International Phonetic Alphabet – About The Alphabetical System

International Phonetic Alphabet – About The Alphabetical System

INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET – In this topic, we are going to know about the International Phonetic Alphabet.

INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET

Meaning

It is an alphabetic system of phonetic notion which is primarily based on the Latin alphabet.

This was made by the International Phonetic Association during the late 19th century (specifically 1888). It was used as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language.

The system is used by the following people:

  • lexicographers
  • foreign language students and teachers
  • linguists
  • speech-language pathologists
  • singers
  • actors
  • constructed language creatore
  • translators

Its common principle is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound. This, however, is not used when the sound itself is complex. This could mean three things:

  • This does not usually use combinations of letters to represent single sounds, such is the case of English when it does with (sh), (th), and (ng); or even single letters to represent multiple sounds like the wat the letter (x) represents /ks/ or/gz/ in English
  • No letters are said to have sound values that are context-dependent like “hard” or “soft” (c) or (g) in many European languages.
  • The system does not have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them. This is a property known as selectiveness

The system is meant for transcribing sounds and not phonemes, although it is used for phonemic transcription as well.

Among the symbols of the system are 107 letters that represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics used for modifying the letters, and 19 more signs that indicate length, tone, stress, and intonation.

Chart

Here is the full chart of the alphabetical system:

Image from: Wikipedia

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