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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, wh ...
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 transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
(IPA),
extensions to the IPA
The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated extIPA , are a set of letters and diacritics devised by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association to augment the Internati ...
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 Nesto ...
and the
Americanist Phonetic Alphabet.
Phonetic scripts
The
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
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 of ...
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, 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 transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
. 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. 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
Modifier may refer to:
* Grammatical modifier, a word that modifies the meaning of another word or limits its meaning
** Compound modifier, two or more words that modify a noun
** Dangling modifier, a word or phrase that modifies a clause in an am ...
(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 ...
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
The Latin-1 Supplement (also called C1 Controls and Latin-1 Supplement) is the second Unicode block in the Unicode standard. It encodes the upper range of ISO 8859-1: 80 (U+0080) - FF (U+00FF). C1 Controls (0080–009F) are not graphic. Thi ...
(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 ...
example:
Near-open front unrounded vowel (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 character ...
(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 ...
example:
Voiceless pharyngeal fricative
The voiceless pharyngeal fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is an h-bar, , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is X\. In the trans ...
(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 version ...
(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 ...
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
A b ...
(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 signs ...
(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 ...
example:
Near-open central vowel (0250)
*
Spacing Modifier Letters
Spacing Modifier Letters is a Unicode block containing characters for the IPA, UPA, and other phonetic transcriptions. Included are the IPA tone marks, and modifiers for aspiration and palatalization. The word ''spacing'' indicates that these ...
(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 ...
example:
Palatal ejective
The palatal ejective is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .
Features
Features of the palatal ejective:
Occurrence
This sound is lar ...
(0063 02BC)
*
Combining Diacritical Marks (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 ...
example:
Near-close central unrounded vowel
The close central unrounded vowel, or high central unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , namely the lower-case letter ''i'' with a hori ...
(026A 0308)
*
Greek and Coptic
Greek and Coptic is the Unicode block for representing modern (monotonic) Greek. It was originally used for writing Coptic, using the similar Greek letters, in addition to the uniquely Coptic additions. Beginning with version 4.1 of the Unicode ...
(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 ...
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 G ...
(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 ...
example: Rising-falling contour tone (1DC8)
*
General Punctuation
General Punctuation is a Unicode block containing punctuation, spacing, and formatting characters for use with all scripts and writing systems. Included are the defined-width spaces, joining formats, directional formats, smart quotes, archaic a ...
(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 ...
example:
Linking (absence of a break) (203F)
*
Superscripts and Subscripts
Superscripts and Subscripts is a Unicode block containing superscript and subscript numerals, mathematical operators, and letters used in mathematics and phonetics. The use of subscripts and superscripts in Unicode allows any polynomial, chemic ...
(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 ...
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 historicall ...
(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 ...
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, Shona, Claudian Latin and the Swedish Dialect Alphabet.
Block
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the pur ...
(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 ...
example:
Labiodental flap
In phonetics, the voiced labiodental flap is a speech sound found primarily in languages of Central Africa, such as Kera and Mangbetu. It has also been reported in the Austronesian language Sika. It is one of the few non- rhotic flaps. The ...
(2C71)
*
Modifier Tone Letters
Modifier Tone Letters is a Unicode block containing tone markings for Chinese, Chinantec, Africanist, and other phonetic transcriptions. It does not contain the standard IPA tone marks, which are found in Spacing Modifier Letters.
are used to m ...
(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 ...
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, downst ...
(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.
Block
History
The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defini ...
(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 t ...
(10780–107BF)
*
Latin Extended-G
Latin Extended-G is a Unicode block containing additional characters for phonetic transcription. The Latin Extended-F and -G blocks contain the first Latin characters defined outside of the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP).
As of early 2022, only ...
(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 ad ...
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 of ...
". 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 Slo ...
; ˙
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
A ring diacritic may appear above or below letters. It may be combined with some Letter (alphabet), letters of the extended Latin alphabets in various contexts.
Rings
Distinct letter
The character Å (å) is derived from an A with a ring. It ...
; ˛
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 i ...
; ˜
small tilde; ˝
double acute accent
The double acute accent ( ˝ ) is a diacritic mark of the Latin and Cyrillic scripts. It is used primarily in Hungarian or Chuvash, and consequently it is sometimes referred to by typographers as hungarumlaut. The signs formed with a regular um ...
*Additions based on 1989 IPA: (U+02DE–U+02E4): ˞ ˟ ˠ ˡ ˢ ˣ ˤ
*
Tone letter
Tone letters are letters that represent the tones of a language, most commonly in languages with contour tones.
__TOC__
Chao tone letters (IPA)
A series of iconic tone letters based on a musical staff was devised by Yuen Ren Chao in the ...
s: (U+02E5–U+02E9): ˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩
*Extended
Bopomofo 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 Nesto ...
(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
![Gucharmap screenshot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8c/Gucharmap_screenshot.png)
Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually.
ISO/IEC 14755 ISO/IEC 14755 is a joint ISO and IEC standard for input methods to enter characters defined in ISO/IEC 10646, the international standard corresponding to the Unicode Standard. As the repertoires of ISO/IEC 10646 and the Unicode Standard are identi ...
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 serv ...
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 hexadecima ...
(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 f ...
example is
BabelMap
Andrew Christopher West (; born 31 March 1960) is an English Sinologist. His first works concerned Chinese novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties. His study of ''Romance of the Three Kingdoms'' used a new approach to analyse the relationship a ...
).
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 lapt ...
provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in a font, etc. It can b
enabledin 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 Character Map, formerly known as Gucharmap, is a free and open-source software Unicode character map program, part of GNOME. This program allows characters to be displayed by Unicode block or script type. It includes brief descriptions of re ...
(
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
KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-known products include the ...
) – exist on most Linux desktop environments.
See also
*
Unicode symbols
In computing, a Unicode symbol is a Unicode character which is not part of a script used to write a natural language, but is nonetheless available for use as part of a text.
Many of the symbols are drawn from existing character sets or ISO/IEC or ...
*
Universal Character Set characters
The Unicode Consortium and the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/ WG 2 jointly collaborate on the list of the characters in the Universal Coded Character Set. The Universal Coded Character Set, most commonly called the Universal Character Set ( UCS, officia ...
*
Latin script in Unicode
Over a thousand characters from the Latin script are encoded in the Unicode Standard, grouped in several basic and extended Latin blocks. The extended ranges contain mainly precomposed letters plus diacritics that are equivalently encoded with co ...
*
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 ...
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 Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
*