International Phonetic Alphabet

 

IPA—International Phonetic Alphabet

 

These are some essential English-based phonemes (phonemes are the smallest unit of sound). There are several variants of each phoneme listed here, within and outreaching English, but let’s go over the basics.

 

CONSONANTS

 

Stops—when air is blocked completely

 

/p/ a voiceless bilabial stop. Let’s break down these three linguistics words to plain English: “voiceless” means that the vocal chords don’t vibrate. “bilabial” means two lips. The stop means that there’s no air flow. Not so hard, right?

 

/b/ a voiced bilabial stop. The difference of /b/ to /p/ is that the vocal chords vibrate with /b/. For example, you can whisper /p/ but it’s harder with /b/. There is something to say for the amount of air flow following the articulation of both /p/ and /b/, but it delves a little deeper.

 

/t/ A voiceless alveolar stop. “Alveolar” refers to the alveolar ridge on the roof of the mouth; you can feel it behind your upper teeth. When pronouncing /t/, the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge, stopping the air flow. In other languages, /t/ is a dental stop, where the tongue stops the air at the upper teeth.

 

/d/ a voiced alveolar stop. At this point, it should start to make sense. It’s the same as /t/ but is voiced.

 

/k/ a voiceless velar stop. The velum is the rear part of the roof of the mouth. The tongue body stops air flow at the velum to produce the voiceless velar stop /k/. Voila.

 

/g/ a voiced velar stop. Get it?

 

Fricatives—sounds produced when air is partially blocked, and friction is created, producing sound.

 

/f/ a voiceless labiodental fricative. Remember bilabial? Labial refers to the lips, so “labiodental”means the lips and teeth contact and air is pushed through.

 

/v/ a voiced labiodental fricative.

 

/θ/ Oh dear, our first Greek symbol. θ is Theta, and conveniently represents the sound “th,” as in “thick.” It’s referred to as—you guessed it—a voiceless dental fricative.

 

/ð/ a voiced dental fricative. Also represented as “th,” but in words like “this” and “that.” Literally.

 

/s/ a voiceless alveolar fricative. I was at first thinking /s/ involved the teeth, because it seemed like the air was pushing through them. But it really doesn’t matter if the teeth are touching or not—you can’t make the /s/ sound without the alveolar ridge. I don’t know if you thought the same thing or not. Maybe I’m just crazy.

 

/z/ a voiced alveolar fricative. As in “crazy.”

 

/ʃ/ a voiceless alveopalatal fricative. This is represented as “sh.” This is similar to /s/ (as people with lisps would understand) but if you slide back and forth between /ʃ/ and /s/ you’ll notice that the tongue moves back behind the alveolar ridge and closer to the hard palate—the middle part of the roof of the mouth. Alveopalatal is also referred to as “post-alveolar.”

 

/ʒ/ a voiced alveopalatal fricative. This occurs in words like “measure” and “decision.”

 

/h/ a voiceless glottal fricative. The glottis is like the back of the throat. /h/ is a little ambiguous, however, because the placement of the tongue depends on the vowel that follows /h/.

 

Affricates—a combination of a stop and consecutive fricative.

 

/tʃ/ a voiceless alveopalatal affricate. Spelled “ch,” and goes from the stopped position /t/ straight into /ʃ/. Pretty straightforward.

 

/dʒ/ a voiced alveopalatal affricate. It appears in words like “judge.”

 

Nasals—voiced oral stops, where sound comes from the nasal cavity when the oral cavity is blocked.

 

/m/ a bilabial nasal. It’s like humming—and coincidentally, the word “humming” has two /m/s.

 

/n/ an alveolar nasal. The tongue is at the alveolar ridge, like with /d/ and /t/.

 

/ŋ/ a velar nasal. It’s often spelled “ng,” and doesn’t appear at the beginning of words in English. There is, however, a last name in Vietnamese and/or? Cantonese that is spelled Ng.

 

Liquids—air flows past the tongue blade without much friction.

In English, there’s only one. /l/, an alveolar liquid. How convenient is that?

 

Glides—the almost-vowels that precede true vowels. It’s smooth and glides into the vowel sound. These are also sometimes referred to as semivowels.

 

/w/ a bilabial (velarized) glide. The tongue body is towards the velum and the lips are rounded. (The word “bilabial” doesn’t necessarily mean the two lips are touching)

 

/ʍ/ is a bilabial glide as well. It’s not a capital m, it’s an upside down w. /ʍ/ is /w/ preceded by /h/, and some dialects use this for “what” and “which.” (I, however, do not.) It also appears as /hw/.

 

/ɹ/ an alveolar glide. In American English, /ɹ/ can be produced by several manipulations of the tongue. It can be curled at the alveolar ridge, or it is against the lower gums and the blade is raised towards the roof of the mouth. It can also come from pursing the lips (which, to tell you the truth, I never knew exactly what that meant, so it’s just rounding the lips) and “retracting the tongue root,” which…well, could mean numerous things. /ɹ/ is a unique sound that rarely appears in other languages, and personally is my least favorite phoneme.

 

/r/ doesn’t appear in English, but is a trilled glide found in dialects of Scottish English, for example.

 

/j/ (also /y/) an alveopalatal glide. The body of the tongue is high and towards the front of the palate. It’s in words like “yes,” “yellow,” etc.

 

VOWELS

 

If you picture where your tongue is positioned, the words like "high" and "front" will correspond. If the tongue is high, it's closer to the roof of the mouth. If it's low, it's farther away, and the jaw may be lowered. If it's back, the body is closer to the velum, and if it's front, it's closer to the alveolar ridge.

 

Lax (Short) Vowels

/ɪ/ a lax high front vowel. A “high” vowel is describing the position of the tongue body. “Front” refers to the closeness towards the alveolar ridge or teeth. It comes in words like “bit” and “wish.”

 

/ɛ/ a lax mid front vowel. If you compare /ɪ/ to /ɛ/ you notice that /ɛ/ is lower. It appears in words like “get” and “mess.”

 

/æ/ a lax low front vowel. This symbol is called “ash” if for no other reason than because that is the sound of the vowel.

 

/ʊ/ a lax high back vowel. It’s in words like “put” and “foot.” The tongue is close to the velum and the lips are rounded, which makes it also referred to as a rounded vowel.

 

/ʌ/ a lax mid back vowel. Examples are “putt” and “luck.”

 

/ɑ/ a lax low back vowel. This is different than /a/, but sometimes not by much to be distinguished in the English language. It often varies by dialect and accent. Words like “hot” and “pot” represent this phoneme, but if you’re from New York or Wisconsin, this may be ambiguous.

 

/ɔ/ a lax low back vowel. This is also rounded, and yet a bit difficult to nail down according to dialect. If you pronounce “cot” and “caught” differently (I don’t think I do, personally…) it’s closer to “caught.” It also appears in “father” and “froth.”

 

Reduced Vowels

The schwa, a mid-back vowel /ə/ is very similar to /ʌ/ but the schwa is used for vowels that are unstressed, such as in the words “democracy” /dəmɑkɹəsɪ/ and “democrat” /dɛməkɹæt/. Notice that the two words that are stems of each other change stress.

 

Another reduced vowel is the barred-i, a high back vowel /ɨ/. It also only occurs in unstressed syllables, like in the word “chicken” /tʃɪkɨn/.

 

Tense (Long) Vowels—generally end with the tongue body high in the mouth, and carry more length than lax vowels.

 

/i/ a tense high front vowel. Words like “beet” and “seat” carry /i/, rather than “bit” and “sit” that carry /ɪ/.

 

/eɪ/ (also /ey/) a tense mid front vowel. It’s related to a glide or diphthong, and is found in words like “clay” and “weigh.”

 

/u/ a tense high back (rounded) vowel found in “crude” and “shoe.”

 

/oʊ/ a tense mid back (rounded) vowel. An “offglide” like /eɪ/, /oʊ/ appears in “boat” and “toe.”

 

Diphthongs? No, it’s not a dirty word. It’s two vowels that have become one glide-like sound. In English, sometimes all our vowels glide like diphthongs, but in languages like Japanese, there is no movement of the tongue or mouth in a vowel, which you may notice in difference of accent between a native speaker of Japanese and one of those posers who try to learn it by themselves from anime.

 

/ɔɪ/ (also /oy/) a tense mid back (rounded) vowel found in “boy” and “soy.”

 

/aʊ/ (also /aw/) a tense low back vowel found in “cow” and “blouse.” Dialects may alter this, and it may even appear closer to /æu/.

/aɪ/ (also /ay/) A tense low back vowel known well by pirates. (“Aye, captain. Yeah, yeah, sorry.)

 

/a/ is a tense low vowel that varies by dialect, mainly in New England (like in “park the car”)

 

 

Now, of course, there are sounds foreign to English speakers, not the least of which are clicks. My favorite example is Xhosa, an African language that uses three different clicks, one of which appears in its very name right off the bat. Khoisan languages can carry even more, adding up to 95 consonants and 24 vowels.

 

Do you know that sound you make—sometimes called a “raspberry?” You push your lips together and push air through; that’s a bilabial fricative. Yeah, there’s a scientific name for that.

 

There’s limitless possibilities with language, and a lot of the IPA has sounds I have no idea how to begin to form. But, I hope the explanation I’ve offered here gives a good foundation for understanding pronunciation of not only English, but for other languages as well. If everyone interested in language learns IPA, it will be easier to understand how to speak a new language.

 

Sources:

LINGUISTICS: An Introduction to Language and Communication. Akmajian, Demers, Farmer, Harnish.

 

Wikipedia: IPA, Khoisan language

 

*Wikipedia also has the complete IPA chart as a picture file and available to copy & paste individual symbols into a Word document.