In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, formed what would be known from 1897 onwards as the International Phonetic Association(in French, l'Association

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The general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound (speech segment). This means that:
• It does not normally use combinations of lettersto

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The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the

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The International Phonetic Association organizes the letters of the IPA into three categories: pulmonicconsonants, non-pulmonic consonants, and

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Diacriticsare used for phonetic detail. They are added to IPA letters to indicate a modification or specification of that letter's normal

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A number of IPA characters are not consistently used for their official values. A distinction between voiced fricatives and approximants is only

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Of more than 160 IPA symbols, relatively few will be used to transcribe speech in any one language, with various levels of precision. A precise phonetic transcription, in which sounds are specified in detail, is known as a narrow transcription. A coarser transcription with

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