International Phonetic Alphabet

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

Set of symbols intended as a universal system for transcribing speech sounds. The promulgation and updating of the IPA has been a principal aim of the International Phonetic Association (Association Phonétique Internationale), founded in Paris in 1886. The first IPA chart was published in 1888. IPA symbols are based on an extended version of the Latin alphabet, with modifications of some letters and the use of additional symbols, some of which had been used in earlier phonetic alphabets. Diacritics are used primarily to show various kinds of secondary articulation.

---

International Phonetic Alphabet [‚in·tər¦nah·ən·əl phə¦ned·ik ′al·fə‚bet]

(linguistics)

A phonetic transcription system the purpose of which is to represent with graphic symbols the distinctive sounds of human speech, regardless of language.

---

(text, human language)

International Phonetic Alphabet - (IPA) A system of symbols for representing pronunciation. There is no commonly agreed way to represent IPA in ASCII characters though it can be represented in Unicode.