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The International Phonetic Association
The International Phonetic Association grew out of Dhi Fonètik Ticerz’
Asóciécon, founded in 1886 in Paris. Because of its close links with practical
language learning, there was considerable focus in the early years on the
development of a phonetic alphabet whose function was to give a practical
teaching alphabet which marked distinctive sounds. The phonetic alphabet
propagated by the Association has developed considerably since
those early days, both in terms of its domains of use and in terms of its
sophistication.
In terms of its use, the IPA’s alphabet has become the world’s standard phonetic
notational system. It is used not only in foreign language teaching, but
also in such diverse areas as speech recognition systems and representations of
pronunciation for mother-tongue speakers. If we just look at its use in English
dictionaries, for example, the International Phonetic Alphabet was adopted for
use in The Collins English Dictionary (1979), The Macquarie Dictionary (1981),
the eighth edition of The Concise Oxford Dictionary (1990) and Chambers 21st
Century Dictionary (1996). Of course, these various dictionaries do not use precisely
the same transcription system for English, but they are all based on the
IPA system. Not all dictionaries have adopted IPA systems whole-heartedly,
though a majority now have: the tenth edition of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate
Dictionary (1996) and The New Penguin Dictionary (2000) both hold out –
though even they have both adopted the use of [ə] and IPA stress marks, and
the Penguin dictionary uses the IPA alphabet for the transcription of foreign
words.
For linguists, the IPA’s alphabet has become the default way of presenting
foreign-language data. That is why it is so important that linguistics students
should be familiar with the IPA chart and have some ability to read its