International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech across all human languages. Its symbols draw mostly from the Latin and Greek scripts, supplemented by purpose-built letters and diacritics, and aim for one symbol per distinctive sound.
Origins and revisions
The Association formed in Paris in 1886, founded by a group of French and English language teachers led by Paul Passy, and took its current name in 1897. Successive revisions of the chart have been agreed at IPA conventions — major overhauls in 1932, 1989 (Kiel Convention), and 1993, with subsequent updates in 1996, 2005, 2015, 2018, and 2020. The 2020 revision, which is functionally identical to the 2015 chart in symbol inventory but updates the date and copyright line, remains current.
Structure of the chart
The chart is divided into three blocks. The pulmonic consonant grid arranges symbols by Place of Articulation (columns) and Manner of Articulation (rows), with Voicing paired left-voiceless / right-voiced. A separate non-pulmonic block covers clicks, implosives, and ejectives. The vowel quadrilateral plots vowels on a two-dimensional space of tongue height and frontness, anchored to Daniel Jones's Cardinal Vowels. Further sections list other symbols, diacritics for fine articulatory detail, and suprasegmentals for length, stress, tone, and intonation.
Use in ELT
The IPA underpins phonemic transcription in learner dictionaries, course books, and pronunciation reference works. Most British ELT materials adopt Adrian Underhill's chart layout, derived from the IPA but reorganised for teaching, while Roach (2009) presents the standard inventory used in Received Pronunciation descriptions. Treatments of General American follow the conventions established in Wells (1982).
References
- International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge University Press.
- Roach, P. (2009). English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course (4th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Wells, J. C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge University Press.