A Guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet and its Application

• Published in: The Choral journal Vol. 59; no. 9; pp. 51 - 59
• Main Author: Thorpe, Stephanie R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oklahoma City American Choral Directors Association 01.04.2019
• Subjects: Dialectics; Dialects; Dictionaries; Handbooks; Language; Musicians & conductors; Phonetics; Quality; Singers; Speaking; Students
• ISSN: 0009-5028; 2163-2170

According to the article "The world's languages, in 7 maps and charts," published by the Washington Post, there are at least 7,102 living languages throughout the world.1 With all of these living languages, scholars developed the field of phonetics in which they were able to characterize and categorize the many languages of the world and the dialects contained within each language. Each phonetic symbol is featured in block parentheses [ ], followed by the sound each symbol produces with examples of words to facilitate understanding. [a]- Bright, forward vowel as in "high," "light," and "quite." [a] - Placed further back in the mouth, a dark vowel as in "father," "hall," "hot," and "body." [æ ] - Bright, forward vowel as in "cat," "mast," "family," and "have." [b] - Stop-plosive, voiced bilabial consonant. [b] is a cognate of [p]. [c] - Consonant that makes a hard [k] sound or [s] sound. "car" and "cup" and "coo." [tf] - Consonant combination that makes a "ch" sound, as in the word "church." [d] - Stop-plosive consonant, tongue + alveolar ridge. [d] is a cognate of [t]. [e] - Forward, closed vowel found mainly in diphthongs, as in "wait," and "stay." [e] - Forward, open vowel, as in "fed," "open," and "extra." [f] - Fricative, unvoiced consonant made with the upper teeth and the lower lip and is a cognate of [v]. [g] - Stop-plosive, voiced consonant made with the back of the tongue and the soft palate. The aforementioned languages have what sounds like a diphthong when two vowel sounds are placed next to each other, as the Italian words "mio" = [mi ]o] and "sei" = [se ]i]. [a?] - "bright," "white," "I," "eye," and "file" = [bra?t], [hwa?t], [a?], and [fail]. [a?] - "brown," "trounce," and "crowd" = [bra?n], [tra?ns], and [kra?d]. [e?] - "wait," "plane/plain," and "blame" = [we?t], [ple?n], and [ble?m]. [??] - "boy," "soil," and "poise" = [b??], [s??l], and [p??z]. [o?] - "boat," "owe," "gold," and "troll."[bo?t], [o?], [go?ld], and [tro?l]. [ju] - "new," "huge," "music," and "cute" = [nju], [hjudƷ], [mjuz?k], and [kjut]. Each marking included in this article is found inside block parentheses [ ] followed by its definition and a word featuring the diacritical marking for reference. [' ] - Acute accent: found in a variety of languages as a signifier of vowel quality or length, typically causing the vowel to be closed in quality, as in the word "résumé" = [re zu me]. [ ' ] - Grave accent: found in a variety of languages as a signifier of vowel quality or length, typically causing the vowel to be open in quality, as in the French word "piece" = [pi es]. [ ç ] - Cedilla: often called the "c cedilla," the marking is found on the bottom of the letter [c], often softening the sound of the consonant, as in the French word façade = [fa sad]. [ ^ ] - Circumflex: found in a variety of languages as a signifier of vowel quality or length, as in the French word reve = [rev] . [ " ] - Diaresis/umlaut: found in a variety of languages as a signifier of vowel quality or length. [ ~ ] - Tilde: found in a variety of languages as a signifier of vowel quality or length and/or consonant length and quality of sound production.