The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for pedagogical purposes. The Association was established in Paris in 1886 by French and British language teachers led by Paul Passy. The prototype of the alphabet appeared in . The Association based their alphabet upon the Romic alphabet of Henry Sweet, which in turn was based on the Phonotypic Alphabet of Isaac Pitman and the Palæotype of Alexander John Ellis.
The alphabet has undergone a number of revisions during its history, the most significant being the one put forth at the Kiel Convention in 1989. Changes to the alphabet are proposed and discussed in the Association's organ, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, previously known as Le Maître Phonétique and before that as The Phonetic Teacher, and then put to a vote by the Association's Council.
The extensions to the IPA for disordered speech were created in 1990, with a major revision in 2015.
Early alphabets The International Phonetic Association was founded in Paris in 1886 under the name Dhi Fonètik Tîtcerz' Asóciécon (The Phonetic Teachers' Association), a development of L'Association phonétique des professeurs d'Anglais ("The English Teachers' Phonetic Association"), to promote an international phonetic alphabet, designed primarily for English, French, and German, for use in schools to facilitate acquiring foreign pronunciation.
Originally the letters had different phonetic values from language to language. For example, English was transcribed with and French with .
As of May and November 1887, the alphabets were as follows:
Early alphabets of the Phonetic Teachers' Association+ English Letter Example Modern equivalent May Nov. she measure thin then what sing pity peat met met, learn mate man air ask but, burn not all more, fellow note pull pool rival ride how oil + French Letter Example Modern equivalent May Nov. yak chat je huile oui règne tout pot note tas rat très nez lit cœur peu nu méchant je ton tant teint un + German Letter Example Modern equivalent May Nov. ach wagen ich so tisch genie wer zwei du nuss so soll kann kahn bær nett see mit viel kœnnen sœhne dünn kühn gabe
1888 alphabet In the August–September 1888 issue of its journal, the Phonetic Teachers' Association published a standardized alphabet intended for transcription of multiple languages, reflecting its members' consensus that only one set of alphabet ought to be used for all languages, along with a set of six principles:
There should be a separate sign for each distinctive sound; that is, for each sound which, being used instead of another, in the same language, can change the meaning of a word. When any sound is found in several languages, the same sign should be used in all. This applies also to very similar shades of sound. The alphabet should consist as much as possible of the ordinary letters of the roman alphabet; as few new letters as possible being used. In assigning values to the roman letters, international usage should decide. The new letters should be suggestive of the sounds they represent, by their resemblance to the old ones. Diacritic marks should be avoided, being trying for the eyes and troublesome to write. The principles would govern all future development of the alphabet, with the exception of #5 and in some cases #2, until they were revised drastically in 1989. #6 has also been loosened, as diacritics have been admitted for limited purposes.
The devised alphabet was as follows. The letters marked with an asterisk were "provisional shapes", which were meant to be replaced "when circumstances will allow".
Shape Value English French German Other languages as in put as pferd but as boot ten ant tot den ent da kind épi kuh good ai gut my a mein no on nein rèe Ital. regno * thing ding Ital. anche lull la lang * fille (in the south) Sp. llano, Ital. gli red rare rot (tongue-point r) rare rot (back r). – Dan. træ quer Flem. wrocht, Span. bibir. buis wel oui Ital. questo full fou voll vain vin wein thin Span. razon then Dan. gade seal sel weiss zeal zèle weise * she chat fisch Swed. skæl, Dan. sjæl, Ital. lascia leisure jeu genie ich you yak ja Swed. ja, Ital. jena ach Span. jota wagen high (haut) hoch full cou nuss soul pot soll not note Ital. notte pas vater Swed. sal * father Ital. mano, Swed. mann. eye, how patte mann man air air bær men né nett pit ni mit * but, fur seul kœnnen * peu sœhne nu dünn * für never je gabe Glottal catch Weak stressed These modifications apply to all letters Strong stressed Long Nasal (or any other vowel) Long and narrow (or any other vowel) Voiceless (or any other consonant) Mark of length
1899 Viëtor alphabet
Although not published by the PTA/IPA, the (possibly mutual) influence of the Viëtor alphabet of 1899 on the development of the IPA alphabet is clear.
Lippenlaute Zahnlaute Vorder- Hinter- Kehllaute Gaumenlaute rowspan="2" rowspan="5" rowspan="3"
The triangular colons for length were already in use:
Long: , half-long: , non-syllabic: , stressed: , nasal: .
1900 IPA chart During the 1890s, the alphabet was expanded to cover sounds of Arabic and other non-European languages which did not easily fit the Latin alphabet.
Throughout the first half of the 1900s, the Association published a series of booklets outlining the specifications of the alphabet in several languages, the first being a French edition published in 1900. In the book, the chart appeared as follows:
Laryn-gales Guttu-rales Uvu-laires Vélaires Palatales Linguales Labiales rowspan="5" Plosives Nasales Latérales Roulées Fricatives (turned ezh) is not supported by Unicode. It may be substituted with (turned three). rowspan="5" Fermées
Mi-fermées Moyennes Mi-ouvertes Ouvertes
Initially, the charts were arranged with laryngeal sounds on the left and labial ones on the right, following the convention of Alexander Melville Bell's Visible Speech. Vowels and consonants were placed in a single chart, reflecting how sounds ranged in openness from stops (top) to open vowels (bottom). The voiced velar fricative was represented by (distinct from , which represents a plosive) since 1895 until it was replaced by in 1900. too would be replaced by in 1931.
Not all letters, especially those in the fricatives row which included both fricatives in the modern sense and approximants, were self-explanatory and could only be discerned in the notes following the chart, which redefined letters using the orthographies of languages wherein the sounds they represent occur. For example:
[is] the Arabic ain [modern ]. is a simple bilabial fricative [modern ] ... is the English hard th, Spanish z, Romaic [Greek] θ, Icelandic þ; the English soft th, Icelandic ð, Romaic δ. is the non-rolled r of Southern British, and can also be used for the simple r of Spanish and Portuguese [modern ] ... is found in German in ach; , in wagen, as often pronounced in the north of Germany [modern ]. is the Arabic kh as in khalifa [modern ]; the Danish r; the Parisian r is intermediate between and . — [modern ] and are the ha and he in Arabic.The 1904 English edition says that is the Arabic and English voiced h -- its use for English, though Arabic has no such sound. — and are sounds in Circassian [approximately modern The 1904 English edition describes these sounds as the "Circassian dental hiss". See for details on these sounds, which do not currently have IPA support.].
Nasalized vowels were marked with a tilde: , , etc. It was noted that may be used for "any vowel of obscure and intermediate quality found in weak syllables". A long sound was distinguished by trailing . Stress may be marked by before the stressed syllable, as necessary, and the Swedish and Norwegian 'compound tone' (double tone) with before the syllable.
Where distinct letters were not provided for both a voiced and voiceless phonation of an articulation, a voiced sound was marked by and a voiceless one by . Retroflex consonants were marked by , as in . Arabic emphatic consonants were marked by : . Consonants accompanied by a glottal stop (ejectives) were marked by : . Tense and lax vowels (at the time referred to as "narrow" and "wide", respectively) were distinguished by acute and grave accents: feet , fit . Non-syllabic vowels were marked by a breve, as in , and syllabic consonants by an acute below, as in . Following letters, spacing stood for advanced tongue, for retracted tongue, for more open mouth, for more closed mouth, for more rounded lips, and for more spread lips – for example the French schwa (or perhaps ). It was also noted that a superscript letter may be used to indicate a tinge of that sound in the sound represented by the preceding letter, as in .
It was emphasized, however, that once such details are supplied in the phonetic description, they need not be repeated in transcription. The equivalent part of the 1904 English edition said:
[I]t must remain a general principle to leave out everything self-evident, and everything that can be explained once for all. This allows us to dispense almost completely with the modifiers, and with a good many other signs, except in scientific works and in introductory explanations. We write English fill and French fil the same way ; yet the English vowel is 'wide' and the French 'narrow', and the English is formed much further back than the French. If we wanted to mark these differences, we should write English , French . But we need not do so: we know, once for all, that English short is always , and French always ; that English is always and French always .
1904 chart In the 1904 Aim and Principles of the International Phonetic Association, the first of its kind in English, the chart appeared as:
Bronchs Throat Uvula Back Front Tongue-point Lip rowspan="5" Stopped Nasal Side Trilled Squeezed rowspan="5" Close
Half-close Mid Half-open Open
In comparison to the 1900 chart, the glottal stop appeared as a dotless question mark at a slightly smaller size in the chart or sample transcriptions, similar to the footless form for the modifier letter , but as a full letter in the table showing script forms next to typographic forms. replaced . , were removed from the chart and instead only mentioned as having "been suggested for a Circassian dental hiss [sibilant] and its voiced correspondent". is suggested for the Bantu labialized sibilant, and as a diacritic to mark click consonants. It was noted that "some" preferred iconic to , and considered and to be unsatisfactory symbols.
Laryngeal consonants had also been moved around, reflecting little understanding about the mechanisms of laryngeal articulations at the time. and were defined as the Arabic and .
In the notes, the half-length mark is now mentioned, and it is noted that whispered sounds may be marked with a diacritical comma, as in . A syllabic consonant is now marked by a vertical bar, as in , rather than . It is noted, in this edition only, that "shifted vowels" with uncharacteristic rounding may be indicated: (on a back-vowel letter) for a protruded central or front vowel, and (on a front-vowel letter) for a compressed back vowel., citing .
In the textual description, the Northern English rhotic vowels are transcribed with a combining letter above, such as in far (this is not supported by Unicode ), which would be replaced by spacing in the next edition.
1912 chart Following 1904, sets of specifications in French appeared in 1905 and 1908, with little to no changes. In 1912, the second English booklet appeared. For the first time, labial sounds were shown on the left and laryngeal ones on the right: