International Phonetic Alphabet Usage
Approximately 6,500 languages worldwide have pronunciations that vary depending on dialects, but the speech sounds that can be made are finite. The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) comprises symbols illustrating each sound and condenses all the characters into a convenient chart. Many fields use it daily, making it one of the most valuable tools for studying language and human vocal anatomy. IPA usage includes the following:
- In dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words
- To create new writing systems for previously unwritten languages
- In foreign language textbooks and phrase books to transcribe the sounds of languages written with non-Latin alphabets
- Help non-native speakers when learning to speak English
The IPA is helpful in any work that captures the nuances of voice quality, pronunciation, and intonation.
Field linguists and indigenous communities use the IPA to document and describe endangered languages before they disappear entirely. Speech and language pathologists and clinicians rely on the IPA to diagnose and treat communication and voice disorders accurately.
Computational linguists working on speech recognition and synthesis often use the IPA. Textbooks, pronunciation guides, and ESL learning materials are based on the IPA and used as a foundational tool for teaching. Vocal music pedagogy, accent training for actors, and other performing arts also reference the IPA. Even Wikipedia uses the IPA to demonstrate the correct pronunciation of words.
Linguistics and IPA Usage
The IPA is the writing standard for linguists worldwide, allowing them to concentrate on the oral elements of speech and find commonalities in every language. Linguists are dedicated to applying the scientific method to organized language study. In addition to sounds, they also study many other disciplines, such as meaning and grammar. American linguists sometimes use phonetic notation and other nonstandard symbols alongside the IPA. Anyone who uses nonstandard methods is encouraged to add an explanation of their choices to their writings. This practice is widely recommended when the exact meaning of symbols and traditions alters over time.
Dictionaries
Using a standard representation of speech sounds in contexts and publications would be logical. However, bilingual and monolingual dictionaries rarely use the IPA. Each dictionary publisher uses their system to indicate the pronunciation of words. If all dictionaries used the IPA, we would only need to keep track of and learn one system.
English Usage of the IPA
The Oxford English Dictionary and others are now using the IPA to indicate word pronunciation. However, some respelling systems are still used for English readers. The IPA includes nearly two hundred distinctive symbols, such as:
- Symbols for consonants, including ejectives, rare clicks, and implosives
- The sixteen vowels used in American English and many more from other languages
- Suprasegmentals, including stress, tone, and other features of prosody and intonation
- Some diacritics indicate an altered pronunciation, such as vowel lengthening, aspirating a consonant, and more.
Sociolinguists use the IPA when studying regional varieties of English or other languages when it is necessary to capture exact pronunciations.
Other Languages
Some dictionaries for other languages did not use the IPA. Those with phonemic orthographies didn’t integrate pronunciation and used respelling systems instead. Israeli dictionaries rarely use the IPA and prefer the Hebrew alphabet to transcribe foreign words. Dictionaries that translate foreign languages into Russian use the IPA most of the time, but the monolingual ones use respelling. The IPA is commonly used when a language does not have specific sounds.
Standard Orthographies and Case Variants
The goal of the IPA method for phonetic transcription is to describe pronunciation in a standardized form. It helps resolve spelling ambiguities often seen in written language and can effectively show detailed phonetic information.
A system of writing a language is called an orthography in which written symbols (graphemes) correspond to speech sounds (phonemes). If a language has a highly phonemic orthography is considered to have regular spelling. An orthography can diverge from being phonemic by degrees such as deep and shallow. The depth is the degree to which the orthography diverges from being truly phonemic. Most natural languages do not have perfect one-to-one phonemic orthographies. An ideal one would have each phoneme represented by its related grapheme allowing each word to denote its pronunciation. If you knew the pronunciation of a word, you could easily infer its spelling.
Only lowercase letters are used on the IPA chart. It does not use punctuation marks or capitalization in transcriptions because phones and phonemes do not have capital or small case relevance. Because the IPA uses small capitals to represent a specific type of phone, using regular capitals would lead to other problems.
IPA letters have been incorporated into the alphabets of various languages and supported by the Unicode Standard. This information technology sets a standard for the uniform encoding, handling, and representation of text across the world’s writing systems.
The IPA and Classical Singing
Classical singers use the IPA when they prepare, especially when performing in a foreign language. Their training includes learning perfect diction and improving tuning and tone quality. Parts of operas are transcribed in IPA, so singers must be able to read it by sight.