IPA Chart: Complete International Phonetic Alphabet Guide

An IPA chart is a one-page table that shows every symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, arranged by where and how each sound is made in the mouth. Because each symbol stands for exactly one sound, the chart lets you write the pronunciation of any word in any language. In short, it is the map linguists, language teachers, singers and dictionary makers use to describe speech.

On this page

1. What Is an IPA Chart?
2. Who Publishes the Official IPA Chart?
3. The Main Sections of the IPA Chart
4. How to Read an IPA Chart Step by Step
5. English Sounds on the IPA Chart
6. Typing and Copying IPA Chart Symbols
7. IPA Chart vs the NATO Phonetic Alphabet
8. Key Takeaways
9. Frequently Asked Questions

What Is an IPA Chart?

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standard set of symbols for speech sounds. The IPA chart is simply that alphabet laid out in a grid, so you can see how the sounds relate to each other. For example, the symbols for p and b sit side by side because both are made with the two lips; the only difference is that your vocal cords vibrate for b.

Ordinary spelling cannot do this job. In English, the letters “ough” sound different in though, through and cough. On the IPA chart, however, every sound has its own symbol, and every symbol has only one value. As a result, a transcription such as /θruː/ for through means the same thing to a reader in London, Lagos or Los Angeles.

If you are new to the subject, it also helps to know the science behind the chart. Our guide to what phonetics is explains how speech sounds are produced, transmitted and heard.

Who Publishes the Official IPA Chart?

The International Phonetic Association maintains the alphabet and its chart. The association grew out of a group of language teachers in France in the 1880s, and it published its first alphabet before the end of that decade. Since then, it has revised the symbols several times, adding sounds and retiring others as phonetic research improved.

You can download the current official chart, in several file formats and languages, from the IPA chart page on the International Phonetic Association website. The association makes the chart freely available, so teachers and students can print and share it. When you see an IPA chart in a textbook or on a poster, it is almost always based on this official version.

The Main Sections of the IPA Chart

At first glance, the chart looks crowded. In practice, though, it breaks down into a handful of clearly labeled boxes. The table below summarizes each one before we look at them in detail.

Section	What it shows	Sample symbols
Pulmonic consonants	Consonants made with air pushed out from the lungs	p b t d k ɡ m n ŋ f v s z ʃ ʒ
Non-pulmonic consonants	Clicks, implosives and ejectives, which use other airstreams	ʘ ǀ ǃ ɓ ɗ pʼ kʼ
Other symbols	Sounds that do not fit neatly in the main grid	w ʍ ɥ ɕ ʑ ɧ
Vowels	Vowel sounds placed on a trapezoid by tongue height and backness	i e ɛ æ a ɑ ɔ o u ə ɪ ʊ ʌ
Diacritics	Small marks that adjust a basic symbol	pʰ ñ n̩ t̪ a̰
Suprasegmentals	Stress, length and syllable breaks	ˈ ˌ ː ˑ .
Tones and word accents	Pitch levels and contours used in tone languages	˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩ (and accent marks)

Pulmonic Consonants

The big grid at the top of the chart holds the pulmonic consonants. “Pulmonic” means the air comes from the lungs, which is how every English consonant is made. The columns run from the front of the mouth to the back: bilabial, labiodental, dental, alveolar, postalveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal and glottal.

The rows, meanwhile, show the manner of articulation. These are plosive, nasal, trill, tap or flap, fricative, lateral fricative, approximant and lateral approximant. Within each cell, the voiceless symbol sits on the left and the voiced symbol on the right. So /s/ and /z/ share a cell, with /s/ first. Shaded cells mark sounds that phoneticians judge to be impossible to make. Our IPA consonant chart guide walks through every row and column with example words.

Non-Pulmonic Consonants

Some languages use sounds that do not rely on lung air. Clicks, such as ʘ and ǃ, are made by trapping air between two closures in the mouth and then releasing it; they are a famous feature of several languages in southern and eastern Africa. Voiced implosives, such as ɓ and ɗ, draw air inward by lowering the larynx. Ejectives, written with an apostrophe-like mark (pʼ, tʼ, kʼ), push air out by raising a closed larynx.

English speakers do make click-like noises, such as the “tsk tsk” of disapproval. However, those noises are not part of English words, so English learners can usually skim this box.

Vowels

The vowel section is a trapezoid, a four-sided shape that roughly matches the space inside your mouth. The top of the shape is “close” (tongue high), and the bottom is “open” (tongue low). The left side is “front,” and the right side is “back.” Where symbols come in pairs, the right-hand one is rounded, meaning your lips form a circle.

For instance, /i/ (as in see) sits at the top left, while /ɑ/ (as in American father) sits at the bottom right. The official chart contains 28 vowel symbols, although no single language uses all of them. For a full tour with English examples, see our IPA vowel chart. In addition, the most common English vowel, the schwa symbol (ə), has its own page.

Other Symbols

A small box lists sounds that would need extra columns in the main grid. Examples include /w/, which uses both the lips and the back of the tongue, and /ʍ/, the voiceless “wh” that some speakers still use in words like which. The box also explains how to write affricates (a stop followed by a fricative, as in /tʃ/ for church) and double articulations with a tie bar.

Diacritics

Diacritics are small marks added above, below or beside a symbol. They let you record fine detail without inventing a new letter. For example, a small raised h shows aspiration, so English pin can be written [pʰɪn]. Similarly, a tilde marks nasalization, as in the French vowel of bon, and a short vertical line under a consonant shows it forms a syllable on its own, as in the second syllable of button [ˈbʌʔn̩].

Suprasegmentals and Tones

Finally, the chart covers features that stretch over more than one sound. A raised vertical stroke ˈ marks primary stress, and a lowered one ˌ marks secondary stress. A colon-like mark ː shows a long sound. Tone languages, such as Mandarin or Yoruba, also need tone marks, so the chart offers both accent marks over vowels and “tone letters” that sketch pitch as a small line graph.

How to Read an IPA Chart Step by Step

Reading the chart becomes easy once you know where to look. Follow these steps the first few times you use it:

1. Decide if the sound is a consonant or a vowel. Consonants involve a clear blockage or narrowing; vowels let air flow freely.
2. For a consonant, find the column. Ask where in the mouth the blockage happens: lips, teeth, ridge behind the teeth, palate, soft palate or throat.
3. Then find the row. Ask how the air is blocked: fully stopped (plosive), sent through the nose (nasal), squeezed (fricative) and so on.
4. Check voicing. Put your fingers on your throat. If you feel a buzz, choose the right-hand symbol in the cell.
5. For a vowel, locate the tongue. High or low, front or back, and with lips rounded or spread.
6. Add detail last. Use diacritics and stress marks only when you need them.

Once you can place sounds on the chart, the natural next step is writing whole words. Our guide to IPA transcription explains slashes, square brackets and how to transcribe a word from scratch.

English Sounds on the IPA Chart

English uses only a small slice of the full IPA chart. Most counts put it at about 44 distinct sounds, though the exact number depends on the accent. The two reference accents in most dictionaries are Received Pronunciation (RP), a traditional British standard, and General American (GA). The table below shows a few symbols where they differ.

Word	RP (British)	General American	What changes
lot	/lɒt/	/lɑt/	RP has a rounded short vowel; GA usually merges it with the vowel of father
goat	/ɡəʊt/	/ɡoʊt/	The diphthong starts further back in GA
car	/kɑː/	/kɑɹ/	GA pronounces the r after a vowel; RP does not
bird	/bɜːd/	/bɝd/	GA uses an r-colored vowel
bath	/bɑːθ/	/bæθ/	RP uses a long back vowel in many of these words

For the complete set, our English IPA chart lists all 44 sounds with example words. English also relies heavily on gliding vowels, which our guide to diphthongs in IPA covers in detail.

Typing and Copying IPA Chart Symbols

All IPA symbols are part of Unicode, the standard that computers use for text. That means you can paste them into documents, emails and websites, as long as your font supports them. The quickest option is to copy them from our IPA symbols copy-and-paste page.

If you write transcriptions often, however, a dedicated input method saves time. Our IPA keyboard guide covers free tools for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone and Android.

IPA Chart vs the NATO Phonetic Alphabet

People often confuse these two systems because both use the word “phonetic.” In fact, they solve completely different problems. The NATO phonetic alphabet assigns a code word to each letter (Alfa for A, Bravo for B) so that people can spell names clearly over a radio or phone line. It describes letters, not sounds.

The IPA chart, by contrast, has nothing to do with spelling. It records what a speaker actually says, sound by sound. So a call-center agent needs the NATO alphabet, while a language student or speech therapist needs the IPA chart. Our homepage has the full NATO chart if that is what you were looking for.

Key Takeaways

The IPA chart packs every speech sound humans commonly use into one organized page. Consonants are sorted by place, manner and voicing; vowels by tongue height, backness and rounding; and diacritics and suprasegmentals fill in the fine detail. Once you learn to read its layout, you can look up, compare and write down the pronunciation of any word. Start with the sounds of your own language, then explore the rest of the chart one box at a time.