The examples show the letters in bold that correspond to the sound that they illustrate. You will find guidance below on how to use these symbols in electronic documents. The IPA distributes audio files in analog and digital form, with specimen pronunciations of these sounds.
- The document in the frame below uses unicode symbols. If you do not see them, then you can open a PDF version of the page.
A phoneme is a speech sound that helps us construct meaning. That is, if we replace it with another sound (where this is possible) we get a new meaning or no meaning at all. If I replace the initial consonant (/r/) from rubble, I can get double or Hubble (astronomer for whom the space telescope is named) or meaningless forms (as regards the lexicon of standard English) like fubble and wubble. The same thing happens if I change the vowel and get rabble, rebel, Ribble (an English river) and the nonsense form robble. (I have used the conventional spelling of “rebel” here, but to avoid confusion should perhaps use phonetic transcription, so that replacements would always appear in the same position as the character they replace.)
But what happens when a phoneme is adapted to the spoken context in which it occurs, in ways that do not alter the meaning either for speaker or hearer? Rather than say these are different phonemes that share the same meaning we use the model of allophones, which are variants of a phoneme. Thus if we isolate the l sound in the initial position in lick and in the final position in ball, we should be able to hear that the sound is (physically) different as is the way our speech organs produce it. Technically, in the second case, the back of the tongue is raised towards the velum or soft palate. The initial l sound is called clear l, while the terminal l sound is sometimes called a dark l. When we want to show the detail ofphonetic variants or allophones we enclose the symbols in square brackets whereas in transcribing sounds from a phonological viewpoint we use slant lines. So, using the IPA transcription [l] is clear l, while [ɫ] is dark l.
If this is not clear think:
- Am I only describing a sound (irrespective of how this sound fits into a system, has meaning and so on)? If so, use square brackets.
- Am I trying to show how the sound is part of a wider system (irrespective of how exactly it sounds in a given instance)? If so, use slant brackets.
So long as we need a form of transcription, we will rely on the IPA scheme. But increasingly it is possible to use digital recording and reproduction to produce reference versions of sounds. This would not, of course, prevent change in the choice of which particular sounds to use in a given context. When people wonder about harass (hærəs) orharass (həræs) they usually are able to articulate either, and are concerned about which reveals them as more or less educated in the use of the “proper” form. (For your information, the stress historically falls on the first syllable, to rhyme with embarrass - thus in both Pocket Oxford [UK, 1969] and Funk & Wagnalls New Practical Standard [US, 1946]. The fashion for hu-rass is found on both sides of the Atlantic and we should not credit it to, or blame it on, US speakers of English.)
Phonologists also refer to segments. A segment is “a discrete unit that can be identified in a stream of speech”, according to Professor Crystal. In English the segments would correspond to vowel sounds and consonant sounds, say. This is a clear metaphor if we think of fruit - the number of segments varies, but is finite in a whole fruit. So some languages have few segments and others many - from 11 in Rotokas and Mura to 141 in !Xu. The term may be most helpful in indicating what non-segmental or supra-segmental (above the segments) features of spoken language are.
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