Start with the essentials
Learn what a symbol represents, make your first transcription, and separate a language’s sound categories from finer phonetic detail.
The IPA learning roomUnderstand the sounds.
Understand the sounds.
Find the symbols.
A place to learn phonetic notation, build a transcription and put your understanding into practice. Explore 26 guides alongside the keyboards, charts and tools you use.
Describevoiceless · bilabial · plosive
[p]
Add detail[pʰ]aspiration marked
Schematic notation, not a word or an accent claim.
Choose a starting point
A path through the IPA
Follow a sequence or go straight to the topic you need.
Add detail to your transcription
Describe movement, timing and pitch. Use small contrasts and worked examples to decide which details your analysis needs.
Read and work with specialist notation
Interpret less familiar symbols, check source conventions and keep Unicode text dependable across documents.
Keyboards, charts & tools.
Your learning library
26 guides · explanations, tutorials and practice
Foundation
Smart IPA
Use familiar Roman letters to find related phonetic symbols without memorizing character codes. Learn to select a symbol, revisit it safely and add a length mark while keeping your transcription deliberate.
Foundation
IPA English
Use a direct keyboard layout to enter phonetic symbols often encountered in English study. Practice a supplied sequence while learning why an English-labelled keyboard cannot choose an accent or transcription system for you.
Developing
Unicode
Understand the difference between a phonetic character, its appearance and the key used to enter it. Use the Unicode layout to combine a base consonant with an aspiration modifier and carry the result into another document.
Developing
SAMPA English
Use the legacy SAMPA English layout to insert selected IPA characters directly. Learn why this keyboard’s key positions must be checked separately from the case-sensitive ASCII conventions used in a SAMPA transcription.
Developing
Superscript symbols
Add raised phonetic modifiers deliberately rather than treating them as decorative small letters. Use the Superscript symbols layout to enter aspiration and compare it with other secondary articulations and release markings.
Developing
Subscript symbols
Use the Subscript symbols layout to attach selected diacritics to a preceding phonetic base. Learn why a mark’s position below a letter does not determine its meaning, and practice a syllabic nasal with a verified key.
Developing
Flipped symbols
Use visual relationships to locate characters while keeping their phonetic meanings separate. Practice a short sequence from the Flipped symbols layout and learn why a turned shape is a distinct character, not a transformed ordinary letter.
Developing
Retroflex symbols
Distinguish retroflex stops, nasals, fricatives and approximants by their complete descriptions. Learn default and Shift positions in this legacy collection, including characters whose sounds are not retroflex.
Developing
Extended symbols
Navigate a mixed collection of IPA consonants and vowels using their phonetic descriptions rather than the layout name. Practice the exact default and Shift keys while keeping this historical collection distinct from the specialist extIPA system.
Developing
Barred symbols
Use the Barred symbols layout without assuming that a stroke has one fixed phonetic meaning. Compare central vowels, a front rounded vowel and several distinct consonants, then insert them through the verified key layers.
Foundation
Pulmonic consonants
Read the consonant table as a map of place, manner and voicing rather than a list of unfamiliar letters. Practice locating symbols and distinguish ordinary empty spaces from the standard chart's shaded articulations.
Developing
Non-pulmonic consonants
Distinguish clicks, voiced implosives and ejectives by their airstream mechanisms rather than by unfamiliar letter shapes. Practice exact chart symbols and learn an important Unicode limitation in the legacy ejective buttons.
Foundation
Vowels
Read vowel symbols by height, backness and lip rounding instead of guessing from English spelling. Use the chart to build a small comparison set and keep vowel quality separate from stress and length.
Developing
Diphthongs
A diphthong changes vowel quality within one syllable, so its transcription often uses two vowel symbols. Learn to read the movement while treating the chart's English examples as accent-specific reference choices rather than one universal inventory.
Developing
Diacritics
Diacritics add a specified phonetic detail to a base symbol, such as nasalization, aspiration or syllabicity. Learn to choose meaningful marks and insert combining characters in the correct place without copying the chart's display circle.
Developing
Tones
Tone notation represents pitch patterns with diacritics or tone letters, interpreted relative to a speaker and language system. Learn the five reference levels, build a simple contour and distinguish IPA pitch notation from language-specific tone numbers.
Foundation
Suprasegmentals
Suprasegmental notation records features such as stress, duration and boundaries alongside individual speech sounds. Learn where to place these marks and build a short schematic transcription that separates prominence from vowel length.
Developing
Affricates
Read an affricate as a coordinated stop release into frication, while keeping phonetic description separate from phonemic analysis. Use the chart's complete tie-bar sequences and check their Unicode components when copying or editing.
Reference
Other symbols
This palette brings together several official IPA Other Symbols, additional fricatives, tie bars and ready-made symbol sequences. Learn what each group contributes without treating the site's convenient folder as a single sound class.
Foundation
English to IPA converter
Turn an English passage into a transcription you can explain. Learn to choose between dictionary pronunciations, handle unfamiliar words, read stress marks and build a useful study routine before you export your work.
Foundation
Minimal-pair finder
Use one-sound contrasts to make a focused phonetics lesson. Learn what the finder matches, how to review dictionary alternatives, and how to choose a clear set of examples.
Foundation
IPA transcription practice
Read a spelling, recall its sounds, and compare the symbols deliberately. Learn what the checker accepts, how to use a correction, and how to build a useful second round.
Teaching & study
Phonetics worksheet & flashcard maker
Build a short activity with a clear learning goal. Review its IPA models, choose a task that fits your learners, and print a clean worksheet with a separate answer key.
Foundation
Find words by sound
Move from a phonetic teaching goal to a useful set of words. Search the pronunciation rather than its spelling, then combine sound position, syllable counts and stress patterns.
Foundation to intermediate
IPA notation converter
Separate the sound from the code used to write it. Practise notation conversion, inspect unsupported details and understand why a broad English phone set cannot preserve every IPA distinction.
Foundation
IPA text checker
Separate a text problem from a pronunciation decision. Find invisible characters, understand combining marks and review brackets without automatically rewriting valid IPA.
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Make it part of your practice
Read. Listen. Transcribe. Compare.
Read a guide, listen to a relevant sound in the IPA’s recorded chart, then explain your choice of symbol. Check the model answers for the written exercises and revisit the distinction you missed.
Open the IPA’s recorded chartFor classes and professional study
Use the printable guides as discussion prompts or short practice sheets. For each transcription, record the language or accent, the source, and your broad or narrow transcription convention. Compare analyses with your teacher, colleagues and language-specific references.
These original lessons support study of notation. The exercises do not score spoken pronunciation or provide clinical assessment. Source references are listed in every guide.