from phonemic transcriptions, but they make no theoretical claim that all the distinctions transcribed are necessarily meaningful in the language.
Phonemic transcriptions, which express the conceptual counterparts of spoken sounds, are usually enclosed in slashes (/ /) and tend to use simpler letters with few diacritics. The choice of IPA letters may reflect theoretical claims of how speakers conceptualize sounds as phonemes or they may be merely a convenience for typesetting. Phonemic approximations between slashes do not have absolute sound values. For instance, in English, either the vowel of pick or the vowel of peak may be transcribed as /i/, so that pick, peak would be transcribed as /ˈpik, ˈpiːk/ or as /ˈpɪk, ˈpik/; and neither is identical to the vowel of the French pique which would also be transcribed /pik/. By contrast, a narrow phonetic transcription of pick, peak, pique could be: [pʰɪk], [pʰiːk], [pikʲ].
IPA is popular for transcription by linguists. Some American linguists, however, use a mix of IPA with Americanist phonetic notation or Sinological phonetic notation or otherwise use nonstandard symbols for various reasons.[44] Authors who employ such nonstandard use are encouraged to include a chart or other explanation of their choices, which is good practice in general, as linguists differ in their understanding of the exact meaning of IPA symbols and common conventions change over time.
The vertical axis of the chart is mapped by vowel height. Vowels pronounced with the tongue lowered are at the bottom, and vowels pronounced with the tongue raised are at the top. For example, [ɑ] (the first vowel in father) is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. [i] (the vowel in "meet") is at the top because the sound is said with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth.
In a similar fashion, the horizontal axis of the chart is determined by vowel backness. Vowels with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth (such as [ɛ], the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as [ʌ], the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.
These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, that is, at the level of syllable, word or phrase. These include prosody, pitch, length, stress, intensity, tone and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the rhythm and intonation of speech.[70] Various ligatures of pitch/tone letters and diacritics are provided for by the Kiel Convention and used in the IPA Handbook despite not being found in the summary of the IPA alphabet found on the one-page chart.
The correspondence breaks down even further once they start combining. For more complex tones, one may combine three or four tone diacritics in any permutation,[73] though in practice only generic peaking (rising-falling) e᷈ and dipping (falling-rising) e᷉ combinations are used. Chao tone letters are required for finer detail (e, e, e, e, etc.). Although only 10 peaking and dipping tones were proposed in Chao's original, limited set of tone letters, phoneticians often make finer distinctions, and indeed an example is found on the IPA Chart.[note 26] The system allows the transcription of 112 peaking and dipping pitch contours, including tones that are level for part of their length.
Online IPA keyboard utilities are available, though none of them cover the complete range of IPA symbols and diacritics. Examples are the IPA 2018 i-charts hosted by the IPA,[120] IPA character picker 27 at GitHub,[121] Type IPA phonetic symbols at TypeIt.org,[122] and an IPA Chart keyboard also at GitHub.[123] In April 2019, Google's Gboard for Android added an IPA keyboard to its platform.[124][125] For iOS there are multiple free keyboard layouts available, such as the IPA Phonetic Keyboard.[126]
The IPA chart and all its subparts are copyright 2015/2005 by the International Phonetic Association. As of July 2012, they are made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). This license allows any kind of re-use (including commercial reproduction and derivative works), as long as attribution is given and the reproduction or derivative work is under the same license. See -sa/3.0/ for further description.
For reference, we also provide two newer versions of the chart, each in a free, readily-available, Unicode-compliant font with full IPA coverage: one serif font (Doulos SIL) and one sans serif (DejaVu Sans).
The phonemic chart contains the 44 sounds of spoken English. It is an excellent tool for both learning and teaching about English pronunciation, but there is no easy way to type the phonemes with a normal keyboard. Use this site to "type" the characters by clicking with your mouse. You can then copy and paste to your software of choice, or even export the characters as an image using the save as image button.
Email: in...@phonemicchart.comType in phonemic characters
- Click on the symbols with your mouse to spell out your word.
- Copy them from the textfield below.
- If using Word or another word processor, select a unicode font : usually Gentium, Arial Unicode MS or Lucida Sans Unicode.
- Paste into your software.
The NATO phonetic alphabet became effective in 1956 and just a few years later became the established universal phonetic alphabet. However, it took several adaptations before the version used today came into effect.
As militaries and NATO continued to follow the Able Baker phonetic alphabet, it was clear the need for a universal phonetic alphabet still remained. A review of the Able Baker alphabet, spearheaded by NATO Allies US and UK, was conducted.
Allies hesitated to adopt the alphabet for national use until the ICAO ruled on the proposal thus creating a rather odd situation in which NATO Military Commands would be the sole users of the proposed phonetic alphabet. Luckily this situation did not last for long as the ICAO approved the alphabet, with November as the code word for the letter N.
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