With the adoption of letters from 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 standard written representation ...

(IPA) in various national alphabets,

letter case Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally '' minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing system ...

forms have been developed. This usually means capital (

uppercase Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (more formally ''#Majuscule, majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (more formally ''#Minuscule, minuscule'') in the written representation of certain langua ...

) forms were developed, but in the case of the

glottal stop The glottal stop or glottal plosive is a type of consonantal sound used in many Speech communication, spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic ...

, both uppercase and lowercase are used. The adoption of IPA letters has been particularly notable in

Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

, in languages such as Hausa, Fula, Akan,

Gbe languages The Gbe languages (pronounced ) form a cluster of about twenty related languages stretching across the area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria. The total number of speakers of Gbe languages is between four and eight million. The most widel ...

Manding languages The Manding languages (sometimes spelt Manden) are a dialect continuum within the Niger–Congo languages, Niger-Congo family spoken in West Africa. Varieties of Manding are generally considered (among native speakers) to be mutually intelligible ...

, and

Lingala Lingala (or Ngala, Lingala: ) is a Bantu languages, Bantu language spoken in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the northern half of the Republic of the Congo, in their capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville, and to a lesser de ...

. The most common are open o , open e , and eng , but several others are found. Kabiyé of northern

Togo Togo, officially the Togolese Republic, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to Ghana–Togo border, the west, Benin to Benin–Togo border, the east and Burkina Faso to Burkina Faso–Togo border, the north. It is one of the le ...

, for example, has (or ), as in this newspaper headline: : ''MBƱ AJƐYA KIGBƐNDƱƱ ŊGBƐYƐ KEDIƔZAƔ SƆSƆƆ TƆM SE.'' Some of the IPA letters that were adopted into language orthographies have since become obsolete in the IPA itself.

Chart

Following are IPA letters and their capital forms. A few of these capitals have lowercase forms that are either a variant of or distinct from the IPA letter. Others letters are the graphic equivalent of IPA capitals, but are not identified with the IPA. Examples are (complement symbol), (existential quantifier symbol), (the capital of ) or (the capital of ), ( Lisu letter Fa), (

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

capital letter Cche), and (the capital of in Americanist usage). Also, includes obsolete and nonstandard IPA symbols:

References

{{IPA navigation International Phonetic Alphabet