Kirshenbaum

Template:Short description Template:For Kirshenbaum Template:IPAc-en, sometimes called ASCII-IPA or erkIPA, is a system used to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in ASCII. This way it allows typewriting IPA-symbols by regular keyboard. It was developed for Usenet, notably the newsgroups sci.lang and alt.usage.english. It is named after Evan Kirshenbaum, who led the collaboration that created it. The eSpeak open source software speech synthesizer uses the Kirshenbaum scheme.

Comparison of Kirshenbaum with X-SAMPA

The system uses almost all lower-case letters to represent the directly corresponding IPA character, but unlike X-SAMPA, has the notable exception of the letter 'r'. A non-comprehensive list of sounds where the two systems use different characters:

Sound	IPA	X-SAMPA	Kirshenbaum
alveolar trill	main}}	r	r<trl>
alveolar approximant	main}}	r\	r
near-open front unrounded vowel	main}}	{	&
open back rounded vowel	main}}	Q	A.
open-mid central unrounded vowel	main}}	3	V"
primary stress	main}}	"	'
secondary stress	main}}	%	,

Kirshenbaum charts of consonants and vowels

This chart is based on information provided in the Kirshenbaum specification.<ref name="kIPA"/><ref name="HPlabs">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It may also be helpful to compare it to the SAMPA chart or X-SAMPA chart.

Consonant chart

Kirshenbaum chart of consonants (the paired signs are voiceless/voiced consonants)

Place of articulation →	Labial		Coronal				Dorsal				Laryngeal		Alveolar laterals
	Bilabial	Labio‐ dental	Dental	Alveolar	Retro‐ flex	Palato‐ alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio‐ velar	Pharyn‐ geal	Glottal
Manner of articulation ↓
Nasals	m	M	n[	n	n.		n^	N	n"	n<lbv>
Stops	p b		t[ d[	t d	t. d.		c J	k g	q G	t<lbv> d<lbv>		?
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<lat> z<lat>
Approximants		r<lbd>	r[	r	r.		j	j<vel>	g"	w		h
Laterals			l[	l	l.		l^	L
Trills	b<trl>			r<trl>					r"
Flaps				*	*.								*<lat>
Ejectives	p`		t[`	t`			c`	k`	q`
Implosives	b`		d`	d`			J`	g`	G`
Clicks	p!		t!	c!<ref name="click" group="Note">Kirshenbaum assigned Template:Angle bracket to IPA Template:Angle bracket, which it used indifferently for both alveolar Template:Angle bracket and palatal Template:Angle bracket clicks.</ref>			c!<ref name="click" group="Note"/>	k!					l!

The IPA consonant chart, for comparison, uses many symbols that are less widely supported: Template:IPA pulmonic consonants Template:IPA non-pulmonic consonants

Vowel chart

Kirshenbaum simplified chart of vowels (the paired signs are unrounded/rounded vowels; symbols in parentheses designate vowels that exist in some oral languages, but do not have IPA signs)
	Front	Central	Back	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	a a.	(a" A".)	A A.

The IPA vowel chart, by comparison, uses many symbols that are less widely supported: Template:IPA vowels

Vowel modifiers and diacritics

Modifiers and diacritics follow the symbol they modify.

Modifier/diacritic	Meaning
~	Nasalized
:	Long
-	Unrounded
.	Rounded
"	Centralized
<?>	Murmured
<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 group,<ref name="MoranEtAl">Template:Cite book</ref> after "being fed up with describing the sound of words by using other words".<ref name="usenetIPAx">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="kIPA">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Kirshenbaum's document, Representing IPA phonetics in ASCII,<ref name="kIPA"/> is commonly used as an example of an "IPA ASCII" system.<ref name="Unicode">Template:Cite book</ref>

The eSpeak software speech synthesizer uses the Kirshenbaum scheme to represent phonemes with ascii characters.<ref name="Latin2Speech">Template:Citation</ref>

Encoding

IETF language tags have registered Template:Mono as a variant subtag identifying text as transcribed in this convention.<ref name="IANA">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

External links

• Kirshenbaum specification (PDF file)
• Tutorial and guide with sound samples
• History