Help:IPA/Introduction: Difference between revisions

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* '''Consonants''': IPA consonants are mostly intuitive to an English speaker, with the same letter used for the same sound. Thus you already know {{IPA|/b, d, f, ɡ, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z/}}, as long as you remember that these each have a single sound. For example, {{IPA|/ɡ/}} always represents the sound of ''get,'' never of ''gem,'' and {{IPA|/s/}} always the sound of ''so,'' never of ''rose''. The letter which most confuses people is {{IPA|/j/}}, which has its Central-European values, a ''y'' sound as in the ''j'' in English ''[[wiktionary:hallelujah|hallelujah]]''. Two English consonant sounds, ''ch'' in ''chair'' and ''j'' in ''jump'', are transcribed with two IPA letters apiece, {{IPA|/tʃ/}} and {{IPA|/dʒ/}}. The English digraphs ''ch, ng, qu, sh, th'' are not used. See and hear also [[IPA pulmonic consonant chart with audio|consonant audio chart]].

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== Vowels ==

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English short vowels are all transcribed by a single letter in the IPA.

Because English short vowels ''a e i o u'' are closer to the Classical pronunciation (still found in Spanish and Italian) than the long vowels are, it is the short vowels which are transcribed with IPA letters which resemble the English letters ''a e i o u.'' However, they are modified to show that they aren't exactly the Classical sounds. For the ''a'' sound of ''cat,'' the [[Old English]] letter ''[[æ]]'' was resurrected: {{IPA|/kæt/}}. The ''e i u'' sounds of ''pet, pit, put'' (not ''putt'') were originally written as capital letters, and that is sometimes still done with manual typewriters. However, small caps looked better, so they were for a time written {{sc|e i u}}. These took more cursive forms over time, and are today written {{IPA|/ɛ ɪ ʊ/}}: ''pet'' {{IPA|/pɛt/}}, ''pit'' {{IPA|/pɪt/}}, ''put'' {{IPA|/pʊt/}}. The latter, of course, is also the short ''oo'' sound of ''good'' {{IPA|/ɡʊd/}}. The ''u'' vowel of ''putt'' or ''cut'', is written as an upturned letter ''v'', e.g. ''cut'' {{IPA|/kʌt/}}. TheSome exactof pronunciationyou ofmay not distinguish this soundvowel variesfrom considerablythat amongof English''put'', dialectsif so, you can think of /ʌ/ and /ʊ/ as representing the same sound.

The ''a'' sound in ''bra'' is written with a Greek ''[[Alpha|α]]'', which looks like a single-storey ''a.'' Because it's long in many dialects, it's {{IPA|/ɑː/}} in the IPA: {{IPA|/brɑː/}}. Likewise, the ''aw'' sound of ''law'' is long in many dialects, but, for many of you, different than the ''bra'' sound. It's written with an "open" ''o'' (just as {{IPA|/ɛ/}} looks like an open ''e'', since a small cap ''o'' looks just like a regular ''o''ː ''law'' {{IPA|/lɔː/}}. (ManySome of you might not make this distinction, in which case you can think of these vowel letters as being the same when reading the IPA.) For those of you who distinguish it, there is a third similar sound, the ''o'' of ''mop.'' This is written with the ''bra'' vowel letter rotated 180°: ''mop'' {{IPA|/mɒp/}}. (A rather unusual IPA letter, as that's an unusual vowel, not found in many languages). The vowel sound in ''bird'' is written as an upturned {{IPA|/ɛ/]}}, therefore it is written as {{IPA|/bɜrd/}}.

Finally, there's the slurred [[schwa]] sound found in many unstressed syllables, as at the end of ''sofa.'' This is written {{IPA|/ə/}}, a symbol used in many US dictionaries. The stressed syllable is marked with a tick: ''sofa'' {{IPA|/ˈsoʊfə/}}. Note that the letter {{IPA|/ə/}} is never used for a stressed vowel; for words like ''cut,'' we use {{IPA|/ʌ/}}: ''butter'' {{IPA|/ˈbʌtər/}}, ''cuppa'' {{IPA|/ˈkʌpə/}}.

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The second purpose concerns only linguists. The first purpose concerns any interested reader, but only to a limited degree, as transcribing words into IPA does not need to be perfect or overly [[Phonetic transcription#Narrow versus broad transcription|precise]] (something for fluent IPA users to consider). The word "transcribe" is used to distinguish this from normal writing or spelling, which has other purposes (such as preserving word etymologies and meaning).

IPA is complex enough to represent nearly anything, but high-fidelity transcriptions will use glyphs that are unfamiliar to English readers and unpracticed in English [[phonology]]. For example a transcription of something like the Icelandic name ''[[Eyjafjallajökull]]'' is pronounced {{IPA-|is|ˈeiːjaˌfjatl̥aˌjœːkʏtl̥||Is-Eyjafjallajökull (3).oga}}, meaning ''island-mountain glacier,'' may approximate Icelandic phonology, but such information will likely be too much for English readers, who may need to reference the name using what is at best an approximate pronunciation anyway. (Often an English version of a foreign name will try to employ translation in combination with partial transcription, but this often stays unnecessarily close to the original spelling and therefore prevents English speakers from using sounds they can easily produce. For example ''Eyja-fjalla glacier'' (['eija-f'jala] ''glacier'') is a sufficiently close approximation, but ''Eyja-fjatla glacier'' (['eija-f'jatla] ''glacier'') would be closer and still easy to pronounce.)

== Notes ==