Today I had the opportunity to do some independent research about the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). When I met with Ms. Chesson last week, she recommended that I look into how this system works in advance of our next meeting tomorrow because it is an important foundation to work in linguistics.
Essentially, the IPA is a standardized system of classifying all of the sounds in spoken language. Based primarily on the Latin alphabet, this system has distinct symbols to represent every sound possible on all languages on earth. You’ve probably seen the IPA if you’ve ever looked in a dictionary (or even on dictionary.com) and it can be a super helpful tool when studying non-phonetic languages like English. English does not have a 1:1 ratio of symbols and sounds; letters like c or th represent multiple, distinct sounds, as in cat and cycle, or the and math. The IPA distinguishes between these discrepancies to make pronunciation easier. It features two charts, one for consonants and one for vowels, organized by the location of a person’s tongue and lips when they make the sounds.
Since its creation in 1886, the IPA has been updated several times (most recently in 2005) to account for all sounds, including Clicks and Ejectives, and be able to represent every language on the planet, not just European ones. This system is really cool and understanding it is a very important step in studying linguistics.
IPA Chart of Consonants
Here’s a link so you can hear the sounds in this chart for yourself 🙂