History of the International Phonetic Alphabet
In the late 19th century, Paul Passy and French and British language teachers established the International Phonetic Association in Paris. The history of the IPA began soon after and was created from the Romic alphabet and elements of earlier systems. As a system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, it was designed to assist the teaching profession by creating a uniform standard for phonetic writing.
Commonly known as phonetic transcription, it allows us to decipher spoken language and write the sounds produced. The IPA is non-language specific, so it can be used internationally to represent sounds from any language. Many symbols have no function in standard English because the sounds aren’t used. All human language uses only one set of symbols in the IPA, never all.
The Evolution of Phonetics
Speech is the fabric of human language, and the study of the physiology, anatomy, acoustics, and neurology of speaking is called phonetics. As new phonetic theories were developed, the system and the charts were updated and published in the academic Journal of the International Phonetic Association.
The first most noteworthy revision was presented at the Kiel Convention in West Germany in 1989. 120 International Phonetic Association members discussed changes to the alphabet and its founding principles. In addition to the alphabet changes, two groups were set up. One to work on computer coding and representation of IPA characters, and another on pathological speech and voice qualities.
In 1999, the Handbook of the IPA was written and published, containing over 200 pages and ten chapters. As an essential reference for linguists and phoneticians, it includes three parts:
- Part I: An introduction to phonetic description and examples of how to use phonetic symbols
- Part II: Twenty-nine “Illustrations” on applying the International Phonetic Alphabet to different languages
- Part III: Discusses computer codings, speech pathology, and the history of the IPA
Who Updates the IPA?
The International Phonetic Association periodically publishes the alphabet in chart form, and new charts are released every few years to reflect current phonetic pronunciations and sounds. A one-to-one system prevents confusion generated by inconsistencies and non-conventional spelling. Every IPA character represents only one sound, and every sound is represented by exactly one IPA character.
The Association maintains the IPA and its organization in a chart. Only changes to the alphabet or chart approved by the Council can be considered part of the official IPA. The IPA chart is freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA).
The Essential Reference for Speech Analysis
In 1993 there was a minor revision of four letters and the removal of letters for glottalic egressive sounds. And in 2020, there were some slight adjustments to the layout. Aside from removing and adding symbols, changes typically consist of modifying typefaces or renaming symbols and categories.
Many IPA symbols are from existing alphabets, and new writing systems are sometimes inspired. The IPA chart is similar to a periodic table of elements, only for linguistics. Linguists use the IPA chart to represent pronunciation. The IPA is revised as we learn more about speech or discover new sounds.