March 8, 2012: alt.usage.english.dot.org

ALT.USAGE.ENGLISH.ORG

ASCII IPA is a way to represent speech using a computer keyboard. This is the full version showing American, British, and some other European pronunciations.

On the newsgroup alt.usage.english we often want to represent the way we speak. It's dangerous to make statements such as "bother rhymes with father" or "father sounds like farther" because, for many people, those statements aren't true. Besides, nobody knows how you say bother and farther. To get round the problem, we use a notation called ASCII IPA. We all agree on what sound each symbol represents, regardless of our own accents. ASCII IPA is similar to the International Phonetic Alphabet used in modern dictionaries, but it uses the symbols available on most computer keyboards. [For a full description of the International Phonetic Alphabet, see the Web site of the International Phonetic Association at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html. The IPA symbols shown on this page are from the 1979 revision of the International Phonetic Association's IPA Chart. For that reason, some of the symbols shown may not be the same as those shown in later revisions of the Phonetic Association's chart. http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ipa/ascii_ipa_combined.shtml

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