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Put your text for the new page here.International Phonetic Alphabet From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The International Phonetic Alphabet was originally developed by British and French phoneticians under the auspices of the International Phonetic Association, established in Paris in 1886 (both the organisation and the phonetic script are best known as IPA). The alphabet has undergone a number of revisions during its history, including some major ones codified by the IPA Kiel Convention (1989). Most letters are taken from the Roman alphabet or derived from it, some are of Greek origin, and there are some characters apparently unrelated to ordinary letters.
The sound-values of the letters are in some cases identical with French and/or English usage; e.g. [z] has the same sound as in English zinc or French zero. [j], on the other hand, has the sound value of English y in yoke (= German j); whereas [y] has the Scandinavian or Old English value of the letter (= German ΓΌ or French u). The general principle is to use one symbol for one speech segment, avoiding letter combinations like sh and th in English orthography.
Vowels in general tend to be close to Latin and Italian, [e] is somewhat closer than English e in met, [i] is approximately the vowel sound found in English meet, and so on.
Diacritic marks can be combined with IPA signs to transcribe slightly modified phonetic values or secondary articulations. There are also special symbols for suprasegmental features like stress and tone.
