International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
/ eye-pee-AY /
The International Phonetic Alphabet is a set of symbols designed so that each distinctive speech sound used in the world's languages has its own mark — one symbol, one sound, with small added marks, called diacritics, for finer shades. Ordinary spelling is a mess: the "gh" in "enough" sounds like "f," yet it's silent in "though." The IPA cuts through that. Write a word between slashes, like /θɪŋk/ for "think," and anyone trained in the system can pronounce it correctly without ever having heard it.
That is why it shows up in dictionaries, language classrooms, and singers' scores around the world. Because the symbols stand for sounds rather than letters of any one language, the same chart works for English, Mandarin, Zulu, or a language with no writing system at all — a field linguist can sit with a speaker and capture exactly what they hear. The familiar symbol [θ], for instance, is the sound at the start of "thin," whatever country you're in.
A common misunderstanding is that the IPA is an alphabet for some language, or a code only experts use. It isn't a language at all — it's more like a ruler for sound. And it doesn't capture every shading of a real voice; rather, it pins down which sounds matter, precisely enough that two people on opposite sides of the planet can agree on what was said.
"jovana" → /dʒoʊˈvɑːnə/ · the same word, written so anyone can say it aloud.
Slashes /…/ mark a broad transcription; square brackets […] mark a finer, more literal one.
The IPA was first published in 1888 by the International Phonetic Association, a group of European language teachers led by Frenchman Paul Passy, and it has been revised ever since — the most recent official chart dates to 2020. Many of its letters are borrowed from the Latin and Greek alphabets, sometimes flipped or reshaped to mark a new sound.