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International Phonetic Alphabet

This article is about the alphabet officially used in linguistics. NATO phonetic alphabet ("alpha bravo") has been informally and nonstandardly called the International Phonetic Alphabet as well.

The International Phonetic Alphabet was originally developed by British and French phoneticians under the auspices of the International Phonetic Association, established in Paris in 1886 (both the organisation and the phonetic script are best known as IPA). The alphabet has undergone a number of revisions during its history, including some major ones codified by the IPA Kiel Convention (1989). Most letters are taken from the Roman alphabet or derived from it, some are taken from the Greek alphabet, and some are apparently unrelated to any standard alphabet.

Description

The sound-values of the consonants that are identical to those in the Latin alphabet in most cases correspond to English usage. [p], [b], [t], [d], [k], [g], [m], [n], [f], [v], [s], [h], [z], [l]. [w].

The vowel symbols that are identical to those in the Latin alphabet ([a], [e], [i], [o], [u]) correspond roughly to the vowels of Spanish or Italian. [i] is like the vowel in meet, [u] like the vowel in food, etc.

Most of the other symbols that are shared with the Latin alphabet, like [j], [r], [c], and [y], correspond to sounds those letters represent in other languages. [j] has the sound value of English y in yoke (= German j); whereas [y] has the Scandinavian or Old English value of the letter (= German y or ü, Greek Υ or French u). The general principle is to use one symbol for one speech segment, avoiding letter combinations such as sh and th in English orthography.

Letters that have shapes that are modified Latin letters usually correspond to a similar sound. For example, all the retroflex consonants have the same symbol as the equivalent alveolar consonants, except with a rightward pointing hook coming out of the bottom.

Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA signs to transcribe slightly modified phonetic values or secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features such as stress and tone.