ALL ABOUT IPA

• International Phonetic Alphabet

(IPA), an alphabet developed in the
19th century to accurately represent the
pronunciation of languages. One aim of
the International Phonetic Alphabet
(IPA) was to provide a unique symbol
for each distinctive sound in a
language—that is, every sound,
or phoneme, that serves to distinguish
one word from another.
 ALL ABOUT IPA
• The concept of the IPA was first broached
by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy of
the International Phonetic Association and
was developed by A.J. Ellis, Henry Sweet,
Daniel Jones, and Passy in the late 19th
century. Its creators’ intent was to standardize
the representation of spoken language,
thereby sidestepping the confusion caused
by the inconsistent conventional spellings
used in every language.
 ALL ABOUT IPA

• The IPA primarily uses Roman

characters. Other letters are borrowed
from different scripts (e.g., Greek) and
are modified to conform to Roman
style.
 TONGUE
T WISTER
 I THOUGHT
I THOUGHT OF
THINKING OF
THANKING YOU
(5X)
 PHONETIC
TRANSCRIPTION
Phonetic Transcription

PRONUNCIATION OF WORDS
- It is usually written in INTERNATIONAL
PHONETIC ALPHABET in which each
English sound has its own symbol.

For example:

Home - /hoʊm/
Come - /kʌm/
PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION IS
USUALLY GIVEN IN BRACKETS,
LIKE THIS: /HOƱM/, /KɅM/.
In Dictionary, it looks like this:
 USES OF IPA

• The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the

pronunciation of words.

• The IPA has often been used as a basis for

creating new writing systems for previously
unwritten languages.
 USES OF IPA

• The IPA is used in some foreign

language text books and phrase books
to transcribe the sounds of languages
which are written with non-Latin
alphabets. It is also used by non-native
speakers of English when learning to
speak English.
 WORD
STRESS

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION
WHAT IS WORD STRESS?
When a word has many
syllables, one of them is always
pronounced more strongly.
This is called word stress,
and we say that the syllable is
stressed.
 Dictionaries tell you which
syllable is stressed. The most
popular system is to put a
vertical line (ˈ) before the
stressed syllable in the
phonetic transcription of the
word.
FOR EXAMPLE:
the transcription for BECOME

is /bɪˈkʌm/
If a word has only one syllable
(examples: PEN, WATCH),
dictionaries usually do not put
the ˈ stress mark before it. So
they don’t write /ˈpen/ — they
simply write /pen/.