Comparison of Kirshenbaum with X-SAMPA
The system uses almost all lower-case letters to represent the directly corresponding IPA character, but unliker , , r<trl>
, -
, r\ , , r
, -
, { , , &
, -
, Q , , A.
, -
, 3 , , V"
, -
, " , , '
, -
, secondary stress , , , , % , , ,
Kirshenbaum charts of consonants and vowels
''This chart is based on information provided in the Kirshenbaum specification. It may also be helpful to compare it to the SAMPA chart or X-SAMPA chart.''Consonant chart
{, class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" , + Kirshenbaum chart ofm
, M
, n n
, n.
,
, n^
, N
, n"
, n<lbv>
,
,
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Stop consonant, Stops
, p b
,
, t[ d[ t d
, t. d.
,
, c J
, k g
, q G
, t<lbv> d<lbv>
,
, ?
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Fricative consonant, Fricatives
, P B
, f v
, T D
, s z
, s. z.
, S Z
, C C<vcd>
, x Q
, X g"
, w<vls> w
, H H<vcd>
, h
, s z
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Approximants
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produ ...
,
, r<lbd>
, r[ r
, r.
,
, j
, j<vel>
, g"
, w
,
, h
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Lateral consonant, Laterals
,
,
, l[ l
, l.
,
, l^
, L
,
,
,
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Trill consonant, Trills
, b<trl>
,
,
, r<trl>
,
,
,
,
, r"
,
,
,
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Flaps
,
,
,
, * *. *<lat> p`
,
, t t`
,
,
, c`
, k`
, q`
,
,
,
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Implosive consonant, Implosives
, b`
,
, d`
, d`
,
,
, J`
, g`
, G`
,
,
,
,
, -
!style="font-size:x-small;text-align:center", Click consonant, Clicks
, p!
,
, t!
, c!Kirshenbaum assigned to IPA , which it used indifferently for both alveolar and palatal clicks.
,
,
, c!
, k!
,
,
,
,
, l!
The IPA consonant chart, for comparison, uses many symbols that are less widely supported:
Vowel chart
{, class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
, -
, colspan=5 , Kirshenbaum simplified chart of vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
s
''(the paired signs are unrounded/rounded vowels; symbols in parentheses designate vowels that exist in some oral language
A spoken language is a form of communication produced through articulate sounds or, in some cases, through manual gestures, as opposed to written language. Oral or vocal languages are those produced using the vocal tract, whereas sign languages are ...
s, but do not have IPA signs)''
, -
!
! width=20% , Front
! width=20% , Central
! width=20% , Back
The human back, also called the dorsum (: dorsa), is the large posterior area of the human body, rising from the top of the buttocks to the back of the neck. It is the surface of the body opposite from the chest and the abdomen. The vertebral c ...
! width=20% , Rhotic
, -
, Close
, i y
, i" u"
, u- u
,
, -
, Near-close
, I I.
,
, (U-) U
,
, -
, Close-mid
, e Y
, @<umd> @.
, o- o
, R<umd>
, -
, Mid
,
, @
,
, R
, -
, Open-mid
, E W
, V" O"
, V O
,
, -
, Near-open
, &
, &"
, ''(no symbols)''
,
, -
, Open
Open or OPEN may refer to:
Music
* Open (band), Australian pop/rock band
* The Open (band), English indie rock band
* ''Open'' (Blues Image album), 1969
* ''Open'' (Gerd Dudek, Buschi Niebergall, and Edward Vesala album), 1979
* ''Open'' (Go ...
, a a.
, (a" A".)
, A A.
,
The IPA vowel chart, by comparison, uses many symbols that are less widely supported:
Vowel modifiers and diacritics
Modifiers and diacritics follow the symbol they modify.
{, class="wikitable" style="text-align:center;"
, -
! Modifier/diacritic
! Meaning
, -
, ~
, Nasalized
, -
, :
, Long
Long may refer to:
Measurement
* Long, characteristic of something of great duration
* Long, characteristic of something of great length
* Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate
* Longa (music), note value in early music mens ...
, -
, -
, Unrounded
, -
, .
, Rounded
, -
, "
, Centralized
, -
, <?>
, Murmured
Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, whispery voice, soughing and susurration) is a phonation in which the vocal folds vibrate, as they do in normal (modal) voicing, but are adjusted to let more air escape which produces a sighing-like s ...
, -
, <r>
, Rhoticized
Stress is indicated by ' for primary stress, and , for secondary stress, placed before the stressed syllable.
Background
The Kirshenbaum system started developing in August 1992 through a usenet
Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
group, after "being fed up with describing the sound of words by using other words".
It should be usable for both phonemic and narrow phonetic transcription.
* It should be possible to represent all symbols and diacritics in the IPA.
* The previous guideline notwithstanding, it is expected that (as in the past) most use will be in transcribing English, so where tradeoffs are necessary, decisions should be made in favor of ease of representation of phonemes which are common in English.
* The representation should be readable.
* It should be possible to mechanically translate from the representation to a character set which includes IPA. The reverse would also be nice.
The developers decided to use the existing IPA alphabet, mapping each ''segment'' to a single keyboard character, and adding extra ASCII characters optionally for IPA ''diacritics''.
An early (1993), different set in ASCII was derived from the pronunciation guide in Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, which uses straight letters to describe the sound.
Kirshenbaum's document, ''Representing IPA phonetics in ASCII'', is commonly used as an example of an "IPA ASCII" system.
The eSpeak software speech synthesizer uses the Kirshenbaum scheme to represent phonemes
A phoneme () is any set of similar speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word from another. All languages con ...
with ascii characters.
Encoding
IETF language tag
An IETF BCP 47 language tag is a standardized code that is used to identify human languages on the Internet. The tag structure has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in ''Best Current Practice (BCP) 47''; the subtags ...
s have registered as a variant subtag identifying text as transcribed in this convention.
Notes and references
Notes
References
External links
Kirshenbaum specification
(PDF
Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
file)
Tutorial and guide with sound samples
{{IPA navigation
Phonetic alphabets
ASCII
International Phonetic Alphabet