User:SebastianHelm/IPA

Diacritics[edit]

Syllabicity diacritics
◌̩	ɹ̩ n̩	Syllabic	◌̯	ɪ̯ ʊ̯	Non-syllabic
◌̍	ɻ̍ ŋ̍	Syllabic	◌̑	y̑	Non-syllabic
Consonant-release diacritics
◌ʰ	tʰ	Aspirated^[α]	◌̚	p̚	No audible release
◌ⁿ	dⁿ	Nasal release	◌ˡ	dˡ	Lateral release
◌ᶿ	tᶿ	Voiceless dental fricative release	◌ˣ	tˣ	Voiceless velar fricative release
◌ᵊ	dᵊ	Mid central vowel release
Phonation diacritics
◌̥	n̥ d̥	Voiceless	◌̬	s̬ t̬	Voiced
◌̊	ɻ̊ ŋ̊	Voiceless	◌̬	s̬ t̬	Voiced
◌̤	b̤ a̤	Breathy voiced^[α]	◌̰	b̰ a̰	Creaky voiced
Articulation diacritics
◌̪	t̪ d̪	Dental	◌̼	t̼ d̼	Linguolabial
◌͆	ɮ͆	Dental	◌̼	t̼ d̼	Linguolabial
◌̺	t̺ d̺	Apical	◌̻	t̻ d̻	Laminal
◌̟	u̟ t̟	Advanced (fronted)	◌̠	i̠ t̠	Retracted (backed)
◌᫈	ɡ᫈	Advanced (fronted)	◌̄	q̄^[β]	Retracted (backed)
◌̈	ë ä	Centralized	◌̽	e̽ ɯ̽	Mid-centralized
◌̝	e̝ r̝	Raised ([r̝], [ɭ˔] are fricatives)	◌̞	e̞ β̞	Lowered ([β̞], [ɣ˕] are approximants)
◌˔	ɭ˔	Raised ([r̝], [ɭ˔] are fricatives)	◌˕	y˕ ɣ˕	Lowered ([β̞], [ɣ˕] are approximants)
Co-articulation diacritics
◌̹	ɔ̹ x̹	More rounded (over-rounding)	◌̜	ɔ̜ xʷ̜	Less rounded (under-rounding)^[γ]
◌͗	y͗ χ͗	More rounded (over-rounding)	◌͑	y͑ χ͑ʷ	Less rounded (under-rounding)^[γ]
◌ʷ	tʷ dʷ	Labialized	◌ʲ	tʲ dʲ	Palatalized
◌ˠ	tˠ dˠ	Velarized	◌̴	ɫ ᵶ	Velarized or pharyngealized
◌ˤ	tˤ aˤ	Pharyngealized	◌̴	ɫ ᵶ	Velarized or pharyngealized
◌̘	e̘ o̘	Advanced tongue root	◌̙	e̙ o̙	Retracted tongue root
◌꭪	y꭪	Advanced tongue root	◌꭫	y꭫	Retracted tongue root
◌̃	ẽ z̃	Nasalized	◌˞	ɚ ɝ	Rhoticity

Notes:

^ ^a ^b With aspirated voiced consonants, the aspiration is usually also voiced (voiced aspirated – but see voiced consonants with voiceless aspiration). Many linguists prefer one of the diacritics dedicated to breathy voice over simple aspiration, such as ⟨b̤⟩. Some linguists restrict that diacritic to sonorants, such as breathy-voice ⟨m̤⟩, and transcribe voiced-aspirated obstruents as e.g. ⟨bʱ⟩.
^ Care must be taken that a superscript retraction sign is not mistaken for mid tone.
^ These are relative to the cardinal value of the letter. They can also apply to unrounded vowels: [ɛ̜] is more spread (less rounded) than cardinal [ɛ], and [ɯ̹] is less spread than cardinal [ɯ].^[1]
Since ⟨xʷ⟩ can mean that the [x] is labialized (rounded) throughout its articulation, and ⟨x̜⟩ makes no sense ([x] is already completely unrounded), ⟨x̜ʷ⟩ can only mean a less-labialized/rounded [xʷ]. However, readers might mistake ⟨x̜ʷ⟩ for "[x̜]" with a labialized off-glide, or might wonder if the two diacritics cancel each other out. Placing the 'less rounded' diacritic under the labialization diacritic, ⟨xʷ̜⟩, makes it clear that it is the labialization that is 'less rounded' than its cardinal IPA value.

Subdiacritics (diacritics normally placed below a letter) may be moved above a letter to avoid conflict with a descender, as in voiceless ⟨ŋ̊⟩.^[2] The raising and lowering diacritics have optional spacing forms ⟨˔⟩, ⟨˕⟩ that avoid descenders.

The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from open-glottis to closed-glottis phonation is:

Phonation scale
Open glottis	[t]	voiceless
	[d̤]	breathy voice, also called murmured
	[d̥]	slack voice
Sweet spot	[d]	modal voice
	[d̬]	stiff voice
	[d̰]	creaky voice
Closed glottis	[ʔ͡t]	glottal closure

Additional diacritics are provided by the Extensions to the IPA for speech pathology.

Suprasegmentals[edit]

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.^[3] 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.

Under capital letters below we will see how a carrier letter may be used to indicate suprasegmental features such as labialization or nasalization. Some authors omit the carrier letter, for e.g. suffixed [kʰuˣt̪s̟]ʷ or prefixed [ʷkʰuˣt̪s̟],^{[note 1]} or place a spacing variant of a diacritic such as ⟨˔⟩ or ⟨˜⟩ at the beginning or end of a word to indicate that it applies to the entire word.^{[note 2]}

Length, stress, and rhythm
ˈke	Primary stress (appears before stressed syllable)	ˌke	Secondary stress (appears before stressed syllable)
eː kː	Long (long vowel or geminate consonant)	eˑ	Half-long
eː kː	Long (long vowel or geminate consonant)	ə̆ ɢ̆	Extra-short
ek.ste eks.te	Syllable break (internal boundary)	es‿e	Linking (lack of a boundary; a phonological word)^{[note 3]}
Intonation
\|^[α]	Minor or foot break	‖^[α]	Major or intonation break
↗︎	Global rise^{[note 4]}	↘︎	Global fall^{[note 4]}
Up- and down-step
ꜛke	Upstep	ꜜke	Downstep

Notes:

^ ^a ^b The pipes for intonation breaks should be a heavier weight than the letters for click consonants. Because fonts do not reflect this, the intonation breaks in the official IPA charts are set in bold typeface.

Pitch diacritics^{[note 5]}
ŋ̋ e̋	Extra high	ŋ̌ ě	Rising	ŋ᷄ e᷄	Mid-rising
ŋ́ é	High	ŋ̂ ê	Falling	ŋ᷅ e᷅	Low-rising
ŋ̄ ē	Mid	ŋ᷈ e᷈	Peaking (rising–falling)	ŋ᷇ e᷇	High-falling
ŋ̀ è	Low	ŋ᷉ e᷉	Dipping (falling–rising)	ŋ᷆ e᷆	Mid-falling
ŋ̏ ȅ	Extra low	(etc.)^{[note 6]}

Chao tone letters^{[note 5]}
˥e	꜒e	e˥	e꜒	High
˦e	꜓e	e˦	e꜓	Half-high
˧e	꜔e	e˧	e꜔	Mid
˨e	꜕e	e˨	e꜕	Half-low
˩e	꜖e	e˩	e꜖	Low
˩˥e	꜖꜒e	e˩˥	e꜖꜒	Rising (low to high or generic)
˥˩e	꜒꜖e	e˥˩	e꜒꜖	Falling (high to low or generic)
(etc.)

The old staveless tone letters, which are effectively obsolete, include high ⟨ˉe⟩, mid ⟨˗e⟩, low ⟨ˍe⟩, rising ⟨ˊe⟩, falling ⟨ˋe⟩, low rising ⟨ˏe⟩ and low falling ⟨ˎe⟩.

Stress[edit]

Officially, the stress marks ⟨ˈ ˌ⟩ appear before the stressed syllable, and thus mark the syllable boundary as well as stress (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a period).^[7] Occasionally the stress mark is placed immediately before the nucleus of the syllable, after any consonantal onset.^[8] In such transcriptions, the stress mark does not mark a syllable boundary. The primary stress mark may be doubled ⟨ˈˈ⟩ for extra stress (such as prosodic stress). The secondary stress mark is sometimes seen doubled ⟨ˌˌ⟩ for extra-weak stress, but this convention has not been adopted by the IPA.^[7] Some dictionaries place both stress marks before a syllable, ⟨¦⟩, to indicate that pronunciations with either primary or secondary stress are heard, though this is not IPA usage.^{[note 7]}

Boundary markers[edit]

There are three boundary markers: ⟨.⟩ for a syllable break, ⟨|⟩ for a minor prosodic break and ⟨‖⟩ for a major prosodic break. The tags 'minor' and 'major' are intentionally ambiguous. Depending on need, 'minor' may vary from a foot break to a break in list-intonation to a continuing–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a comma), and while 'major' is often any intonation break, it may be restricted to a final–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a period). The 'major' symbol may also be doubled, ⟨‖‖⟩, for a stronger break.^{[note 8]}

Although not part of the IPA, the following additional boundary markers are often used in conjunction with the IPA: ⟨μ⟩ for a mora or mora boundary, ⟨σ⟩ for a syllable or syllable boundary, ⟨+⟩ for a morpheme boundary, ⟨#⟩ for a word boundary (may be doubled, ⟨##⟩, for e.g. a breath-group boundary),^[10] ⟨$⟩ for a phrase or intermediate boundary and ⟨%⟩ for a prosodic boundary. For example, C# is a word-final consonant, %V a post-pausa vowel, and σC a syllable-initial consonant.

Pitch and tone[edit]

⟨ꜛ ꜜ⟩ are defined in the Handbook as "upstep" and "downstep", concepts from tonal languages. However, the upstep symbol can also be used for pitch reset, and the IPA Handbook uses it for prosody in the illustration for Portuguese, a non-tonal language.

Phonetic pitch and phonemic tone may be indicated by either diacritics placed over the nucleus of the syllable (e.g., high-pitch ⟨é⟩) or by Chao tone letters placed either before or after the word or syllable. There are three graphic variants of the tone letters: with or without a stave, and facing left or facing right from the stave. The stave was introduced with the 1989 Kiel Convention, as was the option of placing a staved letter after the word or syllable, while retaining the older conventions. There are therefore six ways to transcribe pitch/tone in the IPA: i.e., ⟨é⟩, ⟨˦e⟩, ⟨e˦⟩, ⟨꜓e⟩, ⟨e꜓⟩ and ⟨ˉe⟩ for a high pitch/tone.^[7]^[11]^[12] Of the tone letters, only left-facing staved letters and a few representative combinations are shown in the summary on the Chart, and in practice it is currently more common for tone letters to occur after the syllable/word than before, as in the Chao tradition. Placement before the word is a carry-over from the pre-Kiel IPA convention, as is still the case for the stress and upstep/downstep marks. The IPA endorses the Chao tradition of using the left-facing tone letters, ⟨˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩⟩, for underlying tone, and the right-facing letters, ⟨꜒ ꜓ ꜔ ꜕ ꜖⟩, for surface tone, as occurs in tone sandhi, and for the intonation of non-tonal languages.^{[note 9]} In the Portuguese illustration in the 1999 Handbook, tone letters are placed before a word or syllable to indicate prosodic pitch (equivalent to [↗︎] global rise and [↘︎] global fall, but allowing more precision), and in the Cantonese illustration they are placed after a word/syllable to indicate lexical tone. Theoretically therefore prosodic pitch and lexical tone could be simultaneously transcribed in a single text, though this is not a formalized distinction.

Rising and falling pitch, as in contour tones, are indicated by combining the pitch diacritics and letters in the table, such as grave plus acute for rising [ě] and acute plus grave for falling [ê]. Only six combinations of two diacritics are supported, and only across three levels (high, mid, low), despite the diacritics supporting five levels of pitch in isolation. The four other explicitly approved rising and falling diacritic combinations are high/mid rising [e᷄], low rising [e᷅], high falling [e᷇], and low/mid falling [e᷆].^{[note 10]}

The Chao tone letters, on the other hand, may be combined in any pattern, and are therefore used for more complex contours and finer distinctions than the diacritics allow, such as mid-rising [e˨˦], extra-high falling [e˥˦], etc. There are 20 such possibilities. However, in Chao's original proposal, which was adopted by the IPA in 1989, he stipulated that the half-high and half-low letters ⟨˦ ˨⟩ may be combined with each other, but not with the other three tone letters, so as not to create spuriously precise distinctions. With this restriction, there are 8 possibilities.^[13]

The old staveless tone letters tend to be more restricted than the staved letters, though not as restricted as the diacritics. Officially, they support as many distinctions as the staved letters,^{[note 11]} but typically only three pitch levels are distinguished. Unicode supports default or high-pitch ⟨ˉ ˊ ˋ ˆ ˇ ˜ ˙⟩ and low-pitch ⟨ˍ ˏ ˎ ꞈ ˬ ˷⟩. Only a few mid-pitch tones are supported (such as ⟨˗ ˴⟩), and then only accidentally.

Although tone diacritics and tone letters are presented as equivalent on the chart, "this was done only to simplify the layout of the chart. The two sets of symbols are not comparable in this way."^[14] Using diacritics, a high tone is ⟨é⟩ and a low tone is ⟨è⟩; in tone letters, these are ⟨e˥⟩ and ⟨e˩⟩. One can double the diacritics for extra-high ⟨e̋⟩ and extra-low ⟨ȅ⟩; there is no parallel to this using tone letters. Instead, tone letters have mid-high ⟨e˦⟩ and mid-low ⟨e˨⟩; again, there is no equivalent among the diacritics. Thus in a three-register tone system, ⟨é ē è⟩ are equivalent to ⟨e˥ e˧ e˩⟩, while in a four-register system, ⟨e̋ é è ȅ⟩ may be equivalent to ⟨e˥ e˦ e˨ e˩⟩.^[7]

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,^[7] 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 12]} The system allows the transcription of 112 peaking and dipping pitch contours, including tones that are level for part of their length.

Original (restricted) set of Chao tone letters^{[note 13]}
Register	Level ^{[note 14]}	Rising	Falling	Peaking	Dipping
e˩	e˩˩	e˩˧	e˧˩	e˩˧˩	e˧˩˧
e˨	e˨˨	e˨˦	e˦˨	e˨˦˨	e˦˨˦
e˧	e˧˧	e˧˥	e˥˧	e˧˥˧	e˥˧˥
e˦	e˦˦			e˧˥˩	e˧˩˥
e˥	e˥˥	e˩˥	e˥˩	e˩˥˧	e˥˩˧

More complex contours are possible. Chao gave an example of [꜔꜒꜖꜔] (mid-high-low-mid) from English prosody.^[13]

Chao tone letters generally appear after each syllable, for a language with syllable tone (⟨a˧vɔ˥˩⟩), or after the phonological word, for a language with word tone (⟨avɔ˧˥˩⟩). The IPA gives the option of placing the tone letters before the word or syllable (⟨˧a˥˩vɔ⟩, ⟨˧˥˩avɔ⟩), but this is rare for lexical tone. (And indeed reversed tone letters may be used to clarify that they apply to the following rather than to the preceding syllable: ⟨꜔a꜒꜖vɔ⟩, ⟨꜔꜒꜖avɔ⟩.) The staveless letters are not directly supported by Unicode, but some fonts allow the stave in Chao tone letters to be suppressed.

Nonstandard[edit]

Obsolete and/or nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet
Symbol	Name	Meaning	=IPA		examples, notes
ɿ	reversed fishhook R	syllabic denti-alveolar approximant	ɹ̩^[15]	ɹ̩, z̩, ◌͡ɯ^[16]	⎅+
ʅ	ɿ with retroflex tail	syllabic retroflex approximant	ɹ̩^[15]	ɻ̩, ʐ̩, ◌͡ɨ	⎅

Notes:
⎅ ⊂ Sinological extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet. See also Chinese vowels.
+ More notes in orig. article.
ɹ̩ (2-row span:) [ɹ̩] occurs only ⓐ in isolation or after [s] and such or ⓑ after [ʃ] and such. [All of these] occur only in open syllables.