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A brief overview of the five branches of linguistics (in case you forget!).

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What is Linguistics? | The Five Branches Explained

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AMAZING! A detailed dive into the world of language. Pinker does an amazing job of making the information interesting and engaging.

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Steven Pinker: Linguistics as a Window to Understanding the Brain | Big Think

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An amazing youtube channel full of excellent linguistic content.

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Video details the places and manners of articulation. Helpful when trying to teach an ELL student how to articulate different phonemes.

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Where in our mouth do we pronounce our sounds? In what ways do we let the air escape? This week, we talk about places and manners or articulation: all the different places in the vocal tract we can make sounds, the different methods for restricting air flow that we use, and some of the variation we see between languages for making consonants.

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Article that details the silent period of language acquistion. Important information to keep in mind when working with ELL students.

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There are five different stages in the second language acquisition process:

1. The Silent Period

2. The Early Production Period

3. The Speech Emergence Period

4. The Intermediate Production Period

5. The Advanced Production Period

Even though there is wealth of research on these different stages, out of these five periods, probably the most misunderstood, ignored or even unknown both by teachers and students alike is the first, the Silent Period, which will be the focus of our article today.

What is the Silent Period?

The first stage of the language acquisition process is called "The Silent Period" simply because the students aren't doing much talking yet. In some learners this period may be shorter or longer, ranging between 2 to 6 months, though it may take much longer too, depending on the exposure to the foreign language that the learner has.

For example, a foreigner living abroad and surrounded by a new language all day may have a shorter silent period than a student in his home country who attends a bilingual school in which a second language is taught for four or five hours a day. In turn, this student's silent period may be considerably shorter than that of a learner studying a second language for just two hours a week. So it becomes clear that generalizing how long this period may last is nearly impossible because it depends on many personal and individual variables that come into play.

The main characteristic of this stage is that after some initial exposure to the language, the learner is able to understand much more than s/he can produce. You can easily see this in two-year-old babies too! You can speak to them normally and they can definitely understand whatever you say. However, even if they wanted to say exactly what you said, they would not be able to. They may use some of your words but they would find it impossible to express their ideas in a similarly organized way, in spite of the fact that they may understand every single word we said.

This goes hand in hand with the fact that comprehension preceded production. We will always be able to understand much more than we can produce. For example, in spite of knowing little or nothing about economics, accounting and marketing, when I watch or read news reports on those fields, I can get a pretty good and accurate idea of what those reports are about. However, if someone asked me to explain what the reports said, I would surely resort to general language and simpler explanations to describe what the experts stated using specific jargon and technical analysis.

In other words, at the level of comprehension, I could manage to understand everything, but at the level of production I may not be able to express everything I heard in exactly the same way. Nevertheless, with more exposure on those topics, and if they became meaningful to me and part of my everyday reality, after a while I would be able to start to use that specific jargon as part of my everyday vocabulary. In this example, the stretch of time between my initial exposure to the topic, maybe the first time I heard a report on those topics and the time when I could talk about it freely without jargon or any language-related problems could be considered my silent period in the field.

I want to highlight here that I am stretching the linguists' definition of this period a little bit while saying this. Linguists refer specifically to the time when a person starts to acquire the language through exposure to it, understands a lot but is unable to express his or her ideas yet. When they talk about the "Silent Period" they do not imply that it refers to the acquisition of language at any stage of the second language acquisition process as I do. This is my humble opinion after several years of working with second language learners. Again, this is something that I have personally noticed that I feel could be perfectly applied to language learners at any stage of their learning as shown in the previous example.

As we have just seen when it comes to the first contact between a language learner with a second language this takes a new dimension, of course. For a long time they may be unable to utter a single word and that is perfectly fine and it is part and parcel of the language acquisition process. What is so peculiar about this period is that it has the special ability to make adult students anxious and drive teachers absolutely crazy! This is by far the most difficult period both for teachers and students alike.

A crucial stage of the language acquisition process

One of the main reasons why I decided to write this article was to remind teachers of this crucial stage in second language acquisition and to make students aware of its existence so as not to place a heavy burden on themselves. By knowing this simple fact both teachers and learners can share the joy of teaching and learning without the stress associated with the feeling that they are not reaching their goals.

On occasions, the teacher's lack of knowledge of these kinds of issues can produce unintentional disastrous results on their students' self-esteem. How common it is for those of us who specialize in teaching methodologies to meet disappointed or even angry teachers complaining about their students' lack of progress.

"We've been working on the Present Tense for over two months now. We've been doing drills, lots of repetitions, we've created real-life situations to make the language come to life and yet, they can produce little or nothing!"

"How can they not know this after doing this it for more than three weeks!"

My reply in most cases is the same: " Just give them more time. "

As times goes by, provided that our students are in a truly communicative setting, they will start to produce what they cannot do right now.

The widespread ignorance of this stage in the language acquisition process can create very unwanted situations. As a Colombian saying goes: "la ignorancia es atrevida." Lacking an exact English idiom, or at least not knowing one myself, I will proceed to explain its meaning. The saying basically says that "ignorance is rude and causes us to do stupid things."

On one occasion, while working in a pretty nice school in the US teaching ESL (English as a Second Language) to a child from Mexico, I got a call from my supervisor. She was extremely concerned as the principal of the school I was working at had called her to complain about my skills as a teacher as my student "had not been making any progress at all" since she started to receive my services. Even though this same principal had sat in on one of my classes and even written a report that said that my work was "above average," she seriously doubted that my teaching approach really worked. After all, although the lesson had been fun and provided plenty of communicative opportunities for students to put the language to use, she had not seen any drills, repetitions, gap filling exercises, and grammar rules had never been presented to my group of "seven-year-olders." So, in her opinion, it was only natural this student could not do or say much in English. The funny thing was... this student had been in the US for less than two months and had been receiving ESL services for less than a month and a half!!!

What is more, unlike the idea this principal had, she had made ENORMOUS progress. She could already understand most greetings and basic classroom directives; she could understand several types of questions on different everyday topics. She could even understand many things that people told her to do and basic facts! However, when it came to talking, she could just say one or two greetings and produce "yes" or "no" replies. Does this mean she had not made any progress? Does this mean she had not learned anything? Not in the least! On the contrary, she was way advanced in her initial stage of second language acquisition and very soon afterwards she entered the early production period. Plain and simple, she was going through her silent period.

When I talked to the principal and explained to her, as politely as possible, what the silent period was and how much progress this girl had made, she could not help blushing and sighing with relief at the idea that "we had not been wasting our time!"

Once more, by knowing this simple fact we can relax, enjoy what we are doing without the frustrating feeling that we are getting nowhere. Students can also enjoy the freedom of knowing that sooner or later they will be able to put into practice whatever they are learning now, given the right language setting (For more info on the right language setting, please read my other articles: "Are you in a Really Communicative Second Language Classroom?," Making the Most out of Your Second Language Acquisition Program," and "Second Language Acquisition in Adult Learners - Parts 1 and 2.")

If we are "masters and commanders" of our class, as it may happen if you have your own language school or if you have the freedom to do as you please, just knowing this simple fact can give you a whole different perspective of your work. Nevertheless, if you are working for someone who demands quick and immediate results, the best piece of advice I could give you is to do your own research on this topic; read as much as you can and be prepared to account for whatever you do with your students. Talk to your supervisor, peers, students or whoever is demanding results now and simply explain to them what the wealth of research on this issue shows. More often than not, the light that knowledge projects will dissipate the darkness that surrounds ignorance. Not only will they understand what you mean but they will also appreciate your efforts to make your classes more enjoyable and stress-free.

Written by Julio Foppoli
Julio Foppoli is a teacher of English as a Second Language and a teacher of Spanish as a Second Language. He is the creator and owner of esaudio.net, an online educational website with a technological edge, specialized in the teaching of Spanish as second language via audio-conference to native speakers of English from all over the world.

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The Silent Period of Second Language Acquisition - Eslbase.com

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There are five different stages in the second language acquisition process: The Silent Period The Early Production Period The Speech Emergence Period The Intermediate Production Period The Advanced Production Period Even though there is wealth of research on these different stages, out of these five periods, probably the most misunderstood, ignored or even unknown both by teachers and students alike is the first, the Silent Period, which will be the focus of our article today.

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A brief overview of Noam Chomsky's beliefs on language acquisition.

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Detailed video on language acquisition and language learning.

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Language Acquisition  vs. Learning  | Second Language Theory | TESOL

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A good resource for video warmups that help teach intonation.

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I once had a student who ended every sentence with a rising intonation.

When I would ask her how she was doing, she would respond, "I am well? Thanks?"

To be honest, before I started teaching her, intonation activities never crossed my mind. But her ability to turn everything into a question demonstrated to me just how important it is to teach intonation to English language learners.

The ability to communicate and the ability to be understood are the most important parts of learning a new language. As teachers, we understand this and spend countless hours running pronunciation and grammar exercises in the classroom. And while that's certainly important, it's not enough.

Students don't just need to learn what to say, they also need to learn how to say it. But sometimes it can be difficult to teach a topic like intonation, which can be very subtle and which just comes naturally to native speakers.

The activities in this post are designed to help you teach English intonation in an accessible and engaging way. No matter what level you're teaching, these activities are a gateway to more fluent-sounding speech among your students.

Why Should English Teachers Prioritize Intonation?

Whether you're teaching general ESL lessons or you're focusing specifically on conversational English, you should have the same goal: helping your students sound as natural as possible.

Intonation is a huge part of natural communication. The way we use pitch, stress and emphasis on specific words can completely change the meaning of a sentence.

If you don't believe me, say the sentence "she didn't steal my wallet" five times, placing the emphasis on a different word each time you say it.

As you can see, the sentence takes on a different meaning every time you stress a different word. For ESL students, this can become a problem if they use the wrong intonation and end up conveying the wrong message.

Imagine if one of your students tried to explain to a police officer that a woman didn't still his wallet, but ended up putting the stress on the word "wallet." Instead of telling the officer that the woman's innocent, the student actually implied that she stole something other than his wallet, which can lead to a confusing situation.

Isn't English delightfully complicated?

If you want your students to be fully prepared for communication with native speakers, it's essential to make them aware of intonation pitfalls and prepare them to say what they mean to say.

When teaching intonation, it's best to use activities that are fun and engaging. Stress and emphasis aren't things that most people can learn from studying through computer programs and textbooks.

Let's have a look at some interactive intonation activities that will help your students actively build their communication skills.

1. Video Warm-ups

Regardless of whether you're teaching intonation for the first time or you're simply reviewing material you covered last week, it's always a good idea to introduce a short warm-up that gets students thinking about the material.

The videos below don't just teach intonation in an engaging way, but they also have interactive elements that make them great for classroom warm-up activities.

If you're looking for a way to introduce intonation to your students, have a look at this YouTube channel. You can browse a number of different video clips covering intonation and pronunciation.

For classroom activities, have students follow along with Rachel's playlist of intonation videos, imitating her examples. Rachel also has mouth exercises that'll help them learn how to relax their tongues so that they don't become tired from speaking English.

This channel is great because it has many different intonation warm-up activities that help students learn how to listen for changes in pitch and speak in high and low pitches.

Most of Jill's videos can involve participation from students, whether it's saying sentences in a "sing-songy" manner or repeating various high and low-pitched sounds.

One of the best ways to teach correct English intonation is to show students authentic English speech in a variety of situations. FluentU is an innovative platform that helps you do that while also actively building students' language skills.
FluentU takes real-world videos-like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more-and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students.

It's got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking world actually watch on the regular. There are tons of great choices there when you're looking for videos for in-class activities.

You'll find movie trailers, musical numbers from cinema and theater, news interviews, commercial jingles and much, much more.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

For example, if a student taps on the word "brought," they'll see this:

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like "fill in the blank."

It's perfect for teaching intonation through in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to mention, it's guaranteed to get your students excited about English!

2. Stress Shifting

As we saw with the sample sentence "she didn't steal my wallet," it's possible to change the meaning of a sentence by putting stress on a specific word. Stress Shifting is a simple activity for introducing this concept to your class.

First, you'll need to collect a list of sample English sentences that your students will read aloud for intonation practice. "Perfect Phrases for ESL Conversation Skills" is a popular English phrasebook that you can use to pull sample sentences from. You could also use this list of 76 important English travel phrases as a jumping off point.

Once in class, write one of the sentences on the board and underline a word to stress. Have a student volunteer read the sentence. Then, erase the underline and move it to another word. Have a different student read the sentence.

Discuss how the intonation shifted, and how the meaning of the sentence changed accordingly. Rinse and repeat with the other sentences in your list.

If you have access to a language lab or recording devices, you can have your students record themselves saying each sentence with different words stressed. This creates a great opportunity for you to assess every student's intonation, and ensures that even your shyest students get in on the activity.

3. Inside Out

This exercise is a fun and effective way for students to practice English intonation. It will help students learn how intonation can be used to express emotions, feelings and attitudes in English.

For this activity, assign each student a specific emotion or feeling (such as "excitement," "fear," "sadness," "confusion" and so on, just like in the popular kids' movie "Inside Out") and have them communicate using the emphasis and pitch that reflects their feeling.

For beginner classes, you might want to create the sentences (or pull from the resources mentioned above) beforehand in order to save class time. But for your intermediate and advanced classes, feel free to have them come up with their own sentences that coincide with their assigned emotion.

4. Who Do You Think You're Talkin' To?

The way you speak to your boss is probably not the same way you'd speak to an annoying younger brother or sister. We speak differently to people depending on who they are and how we feel about them.

This is incredibly important for ESL students to know when learning English, so they don't go through life speaking sarcastically to everyone they encounter. This activity helps them get used to adjusting their intonation depending on their audience.

Put students in pairs and have them read sample sentences to each other. But when they read each sentence, change the dynamic by having them pretend they're speaking to a stranger, a close friend, a parent, someone they don't like and so on.

Listen as you walk around the class and pause, correct or discuss with students where necessary. At the end, gather students for a group discussion about the ways they modified their pitch and word stress depending on their audience.

5. Intonation Improv

This ESL roleplaying activity builds on the last one, with an opportunity for more advanced students to get extra English communication practice. It's also a nice way to help your more creative students shine.

Put your students in groups of two or three and give them a number of different scenarios, such as:

Meeting a friend for the first time in years

A couple breaking up

Arguing with a stranger

A doctor and a very sick patient

Every scenario has a different type of emotion that can be expressed through intonation. Reconnecting with a friend should have an intonation that demonstrates excitement or happiness, while arguing with someone would be sarcastic or angry.

You can let students discuss and prepare in groups and then perform one by one for the class, or simply call up volunteers to improvise together. Depending on your class' proficiency level, you may want to have some general lines written out that students can build off of.

Keep each role-play brief (just a couple of minutes) so that the focus stays on intonation. Afterwards, students can pose questions or discuss what they heard and how they might've changed their own intonation.

Remember that every language has its own rhythm and rules regarding intonation, so don't assume that your students will automatically understand English intonation the first time you teach it. But with these activities and a little bit of patience, your students will be able to better express themselves.

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.
Bring English immersion to your classroom!

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5 Effective Intonation Activities for Teaching English to Any Skill Level

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I once had a student who ended every sentence with a rising intonation. When I would ask her how she was doing, she would respond, "I am well? Thanks?" To be honest, before I started teaching her, intonation activities never crossed my mind.

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Twin babies having a conversation. Very important linguisitc information inside!

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Talking Twin Babies - PART 2 - OFFICIAL VIDEO

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Detailed article on Krashen's theory, Schumann's theory, and the Critical Period hypothesis.

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Brief overview of the five stages of language acquisition.

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Five Stages of Second Language Acquisition web article

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Detailed description of phonology.

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Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production, audition and perception of of speech sounds (called phones), phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language and operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units. Knowing the sounds of a language is only a small part of phonology. This importance is shown by the fact that you can change one word into another by simply changing one sound. Consider the differences between the words time and dime. The words are identical except for the first sound. [t] and [d] can therefore distinguish words, and are called contrasting sounds. They are distinctive sounds in English, and all distinctive sounds are classified as phonemes.

Minimal Pairs
Minimal pairs are words with different meanings that have the same sounds except for one. These contrasting sounds can either be consonants or vowels. The words pin and bin are minimal pairs because they are exactly the same except for the first sound. The words read and rude are also exactly the same except for the vowel sound. The examples from above, time and dime, are also minimal pairs. In effect, words with one contrastive sound are minimal pairs. Another feature of minimal pairs is overlapping distribution. Sounds that occur in phonetic environments that are identical are said to be in overlapping distribution. The sounds of [ɪn] from pin and bin are in overlapping distribution because they occur in both words. The same is true for three and through. The sounds of [θr] is in overlapping distribution because they occur in both words as well.

Free Variation
Some words in English are pronounced differently by different speakers. This is most noticeable among American English speakers and British English speakers, as well as dialectal differences. This is evidenced in the ways neither, for example, can be pronounced. American English pronunciation tends to be [niðər], while British English pronunciation is [najðər].

Phones and Allophones
Phonemes are not physical sounds. They are abstract mental representations of the phonological units of a language. Phones are considered to be any single speech sound of which phonemes are made. Phonemes are a family of phones regarded as a single sound and represented by the same symbol. The different phones that are the realization of a phoneme are called allophones of that phoneme. The use of allophones is not random, but rule-governed. No one is taught these rules as they are learned subconsciously when the native language is acquired. To distinguish between a phoneme and its allophones, I will use slashes // to enclose phonemes and brackets [] to enclose allophones or phones. For example, [i] and [ĩ] are allophones of the phoneme /i/; [ɪ] and [ɪ̃] are allophones of the phoneme /ɪ/.

Complementary Distribution
If two sounds are allophones of the same phoneme, they are said to be in complementary distribution. These sounds cannot occur in minimal pairs and they cannot change the meaning of otherwise identical words. If you interchange the sounds, you will only change the pronunciation of the words, not the meaning. Native speakers of the language regard the two allophones as variations of the same sound. To hear this, start to say the word cool (your lips should be pursed in anticipation of /u/ sound), but then say kill instead (with your lips still pursed.) Your pronunciation of kill should sound strange because cool and kill are pronounced with different allophones of the phoneme /k/.

Nasalized vowels are allophones of the same phoneme in English. Take, for example, the sounds in bad and ban. The phoneme is /æ/, however the allophones are [æ] and [æ̃]. Yet in French, nasalized vowels are not allophones of the same phonemes. They are separate phonemes. The words beau [bo] and bon [bõ] are not in complementary distribution because they are minimal pairs and have contrasting sounds. Changing the sounds changes the meaning of the words. This is just one example of differences between languages.

Phonological Rules
Assimilation: sounds become more like neighboring sounds, allowing for ease of articulation or pronunciation; such as vowels are nasalized before nasal consonants
- Harmony: non-adjacent vowels become more similar by sharing a feature or set of features (common in Finnish)
- Gemination: sound becomes identical to an adjacent sound
- Regressive Assimilation: sound on left is the target, and sound on right is the trigger

Dissimilation: sounds become less like neighboring sounds; these rules are quite rare, but one example in English is [fɪfθ] becoming [fɪft] (/f/ and /θ/ are both fricatives, but /t/ is a stop)

Epenthesis: insertion of a sound, e.g. Latin "homre" became Spanish "hombre"
- Prothesis: insertion of vowel sound at beginning of word
- Anaptyxis: vowel sound with predictable quality is inserted word-internally
- Paragoge: insertion of vowel sound at end of word
- Excrescence: consonant sound inserted between other consonants (also called stop-intrusion)

Deletion: deletion of a sound; e.g. French word-final consonants are deleted when the next word begins with a consonant (but are retained when the following word begins with a vowel)
- Aphaeresis: vowel sound deleted at beginning of word
- Syncope: vowel sound is deleted word-internally
- Apocope: vowel sound deleted at end of word

Metathesis: reordering of phonemes; in some dialects of English, the word asked is pronounced [æks]; children's speech shows many cases of metathesis such as aminal for animal

Lenition: consonant changes to a weaker manner of articulation; voiced stop becomes a fricative, fricative becomes a glide, etc.

Palatalization: sound becomes palatal when adjacent to a front vowel Compensatory Lengthening: sound becomes long as a result of sound loss, e.g. Latin "octo" became Italian "otto"

Assimilation in English
An interesting observation of assimilation rules is evidenced in the formation of plurals and the past tense in English. When pluralizing nouns, the last letter is pronounced as either [s], [z], or [əz]. When forming past tenses of verbs, the -ed ending is pronounced as either [t], [d], [əd]. If you were to sort words into three columns, you would be able to tell why certain words are followed by certain sounds:

Hopefully, you can determine which consonants produce which sounds. In the nouns, /s/ is added after voiceless consonants, and /z/ is added after voiced consonants. /əz/ is added after sibilants. For the verbs, /t/ is added after voiceless consonants, and /d/ is added after voiced consonants. /əd/ is added after alveolar stops. The great thing about this is that no one ever taught you this in school. But thanks to linguistics, you now know why there are different sounds (because of assimiliation rules, the consonants become more like their neighboring consonants.)

Writing Rules
A general phonological rule is A → B / D __ E (said: A becomes B when it occurs between D and E) Other symbols in rule writing include: C = any obstruent, V = any vowel, Ø = nothing, # = word boundary, ( ) = optional, and { } = either/or. A deletion rule is A → Ø / E __ (A is deleted when it occurs after E) and an insertion rule is Ø → A / E __ (A is inserted when it occurs after E).

Alpha notation is used to collapse similar assimilation rules into one. C → [Α voice] / __ [Α voice] (An obstruent becomes voiced when it occurs before a voiced obstruent AND an obstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a voiceless obstruent.) Similarly, it can be used for dissimilation rules too. C → [-Α voice] / __ [Α voice] (An obstruent becomes voiced when it occurs before a voiceless obstruent AND an obstruent becomes voiceless when it occurs before a voiced obstruent.) Gemination rules are written as C1C2 → C2C2 (for example, pd → dd)

Syllable Structure
There are three peaks to a syllable: nucleus (vowel), onset (consonant before nucleus) and coda (consonant after nucleus.) The onset and coda are both optional, meaning that a syllable could contain a vowel and nothing else. The nucleus is required in every syllable by definition. The order of the peaks is always onset - nucleus - coda. All languages permit open syllables (Consonant + Vowel), but not all languages allow closed syllables (Consonant + Vowel + Consonant). Languages that only allow open syllables are called CV languages. In addition to not allowing codas, some CV languages also have constraints on the number of consonants allowed in the onset.

The sonority profile dictates that sonority must rise to the nucleus and fall to the coda in every language. The sonority scale (from most to least sonorous) is vowels - glides - liquids - nasals - obstruents. Sonority must rise in the onset, but the sounds cannot be adjacent to or share a place of articulation (except [s] in English) nor can there be more than two consonants in the onset. This explains why English allows some consonant combinations, but not others. For example, price [prajs] is a well-formed syllable and word because the sonority rises in the onset (p, an obstruent, is less sonorous than r, a liquid); however, rpice [rpajs] is not a syllable in English because the sonority does not rise in the onset.

The Maximality Condition states that onsets are as large as possible up to the well-formedness rules of a language. Onsets are always preferred over codas when syllabifying words. There are also constraints that state the maximum number of consonants between two vowels is four; onsets and codas have two consonants maximally; and onsets and codas can be bigger only at the edges of words.

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Whereas phonetics is the study of sounds and is concerned with the production, audition and perception of of speech sounds (called phones), phonology describes the way sounds function within a given language and operates at the level of sound systems and abstract sound units.

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Interactive website where you can click on phonemes and hear them pronounced.

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The International Phonetic Alphabet chart with sounds lets you listen to each of the sounds from the IPA. The interactive IPA chart can be found at the bottom of this page.

International Phonetic Alphabet, also called IPA, is an international alphabet used by linguists to accurately represent the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) in human speech. A phoneme is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a given language. For example, the English words "sit", "bit", and "kit" can be distinguished by the sounds, or phonemes, that are created by each of their first letters.

A phoneme chart is a table that displays the IPA symbol for each of the IPA phonemes of the international alphabet. A phoneme chart can be organized in different ways based on the characteristics of the different IPA phonemes and the relationships between them. For example, in the IPA vowel chart at the bottom of this page, the IPA phonemes that are generated in the same part of the mouth are listed in the same column, and those that are generated with the same amount of mouth opening or closing are listed in the same row. In addition, the IPA vowel chart and other interactive IPA charts below include audio recordings of the individual phonemes in order to help students, non-native speakers of the language, and others, to learn IPA pronunciation of particular sounds.

Who Uses the International Phonetic Alphabet?

An essential function of the IPA is to provide a standard for labeling these phonemes so that linguists can discuss any sound without ambiguity.

In 1886 a group of French and British language teachers teamed up to create a new organization for linguists. The teachers were headed by the French linguist Paul Passy. The International Phonetic Association was formed by formed in1897 (in French, l'Association phonétique internationale).

The latest version, IPA chart number 122, was published by the International Phonetic Association in 2005. Since then, IPA linguistics have played an important role in both the study and use of language worldwide.
IPA linguistics provide students with a greater understanding of language by accurately and uniquely representing the sounds of oral speech. The IPA is used by:

Lexicographers

Foreign Language Students

Teachers

Linguists

Speech-Language Pathologists

Singers

Actors

Constructed Language Creators

Translators

Many American linguists have found that using a combination of IPA and Americanist phonetic notation is an effective way to standardize transcriptions. An extended set of IPA symbols represent different qualities of speech, such as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palate.

How Many International Phonetic Alphabets Are There?

While this IPA is the most commonly used and well-known international phonetic alphabet, it is not the only one. Other alphabets include the Americanist phonetic notation, also known as the North American Phonetic Alphabet (NAPA), the Americanist Phonetic Alphabet or the American Phonetic Alphabet (APA), Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Alphabet (CASA), the Swahili Phonetic Alphabet (SWA), and the Thai Phonetic Alphabet (TPA). Each international alphabet has its own set of symbols and phonemes to represent the sounds of oral language.

The IPA linguistics are based on the Latin alphabet in order to correspond to an international standard. This IPA is also the standard that the United Nations uses to represent sounds in all languages that use a writing system.

Are There Free IPA Translators?

Yes! We have automatic IPA translation tools available in English, Spanish, French and other languages. All of our IPA translators are available for free. Please visit our IPA translators section to see a complete list and use the translators for your own linguistic needs.

How to Use the IPA Chart

The interactive IPA chart helps you identify the sounds of language. To use the phoneme chart, first familiarize yourself with each IPA symbol and the corresponding IPA pronunciation of the sound. For example, in the IPA vowel chart, click on each symbol to hear the corresponding vowel sound, and begin practicing pronouncing the sounds yourself. Finally, start using the IPA in your own speech and writing.

Click on an IPA Symbol to Hear the Associated IPA Pronunciation of the Sound

Our interactive IPA chart is responsive, this means it adjusts to any screen size. If part of the chart is not visible, please click the red and green arrows to see the additional symbols.

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IPA Chart with Sounds - International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds

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The interactive International Phonetic Alphabet chart and online resource. Listen to each of the sounds from the International Phonetic Alphabet. IPA chart sounds and symbols.

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Quick overview of Schumann's theory of language acquisition.