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) possesses a variety of obsolete and nonstandard symbols. Throughout the

history of the IPA The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for ...

, characters representing phonetic values have been modified or completely replaced. An example is for standard . Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that they should be indicated with diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series has been dropped. Other characters have been added in for specific phonemes which do not possess a specific symbol in the IPA. Those studying modern Chinese phonology have used to represent the sound of ''-i'' in

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin, or simply pinyin, officially the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. ''Hanyu'' () literally means 'Han Chinese, Han language'—that is, the Chinese language—while ''pinyin' ...

''hanzi'' which has been variously described as , , or . (See the sections ''Vowels'' and ''Syllabic consonants'' of the article

Standard Chinese phonology The phonology of Standard Chinese has historically derived from the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. However, pronunciation varies widely among speakers, who may introduce elements of their local varieties. Television and radio announcers are ch ...

.) There are also unsupported symbols from local traditions that find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with Americanist symbols, including affricates such as for . Extensions from the Americanist affricate convention of ''c'' = ''ts'' and ''č'' = ''tš'' include ''𝼝'' = ''tʂ'' and ''ɕ'' = ''t𝼞''. While the IPA does not itself have a set of capital letters (the ones that look like capitals are actually

small capital In typography, small caps (short for small capitals) are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. Small caps are used in running ...

s), many languages have adopted symbols from the IPA as part of their orthographies, and in such cases they have invented capital variants of these. This is especially common in Africa. An example is 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 ...

, which has . Other pseudo-IPA capitals supported by Unicode are . (See Case variants of IPA letters.) Capital letters are also used as

cover symbol Linguists use a variety of symbols to represent not just single sounds, but certain particular classes of sounds. They are usually capital letters. This article lists those "cover symbols". Consonants Vowels Capitalized vowels are commonly used ...

s in

phonotactic Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek 'voice, sound' and 'having to do with arranging') is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...

descriptions: = consonant, = vowel, = nasal, = sonorant, etc. This list does not include commonplace extensions of the IPA, such as doubling a symbol for a greater degree of a feature ( extra-long , extra stress, strongly aspirated , and extra-rhotic ), nor superscripting for a lesser degree of a feature ( slightly prenasalized , slightly affricated , and

epenthetic In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...

schwa). The asterisk, as in for the

fortis Fortis may refer to: Business * Fortis (Swiss watchmaker), a Swiss watch company * Fortis Films, an American film and television production company founded by actress and producer Sandra Bullock * Fortis Healthcare, a chain of hospitals in ...

stop of

Korean Korean may refer to: People and culture * Koreans, people from the Korean peninsula or of Korean descent * Korean culture * Korean language **Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Korean **Korean dialects **See also: North–South differences in t ...

, is the convention the IPA uses when it has no symbol for a phone or feature. For symbols and values which were discarded by 1932, see

History of the International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally fo ...

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Footnotes or references

{{IPA navigation International Phonetic Alphabet