1.
International Phonetic Alphabet
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The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
2.
X-SAMPA
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The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London and it is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, and extend SAMPA to cover the entire range of characters in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The result is a SAMPA-inspired remapping of the IPA into 7-bit ASCII, SAMPA was devised as a hack to work around the inability of text encodings to represent IPA symbols. Later, as Unicode support for IPA symbols became more widespread, however, X-SAMPA is still useful as the basis for an input method for true IPA. The IPA symbols that are ordinary lower-case letters have the value in X-SAMPA as they do in the IPA. X-SAMPA uses backslashes as modifying suffixes to create new symbols, for example, O is a distinct sound from O\, to which it bears no relation. Such use of the character can be a problem, since many programs interpret it as an escape character for the character following it. For example, you use such X-SAMPA symbols in EMU. X-SAMPA diacritics follow the symbols they modify, except for ~ for nasalization, = for syllabicity, and for retroflexion and rhotacization, diacritics are joined to the character with the underscore character _. The underscore character is used to encode the IPA tiebar. The numbers _1 to _6 are reserved diacritics as shorthand for language-specific tone numbers, asterisks mark sounds that do not have X-SAMPA symbols. Daggers mark IPA symbols that have recently added to Unicode. Since April 2008, the latter is the case of the labiodental flap, a dedicated symbol for the labiodental flap does not yet exist in X-SAMPA. International Phonetic Alphabet International Phonetic Alphabet for English Kirshenbaum and WorldBet, list of phonetics topics SAMPA, a language-specific predecessor of X-SAMPA. SAMPA chart for English Computer-coding the IPA, A proposed extension of SAMPA Translate English texts into IPA phonetics with PhoTransEdit and this free software tool allows to export transcriptions to X-SAMPA. Online converter between IPA and X-Sampa Web-based translator for X-SAMPA documents, produces Unicode text, XML text, PostScript, PDF, or LaTeX TIPA. Z-SAMPA, an extension of X-SAMPA sometimes used for conlangs Web-based X-SAMPA to IPA Converter
3.
Kirshenbaum
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Kirshenbaum, sometimes called ASCII-IPA or erkIPA, is a system used to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet in ASCII. This way it allows typewriting IPA-symbols by regular keyboard and it was developed for Usenet, notably the newsgroups sci. lang and alt. usage. english. It is named after Evan Kirshenbaum, who led the collaboration that created it, the system uses almost all lower-case letters to represent the directly corresponding IPA character, but unlike X-SAMPA, has the notable exception of the letter r. Examples where the two systems have a different mapping between characters and sounds are, This chart is based on information provided in the Kirshenbaum specification and it may also be helpful to compare it to the SAMPA chart or X-SAMPA chart. Stress is indicated by for primary stress, and, for secondary stress, the Kirshenbaum started developing in August 1992 through a usenet group, after being fed up with describing the sound of words by using other words. It should be usable for both phonemic and narrow phonetic transcription and it should be possible to represent all symbols and diacritics in the IPA. It should be possible to translate from the representation to a character set which includes IPA. The reverse would also be nice, the developers decided to use the existing IPA alphabet, mapping each segment to a single keyboard character, and adding extra ASCII characters optionally for IPA diacritics. An early, different set in ASCII was derived from the guide in Merriam-Websters New Collegiate Dictionary. Kirshenbaum specification Tutorial and guide with sound samples History
4.
IPA Braille
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IPA Braille is the modern standard Braille encoding of the International Phonetic Alphabet, as recognized by the International Council on English Braille. A braille version of the IPA was first created by Merrick and Potthoff in 1934 and it was used in France, Germany, and anglophone countries. However, it was not updated as the IPA evolved, in 1990 it was officially reissued by BAUK, but in a corrupted form that made it largely unworkable. In 1997 BANA created a new system for the United States. However, it was incompatible with braille IPA elsewhere in the world and in addition proved to be cumbersome, in 2008 Robert Englebretson revised the Merrick and Potthoff notation and by 2011 this had been accepted by BANA. It is largely true to the original in consonants and vowels, though the diacritics were completely reworked, the diacritics were also made more systematic, and follow rather than precede the base letters. However, it has no procedure for marking tone. IPA Braille does not use the conventions of English Braille and it is set off by slash or square brackets, which indicate that the intervening material is IPA rather than national orthography. Thus brackets are required in braille even when not used in print, the choice for ⟨ɹ⟩ may reflect the shape of that letter in print. Many of the vowels are used for modified vowels in national alphabets, a few other letters such as ⠹ occur, but only as parts of digraphs. Other IPA letters are indicated with digraphs or even trigraphs usinɡ 5th-decade letters, the component letter ⠲. for example, is equivalent to the tail of the retroflex consonants. This presumably derives from the old IPA practice of using a dot for retroflex consonants. It also marks vowels which in print are formed by rotating the letter, is treated as a rotated ⟨o⟩, and ⟨ɯ⟩ as a rotated ⟨u⟩ rather than ⟨m⟩, perhaps facilitated by braille ⟨u⟩ and ⟨m⟩ themselves being a rotated pair. The basic braille letters ⠹ and ⠯, which do not occur on their own in IPA usage, ⠨ is also used with letters of the fifth decade for transcriber-defined symbols, which need to be specified for each text, as they have no set meaning. These are ⠨⠂, ⠨⠆, ⠨⠒, ⠨⠲, ⠨⠢, ⠨⠖, ⠨⠶, ⠨⠦, ⠨⠔, ⠨⠴. ⠴ is used for barred vowels. ⠖ is used for other hooks, as in flaps, ⠯ is used for click letters. These are far more legible in braille than in print, ligatures, regardless of whether these are written with a tie bar or as actual ligatures in print, are indicated by dot 5, so ⟨t͜ʃ⟩ and ⟨ʧ⟩ are both ⠞⠐⠱. This includes the historic ligatures ⟨ɮ⟩ ⠇⠐⠮ and ⟨ɚ⟩ ⠢⠐⠗, ejectives are written as ligatures with an apostrophe, ⠄, so ⟨tʼ⟩ is ⠞⠐⠄. IPA Braille diacritics are written in two cells, the first indicates the position, whether superscript, mid-line, or subscript
5.
Vowel
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In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, with two competing definitions. There is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis and this contrasts with consonants, such as the English sh, which have a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. In the other, phonological definition, a vowel is defined as syllabic, a phonetically equivalent but non-syllabic sound is a semivowel. In oral languages, phonetic vowels normally form the peak of many to all syllables, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, the word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning vocal. In English, the vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them. The phonetic definition of vowel does not always match the phonological definition, the approximants and illustrate this, both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract, but they occur at the onset of syllables. A similar debate arises over whether a word like bird in a dialect has an r-colored vowel /ɝ/ or a syllabic consonant /ɹ̩/. The American linguist Kenneth Pike suggested the terms vocoid for a vowel and vowel for a phonological vowel, so using this terminology. Nonetheless, the phonetic and phonemic definitions would still conflict for the syllabic el in table, or the syllabic nasals in button, daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height, tongue backness and roundedness. These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right, there are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position, type of vocal fold vibration, and tongue root position. This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928, Peter Ladefoged has said that early phoneticians. Thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, and they were actually describing formant frequencies. The IPA Handbook concedes that the quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction. Vowel height is named for the position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. However, it refers to the first formant, abbreviated F1. Height is defined by the inverse of the F1 value, The higher the frequency of the first formant, however, if more precision is required, true-mid vowels may be written with a lowering diacritic. Although English contrasts six heights in its vowels, they are interdependent with differences in backness and it appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters
6.
Language
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Language is the ability to acquire and use complex systems of communication, particularly the human ability to do so, and a language is any specific example of such a system. The scientific study of language is called linguistics, questions concerning the philosophy of language, such as whether words can represent experience, have been debated since Gorgias and Plato in Ancient Greece. Thinkers such as Rousseau have argued that language originated from emotions while others like Kant have held that it originated from rational and logical thought, 20th-century philosophers such as Wittgenstein argued that philosophy is really the study of language. Major figures in linguistics include Ferdinand de Saussure and Noam Chomsky, estimates of the number of languages in the world vary between 5,000 and 7,000. However, any precise estimate depends on an arbitrary distinction between languages and dialects. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli – for example, in whistling, signed and this is because human language is modality-independent. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate signs to particular meanings, human language has the properties of productivity and displacement, and relies entirely on social convention and learning. Its complex structure affords a wider range of expressions than any known system of animal communication. Language is processed in different locations in the human brain. Humans acquire language through interaction in early childhood, and children generally speak fluently when they are approximately three years old. The use of language is deeply entrenched in human culture, a group of languages that descend from a common ancestor is known as a language family. The languages of the Dravidian family that are mostly in Southern India include Tamil. Academic consensus holds that between 50% and 90% of languages spoken at the beginning of the 21st century will probably have become extinct by the year 2100. The English word language derives ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *dn̥ǵʰwéh₂s tongue, speech, language through Latin lingua, language, tongue, and Old French language. The word is used to refer to codes, ciphers. Unlike conventional human languages, a language in this sense is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. This article specifically concerns the properties of human language as it is studied in the discipline of linguistics. As an object of study, language has two primary meanings, an abstract concept, and a specific linguistic system, e. g. French
7.
Schwa
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In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa is the mid central vowel sound in the middle of the vowel chart, denoted by the IPA symbol ə, or another vowel sound close to that position. An example in English is the sound of the a in the word about. Schwa in English is mainly found in unstressed positions, but in other languages it occurs more frequently as a stressed vowel. In relation to languages, the name schwa and the symbol ə may be used for some other unstressed and toneless neutral vowel. The word schwa is from the Hebrew word shva, designating the Hebrew niqqud vowel sign shva, in Modern Hebrew, the term was introduced into European linguistics by Jacob Grimm in the early 19th century, and so the spelling sch is German in origin. It was first used in English texts between 1890 and 1895, the symbol ⟨ə⟩ was used first by Johann Andreas Schmeller for the reduced vowel at the end of the German name Gabe. Alexander John Ellis, in his alphabet, used it for the similar English sound in. Sometimes the term schwa is used for any vowel. In English, schwa is the most common vowel sound and it is a reduced vowel in many unstressed syllables especially if syllabic consonants are not used. In most varieties of English, schwa occurs almost exclusively in unstressed syllables, in New Zealand English, the high front lax vowel has shifted open and back to sound like schwa, and both stressed and unstressed schwas exist. To a certain extent, that is true for South African English as well, in General American, schwa and ɜː are the two vowel sounds that can be r-colored, r-colored schwa is used in words with unstressed er syllables, such as dinner. See also stress and vowel reduction in English, quite a few languages have a sound similar to schwa. It is similar to a short French unaccented ⟨e⟩, which is rounded and less central and it is almost always unstressed, but Albanian, Bulgarian, Slovene and Afrikaans are some of the languages that allow stressed schwas. In most dialects of Russian an unstressed ⟨a⟩ or ⟨o⟩ reduces to a schwa, in dialects of Kashubian a schwa occurs in place of the Old Polish short consonants u, i, y. Many Caucasian languages and some Uralic languages also use phonemic schwa, in the Eastern dialects of Catalan, including the standard variety, based in the dialect spoken in and around Barcelona, an unstressed ⟨a⟩ or ⟨e⟩ is pronounced as a schwa. In the dialects of Catalan spoken in the Balearic Islands, a stressed schwa can occur, stressed schwa can occur in Romanian, as in mătură. In European and some African dialects of Portuguese, the schwa occurs in unstressed syllables that end in ⟨e⟩, such as noite, tarde, pêssego. However, that is rare in Brazilian Portuguese except in areas as Curitiba in Paraná
8.
Mid central vowel
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The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ə⟩, while the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association does not define the roundedness of, it is more often unrounded than rounded. The phonetician Jane Setter describes the pronunciation of the variant as follows, is a sound which can be produced by basically relaxing the articulators in the oral cavity. To produce the variant, all that needs to be done in addition to that is to round the lips. Some languages, such as Danish and Luxembourgish, have a mid central vowel that is variably rounded, in some other languages, things are more complicated, as the change in rounding is accompanied with the change in height and/or backness. The symbol ⟨ə⟩ is often used for any unstressed obscure vowel, for instance, the English vowel transcribed ⟨ə⟩ is a central unrounded vowel that can be close-mid, mid or open-mid, depending on the environment. The mid central unrounded vowel is written with the symbol. If greater precision is desired, the symbol for the close-mid central unrounded vowel may be used with a lowering diacritic, another possibility is using the symbol for the open-mid central unrounded vowel with a raising diacritic. Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a vowel and an open vowel. Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel and it is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded. Languages may have a mid central rounded vowel, distinct from both the close-mid and open-mid vowels. However, since no language is known to all three, there is no separate IPA symbol for the mid vowel, and the symbol for the close-mid central rounded vowel is generally used instead. If precision is desired, the diacritic can be used. Its vowel height is mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a vowel and an open vowel. Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel and it is rounded, which means that the lips are rounded rather than spread or relaxed
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[ˈbɪtɘ] (help·info)