Usenet ASCII-IPA transcription
Template:Short description Template:Also ASCII-IPA or erkIPA is a transliteration system used to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in ASCII, in order to allow typewriting IPA symbols with a regular keyboard. It was developed for Usenet, notably the newsgroups sci.lang and alt.usage.english. It is sometimes called Kirshenbaum notation or even Kirshenbaum Template:IPAc-en, after Evan Kirshenbaum, who led the collaboration that created it, and the Kirshenbaum specification that defines it. The eSpeak open source software speech synthesizer uses this ASCII-IPA scheme.
Comparison of Usenet ASCII-IPA with X-SAMPA
ASCII-IPA 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 | Usenet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 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}} | % |
,
|
ASCII-IPA 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 ~ see Comparison of ASCII encodings of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Consonant chart
| 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">ASCII-IPA assigned Template:Angle bracket to IPA Template:Angle bracket, which some people 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
| ASCII-IPA 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 ASCII-IPA 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 ASCII-IPA 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>