Editing International Phonetic Alphabet (section)

== Usage ==
{{further|Phonetic transcription}}
Of more than 160 IPA symbols, relatively few will be used to transcribe speech in any one language, with various levels of precision. A precise phonetic transcription, in which sounds are specified in detail, is known as a ''narrow transcription''. A coarser transcription with less detail is called a ''broad transcription.'' Both are relative terms, and both are generally enclosed in square brackets.<ref name="IPA 1999" /> Broad phonetic transcriptions may restrict themselves to easily heard details, or only to details that are relevant to the discussion at hand, and may differ little if at all from phonemic transcriptions, but they make no theoretical claim that all the distinctions transcribed are necessarily meaningful in the language.
[[File:RPGA international.svg|thumb|Phonetic transcriptions of the word ''international'' in two English dialects]]

For example, the English word ''little'' may be transcribed broadly as {{IPA|[ˈlɪtəl]}}, approximately describing many pronunciations. A narrower transcription may focus on individual or dialectical details: {{IPA|[ˈɫɪɾɫ]}} in [[General American]], {{IPA|[ˈlɪʔo]}} in [[Cockney]], or {{IPA|[ˈɫɪːɫ]}} in [[Southern US English]].

Phonemic transcriptions, which express the conceptual counterparts of spoken sounds, are usually enclosed in slashes (/ /) and tend to use simpler letters with few diacritics. The choice of IPA letters may reflect theoretical claims of how speakers conceptualize sounds as phonemes or they may be merely a convenience for typesetting. Phonemic approximations between slashes do not have absolute sound values. For instance, in English, either the vowel of ''pick'' or the vowel of ''peak'' may be transcribed as {{IPA|/i/}}, so that ''pick'', ''peak'' would be transcribed as {{IPA|/ˈpik, ˈpiːk/}} or as {{IPA|/ˈpɪk, ˈpik/}}; and neither is identical to the vowel of the French ''{{lang|fr|pique}}'', which would also be transcribed {{IPA|/pik/}}. By contrast, a narrow phonetic transcription of ''pick'', ''peak'', ''pique'' could be: {{IPA|[pʰɪk]}}, {{IPA|[pʰiːk]}}, {{IPA|[pikʲ]}}.

=== Linguists ===
IPA is popular for transcription by linguists. Some American linguists, however, use a mix of IPA with [[Americanist phonetic notation]] or [[Sinological phonetic notation]] or otherwise use [[Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet|nonstandard symbols]] for various reasons.<ref name="thomason">{{cite web |url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005287.html |title=Why I Don't Love the International Phonetic Alphabet |author=Sally Thomason |date=2 January 2008 |work=Language Log |access-date=3 January 2008 |archive-date=5 August 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805020951/http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005287.html |url-status=live}}</ref> Authors who employ such nonstandard use are encouraged to include a chart or other explanation of their choices, which is good practice in general, as linguists differ in their understanding of the exact meaning of IPA symbols and common conventions change over time.

=== Dictionaries ===
==== English ====
Many British dictionaries, including the ''[[Oxford English Dictionary]]'' and some [[Monolingual learner's dictionary|learner's dictionaries]] such as the ''[[Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary]]'' and the ''[[Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary]]'', now use [[Pronunciation respelling for English#International Phonetic Alphabet|the International Phonetic Alphabet]] to represent the pronunciation of words.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.htm |title=Phonetics |year=2002 |publisher=Cambridge Dictionaries Online |access-date=11 March 2007 |archive-date=17 August 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110817233308/http://dictionary.cambridge.org/help/phonetics.html |url-status=dead}}</ref> However, most American (and some British) volumes use one of a variety of [[Pronunciation respelling for English|pronunciation respelling]] systems, intended to be more comfortable for readers of English and to be more acceptable across dialects, without the implication of a preferred pronunciation that the IPA might convey. For example, the respelling systems in many American dictionaries (such as ''[[Merriam-Webster Dictionary|Merriam-Webster]]'') use {{angbr|y}} for IPA {{IPA|[&thinsp;j]}} and {{angbr|sh}} for IPA {{IPA|[&thinsp;ʃ&thinsp;]}}, reflecting the usual spelling of those sounds in English.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/help/pronunciation-key |title=Merriam-Webster Online Pronunciation Symbols |access-date=4 June 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070601152219/http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/pronsymbols.html |archive-date=1 June 2007 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |first=Michael |last=Agnes |title=Webster's New World College Dictionary |year=1999 |publisher=Macmillan |location=New York |isbn=0-02-863119-6 |page=xxiii |no-pp=true |url=https://archive.org/details/webstersnewworld00agne_0 |url-access=registration}}</ref>{{Notetag|''[[Pronunciation respelling for English]]'' contains detailed comparisons of respelling systems.}}
(In IPA, {{IPA|[y]}} represents the sound of the French {{angbr|u}}, as in ''{{lang|fr|tu}}'', and {{IPA|[sh]}} represents the sequence of consonants in ''gra{{strong|ssh}}opper''.)

==== Other languages ====
The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages with [[phonemic orthographies]] generally do not bother with indicating the pronunciation of most words, and tend to use respelling systems for words with unexpected pronunciations. Dictionaries produced in Israel use the IPA rarely and sometimes use the [[Hebrew alphabet]] for transcription of foreign words.{{NoteTag|Monolingual Hebrew dictionaries use pronunciation respelling for words with unusual spelling; for example, the ''[[Even-Shoshan Dictionary]]'' respells {{Script/Hebrew|תָּכְנִית}} as {{angbr|{{Script/Hebrew|תּוֹכְנִית}}}} because the word uses the ''[[kamatz]] katan''.}} Bilingual dictionaries that translate from foreign languages into Russian usually employ the IPA, but monolingual Russian dictionaries occasionally use pronunciation respelling for foreign words.{{NoteTag|For example, [[Sergey Ozhegov]]'s dictionary adds [нэ́] in brackets to the French loan-word ''пенсне'' (''{{lang|fr|[[pince-nez]]}}'') to indicate that the final {{angbr|[[е]]}} does not [[iotate]] the preceding {{angbr|[[н]]}}.}} The IPA is more common in bilingual dictionaries, but there are exceptions here too. Mass-market bilingual Czech dictionaries, for instance, tend to use the IPA only for sounds not found in [[Czech language|Czech]].{{NoteTag|"In accordance with long-established Czech lexicographical tradition, a modified version of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is adopted in which letters of the Czech alphabet are employed."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Fronek |first=J. |title=Velký anglicko-český slovník |publisher=Leda |year=2006 |isbn=80-7335-022-X |location=Praha |language=cs |quote=}}</ref>}}

=== Standard orthographies and case variants ===
{{Main|Case variants of IPA letters}}
IPA letters have been incorporated into the alphabets of various languages, notably via the [[Africa Alphabet]] in many sub-Saharan languages such as [[Hausa language|Hausa]], [[Fula language|Fula]], [[Akan language|Akan]], [[Gbe languages]], [[Manding languages]], [[Lingala]], etc. Capital case variants have been created for use in these languages. For example, [[Kabiyé language|Kabiyè]] of northern [[Togo]] has [[African D|Ɖ ɖ]], [[Eng (letter)|Ŋ ŋ]], [[Latin gamma|Ɣ ɣ]], [[Open O|Ɔ ɔ]], [[Latin epsilon|Ɛ ɛ]], [[Ʋ|Ʋ ʋ]]. These, and others, are supported by [[Unicode]], but appear in Latin ranges other than the [[IPA Extensions (Unicode block)|IPA extensions]].

In the IPA itself, however, only lower-case letters are used. The 1949 edition of the IPA handbook indicated that an asterisk {{angbr|*}} might be prefixed to indicate that a word was a proper name,<ref>{{harvnb|International Phonetic Association|1949|p=17}}</ref> and this convention was used by ''[[Le Maître Phonétique]]'', which was written in IPA rather than in English or French orthography, but it was not included in the 1999 ''Handbook'', which notes the contrary use of the asterisk as a placeholder for a sound or feature that does not have a symbol.<ref>{{harvnb|International Phonetic Association|1999|p=193}}</ref>

=== Classical singing ===
The IPA has widespread use among classical singers during preparation as they are frequently required to sing in a variety of foreign languages. They are also taught by vocal coaches to perfect diction and improve tone quality and tuning.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Severens |first=Sara E. |year=2017 |title=The Effects of the International Phonetic Alphabet in Singing |journal=Student Scholar Showcase |url=https://digitalshowcase.lynchburg.edu/studentshowcase/2017/presentations/53/ |language=en |access-date=30 May 2018 |archive-date=5 September 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180905102421/https://digitalshowcase.lynchburg.edu/studentshowcase/2017/presentations/53/ |url-status=live}}</ref> Opera [[libretto]]s are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such as [[Nico Castel]]'s volumes<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.castelopera.com/libretti.htm |title=Nico Castel's Complete Libretti Series |publisher=Castel Opera Arts |access-date=29 September 2008 |archive-date=24 July 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110724211024/http://www.castelopera.com/libretti.htm |url-status=dead}}</ref> and Timothy Cheek's book ''Singing in Czech''.<ref>{{Cite book |url=http://scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB/CATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0810840030 |last=Cheek |first=Timothy |title=Singing in Czech |year=2001 |page=392 |isbn=978-0-8108-4003-4 |publisher=The Scarecrow Press |access-date=25 January 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111007052429/http://scarecrowpress.com/Catalog/SingleBook.shtml?command=Search&db=%5EDB%2FCATALOG.db&eqSKUdata=0810840030 |archive-date=7 October 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Opera singers' ability to read IPA was used by the site ''Visual Thesaurus'', which employed several opera singers "to make recordings for the 150,000 words and phrases in VT's lexical database&nbsp;... for their vocal stamina, attention to the details of enunciation, and most of all, knowledge of IPA".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=155 |title=Operatic IPA and the Visual Thesaurus |last=Zimmer |first=Benjamin |author-link=Benjamin Zimmer |work=[[Language Log]] |publisher=[[University of Pennsylvania]] |access-date=29 September 2009 |date=14 May 2008 |archive-date=26 August 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110826025723/http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=155 |url-status=live}}</ref>