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How does the International Phonetic Alphabet represent speech sounds from different languages?

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Diagram of a human head in profile showing the location of vocal organs and possible places of articulation for speech sounds, with labels for lips, teeth, tongue, palate, uvula, pharynx, and vocal cords, and numbered regions corresponding to types of articulation such as bilabial, alveolar, and velar.
pronunciation Diagram depicting the location of human vocal organs and possible places of articulation used for speech.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) represents speech sounds by assigning a unique symbol to each distinctive sound, or phoneme, within a language. Developed to standardize the representation of spoken language, it primarily utilizes Roman characters, supplemented by symbols from other scripts like Greek, which are modified to match the Roman style.1

To capture the nuances of different languages, the IPA employs two main methods of phonetic transcription:

  • Broad Transcription: Uses simple symbols to represent each phoneme, focusing on the functional distinctions between sounds.12
  • Narrow Transcription: Uses diacritics to provide precise phonetic detail, such as nasalization, length, stress, tone, or variations in allophones.12

By using these symbols and modifiers, the IPA allows linguists to describe sounds across diverse languages consistently, bypassing the inconsistencies of conventional orthography. Consonant values generally align with their use in many European languages, while vowel symbols often mirror those found in languages such as Italian.12