The International Phonetic Alphabet Ii - Sound Types

This article covers what is meant by "phoneme," "allophone," and "diphthong" and how some basic sounds of English are represented in IPA symbols. It is part of a series of six articles.

Single Sounds.

The Greek word, "Phoneme" (meaning an uttered sound) is describes the smallest unit of sound that a given language employs. It might be the hum of an "m" or the puff of air from the lips to make a "p" sound. It can be a vowel sound, like the open "o" in "hot" or the closed "o" in "hotel." Each phoneme can be precisely described by a symbol from the IPA.

Multiple Sounds.

A sound made by combining two others is a diphthong, as in the "ai" vowel combination in a word like "play." By contrast, the French phrase, "s'il vous plait" ends with a word that is pronounced somewhat like "play" in English, but not exactly. Even though it has two vowels together (the "ai" in "plait"), "ai" is not a diphthong for most French speakers. It's a single vowel sound similar to (but not exactly like) a "long A" in English (like the "a" in "station").

In the Southern United States and also in the West to some degree, people make words longer than in other English-speaking places. They "draw out" the word (creating a "drawl"), so that vowels often come in two's and three's, when in standard English they would have just one sound. The word "well," for example, is often heard in the South as if it were spelled like "whale." The most common diphthongs and triphthongs are combinations of long vowel sounds (like long "a" as in "hay" or long "e" as in "see") with short vowel sounds (like "i"). The IPA has ways of accommodating diphthongs in its notation.

Sometimes, when two consonant sounds are combined, the notation calls for putting a "ligature" between the two letters -- a sort of tie or curved connecting line -- that shows these two letters should be considered to be a single phoneme. Say the word "judge." The word would be represented by the "j" sound first, then the "uh" vowel sound, and then by a single letter (with ligature), showing that it represents the "dg" sound.

Alternate Pronunciations.

Allophones are mavericks. Recall that a "phone" is a physical sound, whereas the "phoneme" is the theoretical sound. One phoneme can thus be pronounced in different ways in reality, and usually these variations are called regional accents. Allophones are just different ways the same phoneme might be pronounced by different people. For example, "dart" in Boston is pronounced more like "dot". Even though you may not hear the "r" in the way a Bostonian says "dart," other Bostonians do! They will tell you with accuracy when the "dot" means a point and when the "dot" means a pointed missile. Extending the notation described in part I of this series to whole words and not just to individual sounds, you could say that the theoretical /dart/ many be pronounced [dart] in, say, Chicago, but as [dot] in Boston. The two different [r] phones are allophones of /r/.

Some English Sounds.

Since each letter of the IPA uniquely describes a specific sound, what are some common representations of English? Consonants are probably the easiest. The "b" as in "boy" is rendered as [b]. No surprises there. But [c] is not what you might expect. It's the "ch" sound. The hard "c" in English is [k] and the soft "c" is [s]. Many other consonants are presented in IPA just as in English. For example, [d], [f] and [g]. An extra hard "g" sound is shown as [G]. The letter "l" (ell) has a couple of different depictions, as it takes on different sounds. The "l" in "wool" is almost silent. So it's written differently from the "l" in "slap." "M" in "symphony" touches lips to teeth, and is written differently from "m" in "missus," where the lips are away from the teeth. "N" can be "normal" (as in "nut") or nasal (as in "sing" or "tongue.") The "normal" IPA /r/ is a trip of the tongue, as in Spanish. The Midwestern American "r" (exaggerated as a piratical "arrgh") is written in brackets as a lower case "r" upside-down. The English letters get complicated with the "w's" and "v's." For example, the word "what" really has an "h" first and then a "w" (the opposite of the way it's written). This sound has its own letter, a kind of upside-down "w." The "z" sound also has a couple of variations, including a symbol for a "zz" sound (as in "fuzz") and a "zh" sound as in "seizure."

Say "uh-oh" out loud. Hear the "catch"between the two syllables? That's a "glottal stop" and is written [?] (without the period).

The best way to get the idea is to go through an IPA table where the symbols are presented together with an explanation of the sounds they represent. The tables use the language of phonetics (like "alveolar" and "velar"). So in Part III of this series, that's what we will explain -- the nomenclature of the voice tract.