Introduction

The International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA) is a standard set of symbols used to describe the sounds made in human speech. The need for the IPA arose when linguists realized that our standard alphabet is inadequate in describing speech sounds, especially in languages that were heretofore strictly oral ones. As linguists began studying these languages, they needed an unambiguous means of representing speech sounds to offer universal clarification and comprehension in their papers.

In English, for instance, the 26 letters of the Western alphabet and their combinations do not always represent the same sounds. The letter "c" may be hard, as in "cauliflower", or it may be soft as in "rice." Therefore, "c" is inadequate in representing different sounds. Linguists developed the IPA to be able to distinguish sounds in any language. If a linguist was studying a newly discovered branch of a rare dialect, spoken by a handful of people, that linguist could describe the speech sounds to colleagues the world over in a symbolic set that every other linguist can understand.

Previously, when students of linguistics studied the IPA, they used charts filled with written examples they recognized. When looking at a particular symbol, the chart might offer a word with the associated sound represented by the symbol present within the word. Students would read the word and associate the sound with the symbol.

With the convergence of multimedia, hypertext, and the Internet, we are able to combine some of the best elements of traditional charts with symbols and sounds. Now, a student of linguistics can see the symbol, read the word, and listen to the sounds the symbols represent. This represents a huge step forward in offering advantages to different learning styles when studying the IPA. In a field where sound plays such an important role, students can now listen to the actual sounds represented in the charts.

The Online IPA Tutor is intended for beginners in linguistics, and is not comprehensive. It covers only those sounds found in American English. There are, of course, many other sounds human vocal cords can produce, including a set of vowels found in British English, that are not included in the Online IPA Tutor. However, we feel that beginning students of linguistics will find the Tutor useful in introducing the IPA to them; even if the symbols are unfamiliar, the sounds they represent should not be.

The Online IPA Tutor is a former class project and is hosted permanently in the archives of EduQuery.com.

All sounds and symbols are taken from the public domain.

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