Lingthusiasm Episode 6: All the sounds in all the languages - The International Phonetic Alphabet

English writing is hugely inconsistent: is “ough” pronounced as in cough, though, through, thought, rough, plough, or thorough? And once you start adding in other languages with different conventions and writing systems, things get even more complicated. How’s a person supposed to know whether to pronounce “j” as in Jane, Juan, Johan, Jeanne, or Jing?

In the 1800s, linguists decided to create a single alphabet that could represent any sound spoken in any human language. After several revisions and competing standards, we now have the modern International Phonetic Alphabet with 107 letters, 52 diacritics, and a surprisingly passionate fanbase including linguists, musicians, and people who like cool symbols.

In episode 6 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch talk about the history of the IPA, how it works, and some of the fun linguistics games and stories that have arisen around the IPA.

Read the transcript here

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Example of spelling conventions differing cross-linguistically
  
• History of the IPA (Wikipedia)
• Romic Alphabet (Wikipedia)
• Clickable IPA chart with sounds
• Interactive sagittal section
• Emoji corresponding to IPA vowels
  
• Why English spelling (and transcription systems) is so weird (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Phoneticians of My Fair Lady
  
• Using IPA to transcribe beatboxing
  
• 11 facts about the IPA from Arika Okrent (including the fact that the International Phonetic Association journal used to accept publications entirely written in the IPA!)
• English in other orthographies (Tumblr post)
  
• Gurre Kamilaroi, by William Ridley (1856) ful of upside down capital G’s for engmas
• Alice in Wonderland in IPA
  
• Schwa cookie cutter
• IPA consonant chart cross-stitch
• Jones’s vowel cross-stitch
• IPA Scrabble
  
• An IPA version of 2048
• What’s your favourite vowel? Gretchen did a survey!
  
• Kirates!
  
• IPA transcriptions of opera arias (Singers often use IPA to sing in languages they don’t speak)
• The WordsAtSX hashtag
  

And some of our favourite resources for learning and using IPA:

• Online IPA character picker
• IPA/Phonetics apps for phones
• How to memorise the IPA consonant chart
• How to memorise the IPA vowel chart
  
• Using the IPA to explain why lipreading is so hard (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Scottish Seeing Speech project
  
• The Vocal Tract (All Things Linguistic)
• IPA Ultrasounds (All Things Linguistic)
• Phonological natural classes and set theory (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Ingressive sounds (Superlinguo)
• Introduction to fricatives (Wuglife)
• Introduction to the vowel space (Wuglife)
• Intro to the IPA video (The Ling Space)
• IPA vowels video (The Ling Space)
  
• eNunciate from UBC

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our producer is Claire Gawne, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).