The International Phonetic Alphabet

It is quite clear that ordinary writing systems (i.e., alphabet or orthography) cannot illustrate pronunciation differences. In fact, there are many words that are written with the same set of letters but pronounced differently. There are also some words which are written with different sets of letters but pronounced the same. As such, phonologists and phoneticians felt the need for a new writing system, one in which the symbols fully represent the sounds of any language.

Standard English orthography (the writing system) cannot capture all the sounds of English pronunciation. The same is true for writing systems of many of the world's languages. Even if the writing system does a good job of capturing all the sounds of a language, what happens when the pronunciation of a word changes over time? Or when there are multiple pronunciations for a word? To overcome this, linguists use the phonetic alphabet, designed to represent all the possible sounds of the world's languages in a standard way. The most commonly-used alphabet is known as the Phonetic Alphabet designed by the International Phonetic Association (IPA) in the late 19th century.

The anomaly between writing and pronunciation was the main drive behind the development of the phonetic alphabet. Perhaps you have already noticed that some similar sounds have different representations in English orthography. Take the following examples:

[f]	as in	trough, fun
[n]	as in	knife, night
[i]	as in	tiny, ceiling, tin

In addition, different sounds in many languages may be used in the writing system with the same representation. Take the following English examples:

gh	Pronounced as /f/	cough
Pronounced as /aʊ/	bough
ou	Pronounced as /ɔ:/	bought
Pronounced as /ʌ/	tough

Language (all languages) changes over time. Spelling (orthography) is slower to change than pronunciation. As a consequence, the discrepancy between spelling and sounds gave impetus to a number of scholars to want to revise the alphabet so that each sound would be represented by one and only one symbol and each symbol would represent one and only one sound. The main characteristic of the phonetic alphabet is the one-to-one correspondence between sound and symbol. In other words, each sound is represented by one and only one symbol and each symbol represents one and only one sound. Today, the phonetic alphabet is widely used to transcribe or write sounds in all languages of the world.

Take the following example:

English Orthography The man wanted to know the truth.

IPA Transcription /ðǝ mæn ˈwɒntɪd tǝ nǝʊ ðǝ tru:θ/

Each symbol in the alphabet of a language is called a letter. Each symbol in the phonetic alphabet is called a sound segment. As such, the word truth is composed of five letters (t, r, u, t, h) but four phonemes [t], [r], [u:], [θ]. The ordinary writing in a language (i.e., use of letters) is called orthography or writing while phonetic writing (i.e., use of phonemes) is usually called transcription. The inventory of phonemes in the IPA phonetic alphabet is so rich that it can be used to represent all sounds that appear in all languages of the world. However, some but not all of these sounds appear in the English language. The following table summarizes all the basic sounds that are employed by English speakers in their speech (i.e., English vowels, diphthongs, triphthongs, and consonants).

The general principle of the IPA is to provide one symbol for each sound (or speech segment). This means that the IPA does not use letter combinations unless the sound being represented can be regarded as a sequence of two or more sounds and it does not use letters that represent multiple sounds, the way [x] represents the double consonant [ks] in English. Additionally, the IPA does not use letters whose sound value is context-dependent, such as c in English (and most other European languages).

IPA symbols for British English vowels, diphthongs, triphthongs, and consonants.

	symbol	example	symbol	example
VOWELS	/ɪ/	beat	/ǝ/	an
/i:/	bit	/u:/	boot
/e/	hen	/ʊ/	book
/ɜ:/	bird	/ɔ:/	four
/æ/	hat	/ɑ:/	car
/ʌ/	cut	/ɒ/	hot
DIPHTHONGS	/ʊə/	poor	/eɪ/	day
/ɔɪ/	boy	/aʊ/	now
/ɪə/	here	/aɪ/	dry
/əʊ/	go	/eə/	hair
TRIPHTHONGS	/aʊə/	power	/ɔɪǝ/	loyal
/aɪə/	liar	/ǝʊǝ/	mower
/eɪǝ/	layer
CONSONANTS	/p/	pot	/ʃ/	she
	/b/	bat	/ʒ/	vision
	/t/	top	/ʧ/	chat
	/d/	desk	/ʤ/	judge
	/k/	cut	/m/	man
	/g/	good	/n/	not
	/f/	five	/ŋ/	thing
	/v/	van	/r/	rat
	/θ/	think	/l/	look
	/ð/	this	/w/	one
	/s/	sit	/j/	yard
	/z/	zip	/h/	hat

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