Screenshot of message window
How to insert IPA characters in forum messages
Ceci est la version anglaise. Passer à la version française
Creation: 20 March 2009
Last update: 25 March 2009
Document status: completely incomplete!!!! :-)
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The styles will display best if you use a normal browser.
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IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) characters allow a very precise representation of the pronunciation of a word in any language.
French sounds in IPA characters are provided here.
This is an example of text containing normal characters and IPA characters.
As you can see, IPA characters can have very strange forms.
If you cannot read these characters, go to the next section.
All of the characters on this page use your browser's default font. It is unlikely that this font is capable of correctly displaying IPA characters. So you need to use a font which can display them. There are several fonts that can do this.
Here is a partial list of fonts which display IPA characters correctly:
For example, the group of characters [θɪŋ] is specified as follows:
<span style="font-family: 'Charis SIL', 'Doulos SIL', 'DejaVu Sans', 'Arial Unicode MS', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Gentium, sans-serif">[θɪŋ]</span>
To use IPA characters, you just need to have one of these fonts. If you use Windows, you probably have the font "Arial Unicode MS."
If not, most of these fonts are downloadable. The site The International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode offers links to download sites.
The fonts DejaVu, Gentium, Doulos SIL, and Charis SIL are free.
Note that the browser will try to display these characters by choosing fonts in the specified order. This means that it will first try "Charis SIL", then, if that's not available, "Doulos SIL", and so on. If none of the above fonts is installed, it will try with the browser's default font (called "sans-serif") which unfortunately does not currently allow IPA characters to display correctly.
When you click to respond to a message or begin a new discussion, you see something like figure 1:
Screenshot of message window
The general appearance will depend on your browser (Firefox is used here) and whether or not you block ads (they are blocked here).
If we focus on the message box, we have:
Screenshot of message box.
By default, the message box opens in Design mode (left tab of figure 2).
This mode does not allow the use of IPA characters. You must use HTML mode, which is unfortunately much less user friendly.
So my advice is to write the message in Design mode.
Screenshot of message in Design mode.
Then, go to HTML mode to enter the required IPA characters (see figure 4 below).
Screenshot of message in HTML mode before adding IPA characters.
Insert the IPA characters at the appropriate location (see figure 5 below).
Some IPA characters are created with a complicated HTML sequence. The simplest syntax in the sequence is as follows: {
The sequence begins with the characters & (ampersand) followed by # (hash mark, number sign). The next characters correspond to the numeric code of the three-digit IPA character (decimal value). The sequence is completed with a semi-colon (;)
Another possible syntax is ƫ in which the numeric value of the characters is in hexadecimal form (which uses numbers 0 to F). This value is preceded by the letter "x".
For example, the character ŋ can be created with ŋ or ŋ
Screenshot of message in HTML mode with IPA characters.
Do not leave HTML mode to send the message. In fact, clicking to Design mode can modify the encoding of IPA characters. This can happen if your computer already uses UTF-8 encoding.
Note: the behavior of About servers may have changed. Double-check....
There are 5 tables covering the following categories:
| Examples | IPA character | Decimal numeric code |
|---|---|---|
| a, à, amour, lac, patte, tache, la, là, mal, femme, apparemment | a | |
| pâte, tâche, âme, mâle | ɑ | 593 |
| le, te, me, cheval | ə | 601 |
| peu, feu, jeu, jeûne, veux, peux | ø | 248 |
| peur, leur, jeune, cœur, sœur | œ | 339 |
| été, et, vérité, manger, aimer, boulanger | e | |
| tête, mère, mer, paire, noël, ciel, est, peine | ɛ | 603 |
| lit, mie, riz, pis, dix, six, qui, cygne, hypnose | i | |
| pot, tôt, peau, saut, rôle, jaune, aucun | o | |
| port, corps, rose | ɔ | 596 |
| tu, du, lu, sur, dessus, mur, mûre, rude, eu (participe passé du verbe avoir) | y | |
| tout, sous, dessous, mou, bout | u |
| Examples | IPA Character | Decimal numeric code |
|---|---|---|
| enfant, rang, vent, en, an, dans, taon, paon, champ | ɑ̃ | 593 and 771 (or the HTML sequence: ɑ̃) |
| son, long, ont, thon, bon, ombre | ɔ̃ | 596 and 771 |
| vin, vînmes, rein, main, thym, impôt, bien, chien | ɛ̃ | 603 and 771 |
| un, humble, lundi, parfum, aucun | œ̃ | 339 and 771 |
| Examples | IPA Character | Decimal numeric code |
|---|---|---|
| bon, bateau, bille, bar, belle | b | |
| de, du, dur, des, dix | d | see note |
| feu, faon, phare, phoque | f | |
| gare, gomme, goût, langue | g | |
| je, gel, givre, jeu, jouet, nage, pigeon | ʒ | 658 |
| car, qui, que, quand, comme, chœur, chorale, technique, cinq | k | |
| lac, le, ville, balle, lame | l | see note |
| me, homme, mont | m | |
| ne, nez, animal, inutile | n | see note |
| pu, pas, appel | p | |
| rue, roue, roi, mare, mer, terre | ʁ (in some regions, this sound is prononced ʀ or r) | 641 (640) |
| sa, son, ça, garçon, façon, leçon, masse, ascenseur, attention, nation, cinq, cygne, dix (when the word stands alone) | s | |
| tu, tas, patte, théatre | t | see note |
| vu, va, ville, wagon | v | |
| zéro, zone, horizon, rose, base, mise | z | |
| chant, chien, chaud, vache, cher, chimie | ʃ | 643 |
| montagne, pagne, gnon, beignet, rogne | ɲ | 626 |
The consonants d, l, n, and t should technically be represented as follows: d̪, l̪, n̪, t̪.
These are dental consonants rather than alveolar consonants as in English. But for simplicity's sake, the notation is normally used without the diacritical mark.
| Examples | IPA characters | Decimal numeric code |
|---|---|---|
| parking, coaching, travelling | ŋ | 331 |
| spanish words; arabic words | x |
| Examples | IPA Character | Decimal numeric code |
|---|---|---|
| lui, puits, suis, suie, pluie | ɥ | 613 |
| oui, moi, soi, roi, ouate, watt | w | |
| mien, maille, maillon, rouille, chien, quille, fille, veille, soleil, crayon, tuyau | j |
| Type of symbol | IPA Character | Decimal numeric code | Hexadecimal numeric code |
|---|---|---|---|
| character indicating a liaison | ‿ | 8255 | 203F |
| character indicating non-liaison | . | ||
| indication of a dental sound | ̪ | 810 | 032A |
les enfants [lɛ‿zɑ̃fɑ̃]
les enfants sont à la plage [lɛ‿zɑ̃fɑ̃ sɔ̃‿ta la plaʒ]
les haricots [lɛ.aʁiko]
les haricots sont cuits [lɛ.aʁiko sɔ̃ kɥi]
ils sont [il sɔ̃]
ils ont [il‿zɔ̃]
The International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode
International Phonetic Alphabet
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