Americanist phonetic notation

Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet and the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), is a system of phonetic notation originally developed by European and American anthropologists and language scientists (many of whom were Neogrammarians) for the phonetic and phonemic transcription of indigenous languages of the Americas and for languages of Europe. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others, Slavic languages, Semitic languages, and the languages of the Caucasus, of India, and of much of Africa. Uralicists, working on Uralic languages, commonly use the similar but distinct Uralic Phonetic Alphabet.

Despite its name, APA has always been widely used outside the Americas. For example, a version of it is the standard transcription of Arabic for articles published in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, the journal of the German Oriental Society.

Diacritics are more widely used in Americanist notation than in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which seeks to use as few diacritics as possible for phonemic distinctions, retaining them primarily for the dental–alveolar distinction. Americanist notation relies on diacritics to distinguish multiple distinctions that are phonemic in the languages it transcribes. On the other hand, Americanist notation uses single letters for most coronal affricates, whereas the IPA generally requires digraphs. Otherwise Americanist notation has grown increasingly similar to IPA, and has abandoned many of the more obscure letters it once employed.