International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

 International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Origin

The IPA was first published in 1888 by the Association Phonétique Internationale (International Phonetic Association), a group of French language teachers founded by Paul Passy. The aim of the organisation was to devise a system for transcribing the sounds of speech which was independent of any particular language and applicable to all languages.

A phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was used as a model for the IPA.

Uses

• The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words.
• The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten languages.
• The IPA is used in some foreign language text books and phrase books to transcribe the sounds of languages which are written with non-latin alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learning to speak English.

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one on the right represents a voiced consonant, while the one on the left is unvoiced. Shaded areas denote articulations judged to be impossible.

What is phonology?

Phonology is the study of the sound system of languages. It is a huge area of language theory and it is difficult to do more on a general language course than have an outline knowledge of what it includes. At one extreme, phonology is concerned with anatomy and physiology - the organs of speech and how we learn to use them. At another extreme, phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we consider social attitudes to features of sound such as accent and intonation. And part of the subject is concerned with finding objective standard ways of recording speech, and representing this symbolically.

For some kinds of study - perhaps a language investigation into the phonological development of young children or regional variations in accent, you will need to use phonetic transcription to be credible. But this is not necessary in all kinds of study - in an exam, you may be concerned with stylistic effects of sound in advertising or literature, such as assonance, rhyme or onomatopoeia - and you do not need to use special phonetic symbols to do this.

What is phonology?

Definition

        

Phonology is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.

        

The phonological system of a language includes:

¨       an inventory of sounds and their features, and

¨       rules which specify how sounds interact with each other.

        

Phonology is just one of several aspects of language. It is related to other aspects such as phonetics, morphology, syntax, and pragmatics. Here is an illustration that shows the place of phonology in an interacting hierarchy of levels in linguistics:

- Comparison: Phonology and phonetics

Phonetics	Phonology
Is the basis for phonological analysis.	Is the basis for further work in morphology, syntax, discourse, and orthography design.
Analyzes the production of all human speech sounds, regardless of language.	Analyzes the sound patterns of a particular language by determining which phonetic sounds are significant, and explaining how these sounds are interpreted by the native speaker.