Sounds Need Symbols

Phonetics and the IPA

Course 1 · Chapter 1 · Why Sounds Need a Notation

Introduction to Linguistics gave a first look at how speech sounds are made and organised. This course goes further: it teaches you to describe any speech sound exactly, and to write it down in a way that another person can read. The tool for that is the International Phonetic Alphabet, the IPA. This first chapter explains why we need it, what it is, and the few conventions that you will see in every chapter after this.

The idea in a box

Spelling records words; the IPA records sounds. Ordinary spelling gives one sound many spellings and one spelling many sounds, so a separate alphabet is needed in which each symbol stands for one sound, in every language.

Spelling Is Not a Record of Sound

English spelling is a famous example of the problem. Here are six words that all contain the letters ough, with a transcription of how each is said in Received Pronunciation (RP), a standard southern English accent. Do not worry about the symbols yet; just notice how many different sounds hide behind four letters.

# spelling   RP transcription
through    [θɹuː]
though     [ðəʊ]
tough      [tʌf]
cough      [kɒf]
bough      [baʊ]
thorough   [ˈθʌɹə]

The reverse happens too: the same sound is spelt in many ways. The vowel [iː] is written differently in see, sea, be, key, field and receive. Spelling is a record of history and convention, not of sound.

Watch out: letters are not sounds

A letter is a written symbol; a sound is something a person produces. This course keeps them apart. Letters and words in ordinary spelling are in italics; sounds are in [square brackets] or /slashes/. The letter c is [k] in cat and [s] in city.

Some spellings are closer to the sound

Not every language is as irregular as English. Hungarian and Esperanto were both given spelling systems that come close to one letter or digraph per sound. Even there, the letters do not always match what an English reader expects, which is exactly why a neutral notation is useful.

Spelling	Language	Sound	Example
s	Hungarian	[ʃ]	só [ʃoː] "salt"
sz	Hungarian	[s]	szó [soː] "word"
zs	Hungarian	[ʒ]	zseb [ʒɛb] "pocket"
cs	Hungarian	[t͡ʃ]	csak [t͡ʃɒk] "only"
gy	Hungarian	[ɟ]	gyár [ɟaːr] "factory"
ĉ	Esperanto	[t͡ʃ]	ĉapelo "hat"
ŝ	Esperanto	[ʃ]	ŝipo "ship"
ĝ	Esperanto	[d͡ʒ]	ĝardeno "garden"
c	Esperanto	[t͡s]	celo "aim"

Notice that Hungarian s is the sound English writes sh, and Hungarian sz is the sound English writes s. The Hungarian pair só and szó differ in one sound, a minimal pair of the kind met in Introduction to Linguistics 3. The tie bars (t͡ʃ) show that two symbols make one sound, an affricate.

What the IPA Is

The International Phonetic Alphabet is a set of symbols with a fixed meaning for each: one symbol for one sound, whatever the language. It is maintained by the International Phonetic Association, also called the IPA.

Point	What the sources say
Origin	Founded in 1886 by a group of French and English language teachers; named the International Phonetic Association from 1897. Paul Passy led the group, with Otto Jespersen and Daniel Jones among the figures involved.
First uniform alphabet	The values of the letters were made uniform across languages in 1888.
Size	107 letters for consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics and 17 suprasegmental signs, according to Wikipedia.
Latest revisions	The Association says its latest substantive changes were in 2015 (wording and layout) and 2005 (the labiodental flap); later years' charts repeat that design with an updated copyright year. Wikipedia describes the official chart as revised in 2020, so the year you see depends on the source.
Licence	The chart and its sub-charts are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence, so you may copy and adapt them with attribution.
Use	Many British dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, give pronunciations in the IPA; most American dictionaries use their own respelling systems instead.

Use the real chart

The Association's website lists the full chart (a PDF and image files), sub-charts for consonants, vowels, diacritics and tones, an interactive chart, and recordings of the sounds. A written course cannot play audio, so open the interactive chart next to this one and click the sounds as you read.

Brackets and Slashes

You met two kinds of brackets in Introduction to Linguistics 3. They are worth fixing now.

Brackets	Means	Example
[ ] square brackets	a phonetic transcription: the sounds as they are physically made	[pʰɪn]
/ / slashes	a phonemic transcription: the sounds as units of one language's system	/pɪn/
italics	ordinary spelling	pin

Broad and Narrow

A narrow transcription records fine detail; a broad one records only the main sounds. Both are usually written in square brackets. Compare two transcriptions of the same English word:

# word   broad     narrow
pin      [pɪn]     [pʰɪn]    # narrow shows the puff of air after the p
spin     [spɪn]    [spɪn]    # no puff here, so both are the same

How much detail to record depends on the purpose. A dictionary needs a broad transcription; a study of a new accent needs a narrow one. This course gives you both and states which one it is using.

How This Course Works

The accent is always stated. A transcription of English belongs to a particular accent; the same word differs between RP, General American and Scottish English (Chapter 7).
Examples come from languages you know. English, German, Hungarian, Japanese and Esperanto are the working languages, with a few others when they show a sound best.
Everything is checked. Symbols and values are checked against the IPA chart and a reference such as Wikipedia's phonology articles; anything I could not confirm is marked as unverified.
Use your own voice. Each exercise can be done with the interactive chart and by saying the sounds aloud.

Try It Yourself

Exercise 1

Say these English words aloud (in your own accent) and decide how many different vowel sounds the letters ea stand for: bead, bread, break, heart, earth. Then give one more word with each vowel sound you found.

📄 View solution

Exercise 2

Using the table of Esperanto and Hungarian letters, write a broad transcription (in square brackets) of Hungarian sör, nyár, cél (using ny = [ɲ], c = [t͡s] and ö = [ø]) and Esperanto ŝipo, ĉapelo, ĝardeno. Mark the stress in the Esperanto words (stress falls on the second-to-last syllable).

📄 View solution

Exercise 3

Say which brackets (square brackets, slashes or italics) each needs: (a) the word as spelt in a book; (b) the puffed-out [pʰ] of pin; (c) the phoneme that English speakers hear as the first sound of pin; (d) the transcription you would put in a dictionary entry.

📄 View solution

Chapter 1 Quick Reference

Spelling is not a record of sound: one spelling, many sounds (ough); one sound, many spellings ([iː])
The IPA: one symbol per sound in every language; founded 1886, uniform letter values from 1888
Chart: free, Creative Commons licence; use the Association's interactive chart for audio
[ ] phonetic, / / phonemic, italics spelling
Broad transcription: main sounds; narrow: fine detail
State the accent for English transcriptions
Hungarian s = [ʃ], sz = [s]; Esperanto ĉ = [t͡ʃ], ŝ = [ʃ], ĝ = [d͡ʒ]

Coming next

Phonetics and the IPA 2 shows how speech is made: the airstream, the larynx and voicing, the vocal tract, and the articulators that every consonant symbol refers to.