Phonetic symbols in Unicode
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Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
supports several
phonetic script Phonetic transcription (also known as phonetic script or phonetic notation) is the visual representation of speech sounds (or ''phones'') by means of symbols. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet, such as the ...
s and notations through the existing writing systems and the addition of extra blocks with phonetic characters. These phonetic extras are derived from an existing script, usually Latin, Greek or Cyrillic. Apart from
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
(IPA), extensions to the IPA and
obsolete and nonstandard IPA symbols #REDIRECT Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet #REDIRECT Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet {{R from other capitalisation ...
{{R from other capitalisation ...
, these blocks also contain characters from the
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nes ...
and the
Americanist Phonetic Alphabet Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American an ...
.


Phonetic scripts

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) makes use of letters from other writing systems as most phonetic scripts do. IPA notably uses Latin, Greek and Cyrillic characters. Combining diacritics also adds meaning to the phonetic text. Finally, these phonetic alphabets make use of modifier letters, that are specially constructed for the phonetic meaning. A "modifier letter" is strictly intended not as an independent grapheme but as a modification of the preceding character resulting in a distinct grapheme, notably in the context of the International Phonetic Alphabet. For example, ʰ should not occur on its own but modifies the preceding or following symbol. Thus, is a single IPA symbol, distinct from . In practice, however, several of these "modifier letters" are also used as full graphemes, e.g. ʿ as transliterating Semitic
ayin ''Ayin'' (also ''ayn'' or ''ain''; transliterated ) is the sixteenth letter of the Semitic scripts, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac ܥ, and Arabic (where it is sixteenth in abjadi order only). The letter represen ...
or Hawaiian
okina Okina may refer to: * ʻOkina, a letter used in some Polynesian languages, visually resembling a left single quotation mark * Okina () or , a character from the ''Rurouni Kenshin'' manga series * Okina, Spain Okina ( es, Oquina) is a village of ...
, or ˚ transliterating Abkhaz ә.


From to Unicode


Consonants

The following tables indicates the Unicode code point sequences for phonemes as used in the
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
. A bold code point indicates that the Unicode chart provides an application note such as "voiced retroflex lateral" for . An entry in bold italics indicates the character name itself refers to a phoneme such as


Vowels

The following figures depict the phonetic vowels and their Unicode / UCS code points, arranged to represent the phonetic
vowel trapezium A vowel diagram or vowel chart is a schematic arrangement of the vowels. Depending on the particular language being discussed, it can take the form of a triangle or a quadrilateral. Vertical position on the diagram denotes the vowel closeness, ...
. Vowels appearing in pairs in the figure to the right indicate rounded and unrounded variations respectively. Again, characters with Unicode names referring to phonemes are indicated by bold text. Those with explicit application notes are indicated by bold italic text. Those from borrowed unchanged from another script (Latin, Greek or Cyrillic) are indicated by italics. Before and after a bullet are the unrounded • rounded vowels.


Diacritics

Diacritics may be encoded as either modifier (e.g. ˳) or combining (e.g. ◌̥) characters.


Unicode blocks

* Basic Latin (0020–007E),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Open front unrounded vowel The open front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. It is one of the eight primary cardinal vowels, not directly intended to correspond to a vowel sound of a specific language b ...
(0061) * Latin-1 Supplement (00A0–00FF),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Near-open front unrounded vowel The near-open front unrounded vowel, or near-low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase of the ligature. Bo ...
(00E6) *
Latin Extended-A Latin Extended-A is a Unicode block and is the third block of the Unicode standard. It encodes Latin letters from the Latin ISO character sets other than Latin-1 (which is already encoded in the Latin-1 Supplement block) and also legacy characte ...
(0100–017F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Voiceless pharyngeal fricative (0127) *
Latin Extended-B Latin Extended-B is the fourth block (0180-024F) of the Unicode Standard. It has been included since version 1.0, where it was only allocated to the code points 0180-01FF and contained 113 characters. During unification with ISO 10646 for versio ...
(0180–024F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Tenuis dental click The voiceless or more precisely tenuis dental click is a click consonant found primarily among the languages of southern Africa. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The Doke/Beach convention, ado ...
(01C0 0287) *
IPA Extensions IPA Extensions is a block (U+0250–U+02AF) of the Unicode standard that contains full size letters used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Both modern and historical characters are included, as well as former and proposed IPA sign ...
(0250–02AF),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Near-open central vowel The near-open central vowel, or near-low central vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a rotated lowercase double-barrelled letter a. ...
(0250) *
Spacing Modifier Letters Spacing Modifier Letters is a Unicode block containing characters for the IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound ...
(02B0–02FF),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Palatal ejective (0063 02BC) *
Combining Diacritical Marks Combining Diacritical Marks is a Unicode block containing the most common combining characters. It also contains the character " Combining Grapheme Joiner", which prevents canonical reordering of combining characters, and despite the name, actu ...
(0300–036F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Near-close central unrounded vowel (026A 0308) * Greek and Coptic (0370–03FF),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Voiced bilabial fricative The voiced bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is B. The official symbol is the ...
(03B2) *
Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement is a Unicode block containing combining characters for the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Medievalist notations, and German dialectology (Teuthonista). It is an extension of the diacritic characters found in the ...
(1DC0–1DFF),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Rising-falling contour tone (1DC8) * General Punctuation (2000–206F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Linking (absence of a break) (203F) * Superscripts and Subscripts (2070–209F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Nasal release In phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a stop consonant into a nasal. Such sounds are transcribed in the IPA with superscript nasal letters, for example as in English ''catnip'' . In English words such as ''sudden'' in which historically ...
(207F) * Arrows (2190–21FF),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Global rise (2197) *
Latin Extended-C Latin Extended-C is a Unicode block containing Latin characters for Uighur New Script, the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used ...
(2C60–2C7F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example: Labiodental flap (2C71) * Modifier Tone Letters (A700–A71F),
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...
example:
Upstep In linguistics, upstep is a phonemic or phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of Sub-Saharan Africa. Upstep is a much rarer phenomenon than its counterpart, down ...
(A71B) *
Phonetic Extensions Phonetic Extensions is a Unicode block containing phonetic characters used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet, Old Irish phonetic notation, the Oxford English dictionary and American dictionaries, and Americanist and Russianist phonetic notations. ...
(1D00–1D7F) *
Phonetic Extensions Supplement Phonetic Extensions Supplement is a Unicode block containing characters for specialized and deprecated forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation ...
(1D80–1DBF) *
Latin Extended-D Latin Extended-D is a Unicode block containing Latin characters for phonetic, Mayanist, and Medieval transcription and notation systems. 89 of the characters in this block are for medieval characters proposed by the Medieval Unicode Font Initiati ...
(A720–A7FF) *
Latin Extended-E Latin Extended-E is a Unicode block containing Latin script characters used in German dialectology (Teuthonista),, Anthropos alphabet, Sakha Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia),, is the largest republic of Russia, locate ...
(AB30–AB6F) *
Latin Extended-F Latin Extended-F is a Unicode block containing modifier letters, nearly all IPA and extIPA, for phonetic transcription. The Latin Extended-F and -G blocks contain the first Latin characters defined outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane In th ...
(10780–107BF) * Latin Extended-G (1DF00–1DFFF)


Unicode blocks with many phonetic symbols

Six
Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes ( code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ...
s contain many phonetic symbols:


IPA Extensions (U+0250–02AF)


Spacing Modifier Letters (U+02B0–02FF)

The characters in the "Spacing Modifier Letters" block are intended as forming a unity with the preceding letter (which they "modify"). E.g. the character isn't intended simply as a superscript ''h'' (h), but as the mark of aspiration placed after the letter being aspirated, as in " aspirated
voiceless bilabial plosive The voiceless bilabial plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in most spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is p. Features Features o ...
". The block contains: *Latin superscript modifier letters: (U+02B0–U+02B8): ʰ aspiration; ʱ breathy voice, murmured; ʲ palatalization; ʳ, ʴ, ʵ, ʶ r-coloring or r-offglides; ʷ labialization; ʸ palatalization, Americanist usage for U+02B2 *Miscellaneous phonetic modifiers: (U+02B9–U+02D7): ʹ ʺ ʻ ʼ ʽ ʾ ʿ ˀ ˁ ˂ ˃ ˄ ˅ ˆ ˇ ˈ ˉ ˊ ˋ ˌ ˍ ˎ ˏ ː ˑ ˒ ˓ ˔ ˕ ˖ ˗ *Spacing clones of diacritics: (U+02D8–U+02DD): ˘
breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in S ...
; ˙
dot above When used as a diacritic mark, the term dot is usually reserved for the '' interpunct'' ( · ), or to the glyphs "combining dot above" ( ◌̇ ) and "combining dot below" ( ◌̣ ) which may be combined with some letters of th ...
; ˚ ring above; ˛
ogonek The (; Polish: , "little tail", diminutive of ) is a diacritic hook placed under the lower right corner of a vowel in the Latin alphabet used in several European languages, and directly under a vowel in several Native American languages. It ...
; ˜ small tilde; ˝ double acute accent *Additions based on 1989 IPA: (U+02DE–U+02E4): ˞ ˟ ˠ ˡ ˢ ˣ ˤ * Tone letters: (U+02E5–U+02E9): ˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩ *Extended
Bopomofo Bopomofo (), or Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, also named Zhuyin (), is a Chinese transliteration system for Mandarin Chinese and other related languages and dialects. More commonly used in Taiwanese Mandarin, it may also be used to transcribe ...
tone marks: ; *IPA modifiers: , unaspirated *Other modifier letters: for Nenets *
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet The Uralic Phonetic Alphabet (UPA) or Finno-Ugric transcription system is a phonetic transcription or notational system used predominantly for the transcription and reconstruction of Uralic languages. It was first published in 1901 by Eemil Nes ...
(UPA) modifiers: (U+02EF–U+02FF): ˯ ˰ ˱ ˲ ˳ ˴ ˵ ˶ ˷ ˸ ˹ ˺ ˻ ˼ ˽ ˾ ˿


Phonetic Extensions (U+1D00–1D7F)

This block, together with Phonetic Extensions Supplement below, contains: * Small capitals "ɢ ɪ ɴ ɶ ʀ ʏ ʙ ʜ ʟ" * Turned small letters "ɐ ɥ ɯ ɹ ɺ ɻ ʇ ʌ ʍ ʎ ʞ ʮ ʯ" * Extra small capitals "ʁ ʛ ᴀ ᴁ ᴃ ᴄ ᴅ ᴆ ᴇ ᴊ ᴋ ᴌ ᴍ ᴎ ᴏ ᴐ ᴘ ᴙ ᴚ ᴛ ᴜ ᴠ ᴡ ᴢ ᴣ ᴦ ᴧ ᴨ ᴩ ᴪ" * Letters with palatal hooks "ƫ ᶀ ᶁ ᶂ ᶃ ᶄ ᶅ ᶆ ᶇ ᶈ ᶉ ᶊ ᶋ ᶌ ᶍ ᶎ ᶪ ᶵ" * Letters with retroflex hooks "ᶏ ᶐ ᶒ ᶓ ᶔ ᶕ ᶖ ᶗ ᶘ ᶙ ᶚ ᶩ ᶯ ᶼ"


Phonetic Extensions Supplement (U+1D80–1DBF)


Modifier Tone Letters (U+A700–A71F)


Superscripts and Subscripts (U+2070–209F)


Font support for IPA


Input by selection from a screen

Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as a ''screen-selection entry method''.
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting then type charmap then hit ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in the consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the
Basic Multilingual Plane In the Unicode standard, a plane is a continuous group of 65,536 (216) code points. There are 17 planes, identified by the numbers 0 to 16, which corresponds with the possible values 00–1016 of the first two positions in six position hexadeci ...
(BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable
freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...
example is
BabelMap Andrew Christopher West (; born 31 March 1960) is an English Sinologist. His first works concerned Chinese literature, Chinese novels of the Ming dynasty, Ming and Qing dynasty, Qing dynasties. His study of ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' used ...
).
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in a font, etc. It can b
enabled
in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs. Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap (
GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...
) or kcharselect ( KDE) – exist on most Linux desktop environments.


See also

* Unicode symbols * Universal Character Set characters * Latin script in Unicode *
IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners A ...


References


External links


Links to PDFs of Unicode codes for several phonetic symbol sets
{{IPA navigation
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
*