User:Dam Tuan Quynh/sandbox

Most popular edition of Wikipedia by country. In grayed-out countries, the "national-language" edition is usually the most popular, but there are exceptions: for example, Afghanistan has Persian Wikipedia as the most popular (there is no Dari Wikipedia).

Wikipedia is a free multilingual open-source wiki-based online encyclopedia edited and maintained by a community of volunteer editors, started on 15 January 2001 as an English-language encyclopedia. Non-English editions were soon created: the German and Catalan editions were created on circa 16 March, the French edition was created on 23 March, and the Swedish edition was created on 23 May. As of May 2025, Wikipedia articles have been created in 356 editions, with 342 currently active and 14 closed.

The Meta-Wiki language committee manages policies on creating new Wikimedia projects. To be eligible, a language must have a valid ISO 639 code, be "sufficiently unique", and have a "sufficient number of fluent users".

Variations in editions

Most viewed editions of Wikipedia over time

Most edited editions of Wikipedia over time

Wikipedia projects vary in how they divide dialects and variants. For example, the English Wikipedia includes most modern varieties of English including American English and British English. Similarly, the Spanish Wikipedia includes both Peninsular Spanish and Latin American Spanish, and the Portuguese Wikipedia includes both European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. In contrast, some languages have multiple Wikipedias. For example, Serbo-Croatian encompasses four Wikipedia editions, Serbo-Croatian and three different standardized varieties (Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian).

Additionally, some Wikipedia projects apply different approaches to orthography. For instance, the Chinese Wikipedia automatically transliterates between six standard forms: three using simplified Chinese characters (Mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore) and three using traditional Chinese characters (Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau). And rather than relying on transliteration, Belarusian has separate Wikipedia projects for the official Narkamaŭka and Taraškievica orthographies.

Wikipedia edition codes

Each Wikipedia project has a code, which is used as a subdomain of wikipedia.org. The codes mostly conform to ISO 639-1 two-letter codes or ISO 639-3 three-letter codes, with preference given to a two-letter code if available. For example, en stands for English in ISO 639-1, so the English Wikipedia is at en.wikipedia.org.

Wikipedia editions

Active editions

The table below lists all the active language editions of Wikipedia roughly sorted by the number of active users (registered users who have made at least one edit in the last thirty days).

Wikipedia editions

Wikipedia name in English	Wikipedia name in native language	Language	Script (ISO 15924 code)	WP code	Articles	Active users	Launch date	Logo
English Wikipedia	English Wikipedia	English	Latn	en	6,995,404	118,797	15 January 2001
French Wikipedia	Wikipédia en français	French	Latn	fr	2,684,729	17,583	23 March 2001
German Wikipedia	Deutschsprachige Wikipedia	German	Latn	de	3,016,351	16,992	16 March 2001
Spanish Wikipedia	Wikipedia en español	Spanish	Latn	es	2,034,545	13,466	20 May 2001
Japanese Wikipedia	ウィキペディア日本語版 (Wikipedia nihongo-ban)	Japanese	Jpan	ja	1,462,297	12,764	20 May 2001
Russian Wikipedia	Русская Википедия (Russkaya Vikipediya)	Russian	Cyrl	ru	2,045,543	8,756	20 May 2001
Portuguese Wikipedia	Wikipédia em português	Portuguese	Latn	pt	1,146,744	8,511	11 May 2001
Italian Wikipedia	Wikipedia in italiano	Italian	Latn	it	1,918,897	7,477	11 May 2001
Chinese Wikipedia	Traditional Chinese: 中文維基百科, simplified Chinese: 中文维基百科 (pinyin: Zhōngwén wéijī bǎikē)	Chinese (written vernacular Chinese)	Hans/Hant	zh	1,477,177	6,913	24 October 2002
Persian Wikipedia	ویکی‌پدیای فارسی (Vikipediā-ye Fārsi)	Persian	Arab	fa	1,039,364	4,790	19 December 2003
Polish Wikipedia	Polskojęzyczna Wikipedia	Polish	Latn	pl	1,658,027	4,154	26 June 2001
Arabic Wikipedia	ويكيبيديا العربية (Wīkībīdiyā al-ʿarabiyya)	Arabic	Arab	ar	1,263,101	3,841	8 July 2003
Dutch Wikipedia	Nederlandstalige Wikipedia	Dutch	Latn	nl	2,187,359	3,632	19 June 2001
Hebrew Wikipedia	ויקיפדיה העברית (Vikipedya ha-ivrit)	Hebrew	Hebr	he	375,469	3,080	8 July 2003
Ukrainian Wikipedia	Українська Вікіпедія (Ukrainska Vikipediia)	Ukrainian	Cyrl	uk	1,377,518	3,060	30 January 2004
Norwegian Wikipedia (Bokmål)	Norsk Wikipedia	Norwegian (Bokmål)	Latn	no	647,868	2,997	26 November 2001
Indonesian Wikipedia	Wikipedia bahasa Indonesia	Indonesian	Latn	id	729,502	2,981	30 March 2003
Romanian Wikipedia	Wikipedia în limba română	Romanian	Latn	ro	513,204	2,716	12 July 2003
Turkish Wikipedia	Türkçe Vikipedi	Turkish	Latn	tr	635,775	2,583	5 December 2002
Serbian Wikipedia	Википедија на српском језику (Vikipedija na srpskom jeziku)	Serbian	Cyrl/Latn	sr	707,002	2,343	16 February 2003
Czech Wikipedia	Česká Wikipedie	Czech	Latn	cs	568,947	2,155	3 May 2002
Swedish Wikipedia	Svenskspråkiga Wikipedia	Swedish	Latn	sv	2,609,801	1,942	23 May 2001
Korean Wikipedia	한국어 위키백과 (Hangugeo wikibaekgwa)	Korean	Hang	ko	704,004	1,832	11 October 2002
Danish Wikipedia	Dansk Wikipedia	Danish	Latn	da	308,492	1,783	1 February 2002
Simple English Wikipedia	Simple English Wikipedia	Simple English	Latn	simple	269,144	1,710	18 September 2001
Finnish Wikipedia	Suomenkielinen Wikipedia	Finnish	Latn	fi	594,463	1,568	21 February 2002
Hungarian Wikipedia	Magyar Wikipédia	Hungarian	Latn	hu	557,403	1,414	8 July 2003
Vietnamese Wikipedia	Wikipedia tiếng Việt	Vietnamese	Latn	vi	1,294,388	1,228	November 2002 (unknown day)
Catalan Wikipedia	Viquipèdia en català	Catalan	Latn	ca	774,448	1,160	16 March 2001
Thai Wikipedia	วิกิพีเดียภาษาไทย (Wi-ki-phi-dia pha-sa thai)	Thai	Thai	th	173,896	1,144	December 2003 (unknown day)
Bengali Wikipedia	বাংলা উইকিপিডিয়া (Bangla uikipiḍiẏa)	Bengali	Beng	bn	169,575	1,114	27 January 2004
Cantonese Wikipedia	Traditional Chinese: 粵文維基百科 (Jyutping: jyut6 man4 wai4 gei1 baak3 fo1)	Cantonese	Hant	zh-yue	144,745	925	25 March 2006
Greek Wikipedia	Ελληνική Βικιπαίδεια (Ellinikí Vikipaídeia)	Greek	Grek	el	252,822	910	1 December 2002
Estonian Wikipedia	Eestikeelne Vikipeedia	Estonian	Latn	et	252,387	682	24 August 2002
Swahili Wikipedia	Wikipedia ya Kiswahili	Swahili	Latn	sw	98,817	661	8 March 2003
Bulgarian Wikipedia	Българоезична Уикипедия (Bǎlgaroezična Uikipediya)	Bulgarian	Cyrl	bg	303,993	653	6 December 2003
Hindi Wikipedia	हिन्दी विकिपीडिया (Hindī vikipīḍiyā)	Hindi	Deva	hi	165,407	620	11 July 2003
Malay Wikipedia	Wikipedia Bahasa Melayu (ويکيڤيديا بهاس ملايو)	Malay	Latn	ms	425,331	586	26 October 2002
Azerbaijani Wikipedia	Azərbaycanca Vikipediya	Azerbaijani	Latn	az	204,435	575	January 2004 (unknown day)
Basque Wikipedia	Euskarazko Wikipedia	Basque	Latn	eu	463,416	562	6 December 2001
Armenian Wikipedia	Հայերեն Վիքիպեդիա (Hayeren Vikʿipedia)	Armenian	Armn	hy	319,181	531	July 2004 (unknown day)
Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia	Srpskohrvatska Wikipedija (Српскохрватска Википедија)	Serbo-Croatian	Latn	sh	460,711	531	16 January 2002 – 20 February 2005 (original) 23 June 2005 (relaunch)
Slovak Wikipedia	Slovenská Wikipedia	Slovak	Latn	sk	253,814	506	August 2003 (unknown day)
Croatian Wikipedia	Hrvatska Wikipedija	Croatian	Latn	hr	225,913	481	16 February 2003
Uzbek Wikipedia	Oʻzbekcha Vikipediya (Ўзбекча Википедия)	Uzbek	Latn/Cyrl	uz	292,694	448	21 December 2003
Lithuanian Wikipedia	Lietuviškoji Vikipedija	Lithuanian	Latn	lt	222,327	331	20 February 2003
Slovene Wikipedia	Slovenska Wikipedija	Slovene	Latn	sl	192,930	317	26 February 2002
Esperanto Wikipedia	Vikipedio en Esperanto	Esperanto	Latn	eo	370,573	310	6 November 2001
Belarusian Wikipedia	Беларуская Вікіпедыя (Bielaruskaja Vikipiedyja)	Belarusian (official Narkamaŭka orthography)	Cyrl	be	253,818	285	12 August 2004 (original) 27 March 2007 (clean version)
Georgian Wikipedia	ქართული ვიკიპედია (Kartuli vik’ip’edia)	Georgian	Geor	ka	182,957	285	November 2003 (unknown day)
Latvian Wikipedia	Vikipēdija latviešu valodā	Latvian	Latn	lv	135,205	283	3 March 2003
Galician Wikipedia	Galipedia or Wikipedia en galego	Galician	Latn	gl	221,336	278	8 March 2003
Kazakh Wikipedia	Қазақша Уикипедия (Qazaqşa Wïkïpedïya) (قازاقشا ۋىيكىيپەدىييا)	Kazakh	Cyrl	kk	239,224	276	3 June 2002
Tamil Wikipedia	தமிழ் விக்கிபீடியா (Tamiḻ vikkippīṭiyā)	Tamil	Taml	ta	174,082	263	September 2003 (unknown day)
Albanian Wikipedia	Wikipedia shqip	Albanian	Latn	sq	102,536	256	12 October 2003
Urdu Wikipedia	اردو ویکیپیڈیا (Urdū vikipīḍiyā)	Urdu	Arab	ur	225,109	249	24 January 2004
Macedonian Wikipedia	Македонска Википедија (Makedonska Vikipedija)	Macedonian	Cyrl	mk	152,489	221	September 2003 (unknown day)
Malayalam Wikipedia	മലയാളം വിക്കിപീഡിയ (Malayāḷaṃ vikkipīḍiya)	Malayalam	Mlym	ml	86,781	212	21 December 2002
Egyptian Arabic Wikipedia	ويكيپيديا مصرى (Wīkībīdiyā maṣri)	Egyptian Arabic	Arab	arz	1,627,249	196	24 November 2008
Cebuano Wikipedia	Wikipedya sa Sinugboanon	Cebuano	Latn	ceb	6,117,070	194	22 June 2005
Afrikaans Wikipedia	Afrikaanse Wikipedia	Afrikaans	Latn	af	124,144	185	16 November 2001
Latin Wikipedia	Vicipaedia Latina	Latin	Latn	la	140,204	178	May 2002 (unknown day)
Bosnian Wikipedia	Wikipedia na bosanskom jeziku	Bosnian	Latn	bs	94,985	162	12 December 2002
Telugu Wikipedia	తెలుగు వికీపీడియా (Telugu vikīpīḍiyā)	Telugu	Telu	te	112,882	162	10 December 2003
Tagalog Wikipedia	Wikipediang Tagalog	Tagalog	Latn	tl	48,543	160	1 December 2003
Icelandic Wikipedia	Íslenska Wikipedia	Icelandic	Latn	is	60,163	146	5 December 2003
Norwegian Wikipedia (Nynorsk)	Norsk (Nynorsk) Wikipedia	Norwegian (Nynorsk)	Latn	nn	174,717	146	31 July 2004
Burmese Wikipedia	မြန်မာဝီကီပီးဒီးယား (Mranma wikipi:di:ya:)	Burmese	Mymr	my	109,080	143	July 2004 (unknown day)
Hausa Wikipedia	Wikipedia Hausa	Hausa	Latn	ha	57,696	140	Unknown date
Assamese Wikipedia	অসমীয়া ৱিকিপিডিয়া (Ôxômiya wikipidiya)	Assamese	Beng	as	18,500	139	2 June 2002
Mongolian Wikipedia	Монгол Википедиа (Mongol Vikipyedia)	Mongolian	Cyrl	mn	25,557	138	28 February 2004
Sorani Kurdish Wikipedia	ویکیپیدیای کوردیی سۆرانی (Wîkîpîdiyay Kurdî Soranî)	Kurdish (Sorani)	Arab	ckb	76,769	135	13 August 2009
Marathi Wikipedia	मराठी विकिपीडिया (Marāṭhī vikipīḍiyā)	Marathi	Deva	mr	99,937	129	1 May 2003
Central Bikol Wikipedia	Wikipedyang Bikol Sentral	Central Bikol	Latn	bcl	19,575	127	24 November 2007
Igbo Wikipedia	Wikipedia Igbo	Igbo	Latn	ig	42,695	120	Unknown date
Punjabi Wikipedia	ਪੰਜਾਬੀ ਵਿਕੀਪੀਡੀਆ (Pañjābī vikīpīḍīā)	Punjabi	Guru	pa	58,699	113	3 June 2002
Asturian Wikipedia	Wikipedia n'asturianu	Asturian	Latn	ast	137,286	111	20 July 2004
Occitan Wikipedia	Wikipèdia en occitan	Occitan	Latn	oc	90,871	111	20 October 2003
Belarusian Wikipedia (Classical)	Беларуская Вікіпэдыя (Bielaruskaja Vikipiedyja)	Belarusian (Taraškievica orthography)	Cyrl	be-tarask	88,949	108	27 March 2007
Javanese Wikipedia	Wikipedia basa Jawa (ꦮꦶꦏꦶꦥꦺꦝꦶꦪꦃꦧꦱꦗꦮ)	Javanese	Latn/Java	jv	74,503	108	8 March 2004
Welsh Wikipedia	Wicipedia Cymraeg	Welsh	Latn	cy	282,082	106	July 2003 (unknown day)
South Azerbaijani Wikipedia	تورکجه ویکی‌پدیا (Azərbaycanca Vikipediya)	South Azerbaijani	Arab	azb	244,074	105	22 July 2015
Kannada Wikipedia	ಕನ್ನಡ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ (Kannaḍa vikipīḍiya)	Kannada	Knda	kn	33,790	103	June 2003 (unknown day)
Kyrgyz Wikipedia	Кыргыз Википедиясы (Kyrgyz Wikipediyasy)	Kyrgyz	Cyrl	ky	75,956	99	3 June 2002
Tatar Wikipedia	Татар Википедиясе (Tatar Wikipediäse)	Tatar	Cyrl	tt	502,680	97	15 September 2003
Nepali Wikipedia	नेपाली विकिपिडिया (Nepālī vikipiḍiyā)	Nepali	Deva	ne	29,901	93	3 June 2002
Sinhala Wikipedia	සිංහල විකිපීඩියා (Siṁhala wikipīḍiyā)	Sinhala	Sinh	si	22,916	91	Unknown date
Breton Wikipedia	Wikipedia e brezhoneg	Breton	Latn	br	88,467	91	June 2004 (unknown day)
Irish Wikipedia	Vicipéid na Gaeilge	Irish	Latn	ga	61,765	91	October 2003 (unknown day)
Alemannic Wikipedia	Alemannische Wikipedia	Alemannic German	Latn	als	31,152	86	13 November 2003
Tajik Wikipedia	Википедияи Тоҷикӣ (Vikipedijai Toçikī)	Tajik	Cyrl/Latn	tg	115,300	85	27 January 2004
Scots Wikipedia	Scots Wikipædia	Scots	Latn	sco	34,376	85	23 June 2005
Southern Min Wikipedia	Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Holopedia or Wikipedia Bân-lâm-gú	Southern Min	Latn	zh-min-nan	433,684	85	28 May 2004
Luxembourgish Wikipedia	Wikipedia op Lëtzebuergesch	Luxembourgish	Latn	lb	65,096	80	21 July 2004
Kurdish Wikipedia	Wîkîpediya kurdî (ویکیپەدیا کوردی)	Kurdish (Kurmanji)	Latn/Arab	ku	90,346	80	4 January 2004
Aragonese Wikipedia	Biquipedia en aragonés	Aragonese	Latn	an	48,784	79	21 July 2004
Yoruba Wikipedia	Wikipéédíà Yorùbá	Yoruba	Latn	yo	35,201	76	2008 (unknown date)
Somali Wikipedia	Soomaali Wikipedia	Somali	Latn	so	8,337	74	Unknown date
West Frisian Wikipedia	Frysktalige Wikipedy	West Frisian	Latn	fy	56,839	74	2 September 2002
Bashkir Wikipedia	Башҡорт Википедияһы (Başķort Vikipediya)	Bashkir	Cyrl	ba	63,810	73	16 April 2005
Waray Wikipedia	Waray Wikipedia	Waray	Latn	war	1,273,940	73	25 September 2005
Fiji Hindi Wikipedia	Fiji Baat Wikipedia	Fiji Hindi	Latn	hif	11,601	67	12 November 2008
Gujarati Wikipedia	ગુજરાતી વિકિપીડિયા (Gujrātī vikipīḍiyā)	Gujarati	Gujr	gu	30,563	67	July 2004 (unknown day)
Wu Wikipedia	Traditional Chinese: 吳語維基百科, simplified Chinese: 吴语维基百科 (Romanized: Wu-nyu Vi-ci-pah-khu)	Wu Chinese	Hans/Hant	wuu	45,649	66	1 October 2006
Balinese Wikipedia	Wikipédia Basa Bali (ᬯᬶᬓᬶᬧᬾᬤᬶᬬ ᬩᬲᬩᬮᬶ)	Balinese	Latn	ban	29,516	66	14 October 2019
Dusun Wikipedia	Wikipedia Kadazandusun	Dusun	Latn	dtp	1,511	65	28 May 2024
Khmer Wikipedia	វិគីភីឌាភាសាខ្មែរ (Vikiiphiidiaa phiăsaa khmae)	Khmer	Khmr	km	11,425	63	15 January 2005
Western Punjabi Wikipedia	پنجابی وکیپیڈیا (Pañjābī vikīpīḍīā)	Western Punjabi	Arab	pnb	74,097	63	24 October 2008
Ido Wikipedia	Wikipedio en Ido	Ido	Latn	io	56,355	62	2004 (unknown date)
Lombard Wikipedia	Wikipedia in lombard	Lombard	Latn	lmo	76,659	57	October 2005 (unknown day)
Maltese Wikipedia	Wikipedija Malti	Maltese	Latn	mt	7,351	57	10 September 2004
Bavarian Wikipedia	Boarische Wikipedia	Bavarian	Latn	bar	27,181	55	2 May 2006
Pashto Wikipedia	پښتو ويکيپېډيا (Pax̌tó wīkīpeḍyā)	Pashto	Arab	ps	20,508	54	2003 (unknown date)
Minangkabau Wikipedia	Wikipedia Minangkabau	Minangkabau	Latn	min	228,382	53	7 February 2013
Amharic Wikipedia	አማርኛ ዊኪፔዲያ (Amarəñña wikipediya)	Amharic	Ethi	am	15,419	52	December 2002 (unknown day)
Moroccan Arabic Wikipedia	ويكيبيديا المغربية (Wīkībīdiyā maḡribiyy)	Moroccan Arabic	Arab	ary	10,591	52	20 July 2020
Chuvash Wikipedia	Чăваш Википедийĕ (Russian-based: Căvaš Vikipedijĕ, Turkish-based: Çovaş Vikipyediyö)	Chuvash	Cyrl	cv	57,654	52	22 November 2004
Haitian Creole Wikipedia	Wikipedya kreyòl ayisyen	Haitian Creole	Latn	ht	71,021	51	August 2005 (unknown day)
Kinyarwanda Wikipedia	Wikipediya mu Ikinyarwanda	Kinyarwanda	Latn	rw	8,045	51	Unknown date
Low German Wikipedia	Plattdüütsche Wikipedia	Low German	Latn	nds	85,447	51	April 2006 (unknown day)
Old English Wikipedia	Engliscan Ƿikipǣdia	Old English	Latn	ang	4,795	51	Unknown date
Sundanese Wikipedia	Wikipédia basa Sunda	Sundanese	Latn	su	62,010	51	15 March 2004
Venetian Wikipedia	Wikipedia en łéngoa vèneta	Venetian	Latn	vec	69,431	50	Unknown date
Odia Wikipedia	ଓଡ଼ିଆ ଉଇକିପିଡ଼ିଆ (Oṛiā uikipiṛiā)	Odia	Orya	or	19,560	50	June 2002 (unknown day)
Zulu Wikipedia	Wikipedia isiZulu	Zulu	Latn	zu	11,624	49	2003 (unknown date)
Betawi Wikipedia	Wikipédi basa Betawi	Betawi	Latn	bew	2,967	48	24 April 2024
Interlingua Wikipedia	Wikipedia in interlingua	Interlingua	Latn	ia	29,934	48	29 April 2002
Karakalpak Wikipedia	Qaraqalpaq Wikipediası	Karakalpak	Latn	kaa	10,011	48	12 November 2008
Moroccan Amazigh Wikipedia	ⵡⵉⴽⵉⴱⵉⴷⵢⴰ ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ ⵜⴰⵏⴰⵡⴰⵢⵜ (Wikibidya tamaziɣt tanawayt)	Standard Moroccan Amazigh	Tfng	zgh	11,728	48	6 November 2023
Chechen Wikipedia	Нохчийн Википеди (Noxçiyn Wikipedi)	Chechen	Cyrl	ce	601,525	47	28 February 2005
Fula Wikipedia	Wikipedia Fulfude	Fula	Latn	ff	8,597	47	Unknown date
Malagasy Wikipedia	Wikipedia amin'ny teny malagasy	Malagasy	Latn	mg	99,652	47	April 2004 (unknown day)
Quechua Wikipedia	Qhichwa Wikipidiya	Quechua (Southern Quechua)	Latn	qu	24,141	47	January 2003 (unknown day)
Sanskrit Wikipedia	संस्कृतविकिपीडिया (Saṃskṛta vikipīḍiyā)	Sanskrit	Deva	sa	12,284	47	December 2003 (unknown day)
Faroese Wikipedia	Føroysk Wikipedia	Faroese	Latn	fo	14,165	46	30 May 2004
Silesian Wikipedia	Ślůnsko Wikipedyjo	Silesian	Latn	szl	58,986	45	26 May 2008
Classical Chinese Wikipedia	文言維基大典 (Wéijī dàdiǎn wényán)	Classical Chinese	Hant	zh-classical	13,599	44	31 July 2006
Dagbani Wikipedia	Wikipidia Dagbani	Dagbani	Latn	dag	12,794	44	30 June 2021
Western Armenian Wikipedia	Արեւմտահայերէն Ուիքիփետիա (Arevmdahayerēn Uikʿipʿetia)	Western Armenian	Armn	hyw	12,339	43	1 April 2019
Yiddish Wikipedia	יידישע וויקיפעדיע (Yidishe vikipedye)	Yiddish	Hebr	yi	15,517	43	4 March 2004
Madurese Wikipedia	Wikipèḍia bhâsa Madhurâ	Madurese	Latn	mad	1,763	41	15 December 2020
Sardinian Wikipedia	Wikipedia in sardu	Sardinian	Latn	sc	7,683	41	April 2004 (unknown day)
Rusyn Wikipedia	Русиньска Вікіпедія (Rusîn'ska Vikipedija)	Rusyn	Cyrl	rue	10,037	40	23 January 2011
Maithili Wikipedia	मैथिली विकिपिडिया (Maithilī vikipiḍiyā)	Maithili	Deva	mai	14,212	40	6 November 2014
Acehnese Wikipedia	Wikipèdia bahsa Acèh	Acehnese	Latn	ace	13,062	39	12 August 2009
Banjarese Wikipedia	Wikipidia basa Banjar	Banjarese	Latn	bjn	11,255	39	17 October 2010
Limburgish Wikipedia	Limburgse Wikipedia	Limburgish	Latn	li	15,100	39	August 2004 (unknown day)
Tsonga Wikipedia	Wikipediya Xitsonga	Tsonga	Latn	ts	944	39	Unknown date
Zazaki Wikipedia	Wikipediyay Zazaki	Zaza	Latn	diq	42,315	39	30 September 2006
Sindhi Wikipedia	سنڌي وڪيپيڊيا (Sindhi wikipidia)	Sindhi	Arab	sd	19,113	39	6 February 2006
Mingrelian Wikipedia	მარგალური ვიკიპედია (Margaluri vik’ip’edia)	Mingrelian	Geor	xmf	21,800	38	12 June 2011
Corsican Wikipedia	Corsipedia or Wikipedia in lingua corsa	Corsican	Latn	co	8,479	37	9 December 2003
Friulian Wikipedia	Vichipedie par furlan	Friulian	Latn	fur	4,555	37	25 January 2005
Yakut Wikipedia	Сахалыы Бикипиэдьийэ (Sahalyy Bikipieçje)	Yakut	Cyrl	sah	17,565	37	26 May 2008
Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia	Uicipeid na Gàidhlig	Scottish Gaelic	Latn	gd	15,996	37	September 2003 (unknown day)
Northern Sotho Wikipedia	Wikipedia Sesotho sa Leboa	Northern Sotho	Latn	nso	8,766	36	29 October 2011
Sicilian Wikipedia	Wikipedia ’n sicilianu	Sicilian	Latn	scn	26,318	36	5 October 2004
Võro Wikipedia	Võrokeeline Vikipeediä	Võro	Latn	fiu-vro	6,800	36	2005 (unknown date)
Crimean Tatar Wikipedia	Qırımtatarca Vikipediya	Crimean Tatar	Latn	crh	28,571	36	12 January 2008
Ladin Wikipedia	Wikipedia per ladin	Ladin	Latn	lld	180,788	36	17 August 2020
Tibetan Wikipedia	བོད་ཡིག་གི་ཝེ་ཁེ་རིག་མཛོད (Wylie: Bod yig gi we khe rig mdzod)	Central Tibetan (Lhasa Tibetan)	Tibt	bo	7,004	35	Unknown date
Turkmen Wikipedia	Türkmençe Wikipediýa	Turkmen	Latn	tk	6,943	35	16 February 2004
Bhojpuri Wikipedia	बिहारी विकिपीडिया (Bihārī vikipīḍiyā)	Bihari (Bhojpuri)	Deva	bh	8,816	35	21 February 2003
Kapampangan Wikipedia	Wikipediang Kapampángan	Kapampangan	Latn	pam	10,117	34	2005 (unknown date)
Lao Wikipedia	ວິກິພີເດຍ ພາສາລາວ (Wi ki phī dīa phasa lao)	Lao	Laoo	lo	4,744	34	Unknown date
Interlingue Wikipedia	Wikipedia in Interlingue	Interlingue	Latn	ie	13,153	33	Unknown date
Neapolitan Wikipedia	Wikipedia napulitana	Neapolitan	Latn	nap	14,922	33	21 December 2006
Pennsylvania Dutch Wikipedia	Pennsilfaanisch-Deitsche Wikipedelche	Pennsylvania Dutch	Latn	pdc	2,043	33	Unknown date
Venda Wikipedia	Wikipedia nga tshiVenḓa	Venda	Latn	ve	819	33	Unknown date
Angika Wikipedia	विकिपीडिया	Angika	Deva	anp	1,643	32	22 March 2023
Gorontalo Wikipedia	Wikipedia bahasa Hulontalo	Gorontalo	Latn	gor	14,822	32	18 April 2018
Walloon Wikipedia	Wikipedia e walon	Walloon	Latn	wa	12,624	32	20 July 2003
Wayuu Wikipedia	Wikipeetia süka wayuunaiki	Wayuu	Latn	guc	672	32	27 February 2023
Mazanderani Wikipedia	مازرونی ویکی‌پدیا (Mazandarani vikipedi)	Mazanderani	Arab	mzn	58,185	31	30 September 2006
Abkhaz Wikipedia	Аԥсуа авикипедиа (Apsua avikipedia)	Abkhaz	Cyrl	ab	6,444	30	Unknown date
Judaeo-Spanish Wikipedia	Vikipedya en lingua Judeo-Espanyola	Judaeo-Spanish	Latn	lad	3,840	30	Unknown date
Ligurian Wikipedia	Wikipedia Ligure	Ligurian	Latn	lij	11,400	30	Unknown date
Piedmontese Wikipedia	Wikipedia an piemontèisa	Piedmontese	Latn	pms	70,344	30	27 March 2006
Upper Sorbian Wikipedia	Hornjoserbska wikipedija	Upper Sorbian	Latn	hsb	13,989	30	2 October 2006
Kashmiri Wikipedia	کٲشُر وِکیٖپیٖڈیا (Kạ̄śur vikipīḍiyā)	Kashmiri	Arab	ks	6,927	30	25 March 2004
Volapük Wikipedia	Vükiped Volapükik	Volapük	Latn	vo	42,055	30	27 January 2004
Hakka Wikipedia	Pha̍k-fa-sṳ: Hakkâpedia or Hak-kâ-ngî Wikipedia	Hakka Chinese	Latn	hak	10,350	29	27 May 2007
Ilocano Wikipedia	Wikipedia nga Ilokano	Ilocano	Latn	ilo	15,402	29	2005 (unknown date)
Picard Wikipedia	Wikipédia in lingue picarde	Picard	Latn	pcd	5,949	29	19 March 2009
Santali Wikipedia	ᱥᱟᱱᱛᱟᱲᱤ ᱣᱤᱠᱤᱯᱤᱰᱤᱭᱟ (Santaṛi wikipiḍiya)	Santali	Olck	sat	13,322	29	2 August 2018
Avar Wikipedia	Авар Википедия (Avar Vikipedija)	Avar	Cyrl	av	3,628	28	Unknown date
Aymara Wikipedia	Aymar Wikipidiya	Aymara	Latn	ay	5,173	28	Unknown date
Kabyle Wikipedia	Wikipedia taqbaylit	Kabyle	Latn	kab	6,913	28	12 November 2007
Swazi Wikipedia	Wikipedia siSwati	Swazi	Latn	ss	1,052	28	Unknown date
Xhosa Wikipedia	Wikipedia isiXhosa	Xhosa	Latn	xh	2,245	28	Unknown date
Tulu Wikipedia	ತುಳು ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ (Tuḷu vikipīḍiya)	Tulu	Knda	tcy	2,829	28	6 August 2016
Aromanian Wikipedia	Wikipedia pri Armâneaști	Aromanian	Latn	roa-rup	1,390	27	2004 (unknown date)
Kashubian Wikipedia	Kaszëbskô Wikipedijô	Kashubian	Latn	csb	5,478	27	31 March 2004
Lower Sorbian Wikipedia	Dolnoserbska wikipedija	Lower Sorbian	Latn	dsb	3,429	27	12 November 2008
Manx Wikipedia	Wikipedia yn Gaelg	Manx	Latn	gv	6,858	27	September 2003 (unknown day)
Papiamento Wikipedia	Wikipedia na papiamentu	Papiamento	Latn	pap	4,658	27	Unknown date
West Flemish Wikipedia	West-Vlamse Wikipedia	West Flemish	Latn	vls	8,112	27	Unknown date
Cherokee Wikipedia	ᏫᎩᏇᏗᏯ ᏣᎳᎩ (Wigiquediya tsalagi)	Cherokee	Cher	chr	1,026	26	May 2004 (unknown day)
Luganda Wikipedia	Wikipediya Luganda	Luganda	Latn	lg	3,413	26	Unknown date
North Frisian Wikipedia	Nordfriisk Wikipedia	North Frisian	Latn	frr	20,256	26	19 August 2010
Tswana Wikipedia	Wikipedia Setswana	Tswana	Latn	tn	2,141	26	Unknown date
Guarani Wikipedia	Vikipetã avañe'ẽme	Guarani	Latn	gn	5,908	26	Unknown date
Wolof Wikipedia	Wikipedia Wolof	Wolof	Latn	wo	1,724	26	Unknown date
Chavacano Wikipedia	Chavacano Wikipedia	Zamboanga Chavacano	Latn	cbk-zam	3,226	25	30 September 2006
Eastern Min Wikipedia	Bàng-uâ-cê: Bànguâpedia or Mìng-dĕ̤ng-ngṳ̄ Wikipedia	Eastern Min	Latn	cdo	16,657	25	30 September 2006
Franco-Provençal Wikipedia	Vouiquipèdia en arpetan	Franco-Provençal	Latn	frp	5,805	25	24 March 2006
Ghanaian Pidgin Wikipedia	Ghanaian Pidgin Wikipedia	Ghanaian Pidgin English	Latn	gpe	2,983	25	5 July 2023
Greenlandic Wikipedia	Kalaallisut Wikipedia	Greenlandic	Latn	kl	246	25	Unknown date
Dzongkha Wikipedia	རྫོང་ཁ་ཝེ་ཁེ་རིག་མཛོད (Rdzong kha we khe rig mdzod)	Dzongkha	Tibt	dz	387	24	Unknown date
Emilian–Romagnol Wikipedia	Emiliàn e rumagnòl Vichipedèia	Emilian–Romagnol	Latn	eml	13,203	24	30 September 2006
Gagauz Wikipedia	Gagauzca Vikipediya	Gagauz	Latn	gag	3,020	24	13 November 2010
Gun Wikipedia	Gungbe Wikipedia	Gun	Latn	guw	1,517	24	23 March 2022
Igala Wikipedia	Wikipídiya Igala	Igala	Latn	igl	857	24	24 April 2024
Maldivian Wikipedia	ދިވެހި ވިކިޕީޑިޔާ (Dhivehi vikipīḍiyā)	Maldivian	Thaa	dv	3,141	24	28 August 2004
Māori Wikipedia	Wikipedia Māori	Māori	Latn	mi	7,993	24	2003 (unknown date)
Nigerian Pidgin Wikipedia	Naijá Wikipedia	Nigerian Pidgin	Latn	pcm	1,473	24	17 August 2022
Romansh Wikipedia	Vichipedia rumantscha	Romansh	Latn	rm	3,784	24	Unknown date
Sotho Wikipedia	Wikipedia Sesotho	Sotho	Latn	st	1,407	24	Unknown date
Sylheti Wikipedia		Sylheti	Sylo	syl	1,158	24	25 February 2025
Ossetian Wikipedia	Ирон Википеди (Iron Vikipedi)	Ossetian	Cyrl	os	20,415	24	28 February 2005
Doteli Wikipedia	डोटेली विकिपिडिया (Ḍōṭēlī vikipiḍiyā)	Doteli	Deva	dty	3,593	23	24 April 2017
Gothic Wikipedia	𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌹𐍃𐌺 𐍅𐌹𐌺𐌹𐍀𐌰𐌹𐌳𐌾𐌰 (Gutisk wikipaidja)	Gothic	Goth	got	899	23	Unknown date
Inuktitut Wikipedia	ᐃᓄᒃᑎᑐᑦ ᐊᕆᐅᙵᐃᐹ (Uikipitia inuktitut)	Inuktitut	Cans	iu	418	23	Unknown date
Lojban Wikipedia	ni'o la .uikipedi'as. pe lo jbobau	Lojban	Latn	jbo	1,338	23	Unknown date
Tuvan Wikipedia	Тыва Википедия (Tıwa Vikipediya)	Tuvan	Cyrl	tyv	3,542	23	11 August 2013
Dutch Low Saxon Wikipedia	Nedersaksische Wikipedie	Dutch Low Saxon	Latn	nds-nl	8,009	23	24 March 2006
Banyumasan Wikipedia	Wikipédia basa Banyumasan	Banyumasan	Latn	map-bms	13,929	22	2005 (unknown date)
Cornish Wikipedia	Wikipedya Kernowek	Cornish	Latn	kw	7,095	22	Unknown date
Inari Sámi Wikipedia	Anarâškielâlâš Wikipedia	Inari Sámi	Latn	smn	6,227	22	19 October 2020
Old Church Slavonic Wikipedia	Словѣньска Википєдїꙗ (Slověnĭska Vikipedija)	Old Church Slavonic	Cyrs	cu	1,301	22	30 September 2006
Udmurt Wikipedia	Удмурт Википедия (Udmurt Vikipedija)	Udmurt	Cyrl	udm	5,703	22	24 October 2005
Extremaduran Wikipedia	Güiquipeya en estremeñu	Extremaduran	Latn	ext	3,916	22	27 January 2007
Samogitian Wikipedia	Žemaitėška Vikipedėjė	Samogitian	Latn	bat-smg	17,267	22	25 March 2006
Hawaiian Wikipedia	Hawai‘i Wikipikia	Hawaiian	Latn	haw	2,899	21	Unknown date
Kotava Wikipedia	Wikipedia men Kotava	Kotava	Latn	avk	29,892	21	29 December 2020
Lingua Franca Nova Wikipedia	Vicipedia en lingua franca nova	Lingua Franca Nova	Latn	lfn	4,462	21	18 April 2018
Nahuatl Wikipedia	Huiquipedia nāhuatlahtōlcopa	Nahuatl	Latn	nah	4,269	21	August 2003 (unknown day)
Navajo Wikipedia	Wikiibíídiiya Dinék'ehjí	Navajo	Latn	nv	22,661	21	Unknown date
Newar Wikipedia	विकिपिडियाय् लसकुस (Vikipiḍiyāya lasakūsa)	Newar	Deva	new	72,508	21	4 June 2006
Oromo Wikipedia	Oromoo Wikipedia	Oromo	Latn	om	1,930	21	Unknown date
Twi Wikipedia	Wikipidia Twi	Twi	Latn	tw	4,200	21	Unknown date
Uyghur Wikipedia	UEY: ئۇيغۇرچە ۋىكىپېدىيە (ULY: Uyghur wikipëdiye) (UYY: Uyghur vikipediyə) (UKY: Уйғур википедийә)	Uyghur	Arab	ug	9,557	21	Unknown date
Zeelandic Wikipedia	Zeêuwstaelihe Wikipedia	Zeelandic	Latn	zea	6,677	21	30 September 2006
Erzya Wikipedia	Эрзянь Википедия (Erzäń Vikipedija)	Erzya	Cyrl	myv	7,872	20	26 May 2008
Kirundi Wikipedia	Wikipediya mu Ikirundi	Kirundi	Latn	rn	703	20	Unknown date
Meitei Wikipedia	ꯃꯤꯇꯩꯂꯣꯟ ꯋꯤꯀꯤꯄꯦꯗꯤꯌꯥ (Meeteilon weekeepaydeeya)	Meitei	Mtei	mni	10,441	20	22 February 2021
Saraiki Wikipedia	سرائیکی ویٖکیٖپیڈیا (Sarā'īkī vikipīḍiyā)	Saraiki	Arab	skr	24,147	20	22 November 2020
Saterland Frisian Wikipedia	Seelterfräiske Wikipedia	Saterland Frisian	Latn	stq	4,128	20	12 November 2008
Tumbuka Wikipedia	Wikipedia Chitumbuka	Tumbuka	Latn	tum	18,725	20	Unknown date
Ewe Wikipedia	Wikipiɖia Eʋegbe	Ewe	Latn	ee	1,206	19	Unknown date
Komi Wikipedia	Коми Википедия (Komi Vikipedija)	Komi	Cyrl	kv	5,697	19	August 2004 (unknown day)
Livvi-Karelian Wikipedia	Livvinkarjalan Wikipedii	Livvi-Karelian	Latn	olo	4,559	19	7 October 2016
Meadow Mari Wikipedia	Олык Марий Википедий (Olyk Marij Vikipedij)	Meadow Mari	Cyrl	mhr	11,337	19	9 July 2009
Moksha Wikipedia	Мокшень Википедиесь (Mokšenj Vikipedijesʹ)	Moksha	Cyrl	mdf	7,385	19	26 May 2008
N'Ko Wikipedia	ߥߞߌߔߘߋߞߎ ߒߞߏ (Wkipdeku n'ko)	N'Ko	Nkoo	nqo	1,540	19	26 September 2019
Shilha Wikipedia	Wikipidya taclḥiyt (ⵡⵉⴽⵉⵒⵉⴷⵢⴰ ⵜⴰⵛⵍⵃⵉⵜ)	Shilha	Latn/Tfng	shi	10,863	19	30 June 2021
Toba Batak Wikipedia	Wikipedia Batak Toba	Toba Batak	Latn	bbc	1,054	19	6 November 2023
Veps Wikipedia	Vepsän Vikipedii	Veps	Latn	vep	7,001	19	1 February 2012
Northern Sámi Wikipedia	Davvisámegiel Wikipedia	Northern Sámi	Latn	se	7,901	19	20 July 2004
Cree Wikipedia	ᐎᑭᐱᑎᔭ ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ (Wikipitiya nēhiyawēwin)	Cree	Cans	cr	13	18	August 2004 (unknown day)
Gan Wikipedia	Traditional Chinese: 贛語維基百科, simplified Chinese: 赣语维基百科 (Pha̍k-oa-chhi: Gon wéijī bǎikē)	Gan Chinese	Hans/Hant	gan	6,759	18	27 May 2008
Gilaki Wikipedia	گیلکی ویکیپدیاٰ (Gilɵki vikipɵdiya)	Gilaki	Arab	glk	48,148	18	2006 (unknown date)
Kongo Wikipedia	Wikipedia kikôngo	Kongo	Latn	kg	1,561	18	Unknown date
Kusaal Wikipedia	Wikipiidia Kʋsaal	Kusaal	Latn	kus	1,080	18	24 April 2024
Lezgian Wikipedia	Лезги Википедия (Lezgi Vikipediä)	Lezgian	Cyrl	lez	4,430	18	27 March 2012
Mirandese Wikipedia	Biquipédia an lhéngua mirandesa	Mirandese	Latn	mwl	4,280	18	12 August 2009
Samoan Wikipedia	Wikipedia gagana Sāmoa	Samoan	Latn	sm	1,174	18	Unknown date
Shona Wikipedia	Wikipedhiya chiShona	Shona	Latn	sn	11,467	18	Unknown date
Tarantino Wikipedia	Uicchipèdie tarandíne	Tarantino	Latn	roa-tara	9,493	18	30 September 2006
Classical Syriac Wikipedia	ܘܝܩܝܦܕܝܐ ܠܫܢܐ ܣܘܪܝܝܐ (Wīqīpedyāʾ leššānā suryāyā)	Aramaic (Syriac)	Syrc	arc	1,915	18	July 2004 (unknown day)
Atikamekw Wikipedia	Atikamekw Wikipetcia	Atikamekw	Latn	atj	2,069	17	21 June 2017
Awadhi Wikipedia	अवधी विकिपीडिया (Avadhī vikipīḍiyā)	Awadhi	Deva	awa	2,501	17	21 May 2020
Bishnupriya Manipuri Wikipedia	বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়া মণিপুরী উইকিপিডিয়া (Bişnupriya mônipuri u'ikipiḍiẏā)	Bishnupriya Manipuri	Beng	bpy	25,088	17	30 September 2006
Buginese Wikipedia	ᨓᨗᨀᨗᨄᨙᨉᨗᨕ ᨅᨔ ᨕᨘᨁᨗ (Wikipedia basa Ugi)	Buginese	Bugi	bug	15,951	17	Unknown date
Buryat Wikipedia	Буряад Википеэди (Buryaad Vikipjeedi)	Buryat (Russia Buriat)	Cyrl	bxr	2,861	17	30 September 2006
Jamaican Patois Wikipedia	Jumiekan Patwa Wikipidia	Jamaican Patois	Latn	jam	1,724	17	2 May 2016
Palatine German Wikipedia	Pälzisch Wikipedia	Palatine German	Latn	pfl	2,806	17	13 November 2010
Pangasinan Wikipedia	Wikipedia Pangasinan	Pangasinan	Latn	pag	2,615	17	30 September 2006
Bislama Wikipedia	Wikipedia long Bislama	Bislama	Latn	bi	1,469	16	Unknown date
Chewa Wikipedia	Wikipedia Chichewa	Chewa	Latn	ny	1,069	16	Unknown date
Lingala Wikipedia	Lingála Wikipedia	Lingala	Latn	ln	4,747	16	Unknown date
Pa'O Wikipedia	ပအိုဝ်ႏဝီခီပီးဒီးယား (Pǎʼǒ wikhipi:di:ya)	Pa'O	Mymr	blk	2,852	16	19 July 2022
Romani Wikipedia	Romani Vikipidiya	Romani (Vlax Romani)	Latn	rmy	759	16	Unknown date
Sakizaya Wikipedia	Wikipitiya nu Sakizaya	Sakizaya	Latn	szy	2,737	16	22 November 2019
Central Kanuri Wikipedia		Central Kanuri	Latn	knc	1,305	15	30 January 2025
Hill Mari Wikipedia	Кырык марла Википеди (Kyryk marla Vikipedi)	Hill Mari	Cyrl	mrj	10,432	15	17 October 2010
Iban Wikipedia	Iban Wikipedia	Iban	Latn	iba	1,477	15	14 October 2024
Kalmyk Wikipedia	Хальмг Бикипеди (Haľmg Vikipedi)	Kalmyk Oirat	Cyrl	xal	1,665	15	24 March 2006
Karachay-Balkar Wikipedia	Къарачай-Малкъар Википедия (Qaraçay-Malqar Wikipédiya)	Karachay-Balkar	Cyrl	krc	2,460	15	19 March 2010
Latgalian Wikipedia	Vikipedeja latgaļu volūdā	Latgalian	Latn	ltg	1,092	15	18 March 2011
Norman Wikipedia	Augeron, Cotentinais, Percheron: Viqùipédie normaunde Auregnais: Ouitchipédie Nourmaounde Brayon, Cauchois, Rouennais: Viqùipédie normande Guernésiais: Ouitchipédie normande Jèrriais: Ouitchipédie Nouormande Sercquiais: Witchipedi Normãdi	Norman	Latn	nrm	5,036	15	2006 (unknown date)
Bambara Wikipedia	Wikipedi Bamanankan	Bambara	Latn	bm	897	15	Unknown date
Konkani Wikipedia	कोंकणी विकिपीडिया (Konknni Wikipidia) (ಕೊಂಕ್ಣಿ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ)	Konkani (Goan Konkani)	Deva/Latn/Knda	gom	3,614	15	16 June 2015
Adyghe Wikipedia	Адыгэ Википедие (Adıgə Vikipedie)	Adyghe	Cyrl	ady	562	14	11 February 2016
Fante Wikipedia	Fante Wikipedia	Fante	Latn	fat	884	14	20 April 2023
Ingush Wikipedia	Гӏалгӏай Википеди (Ghalghaj Vikipedi)	Ingush	Cyrl	inh	2,405	14	18 April 2018
Mon Wikipedia	ဝဳကဳပဳဒဳယာမန် (Wīkīpīdīya mawn)	Mon	Mymr	mnw	1,954	14	4 November 2019
Novial Wikipedia	Wikipedie in novial	Novial	Latn	nov	1,865	14	30 September 2006
Pannonian Rusyn Wikipedia	Википедия на панонским руским язику (Vikipedija na panonskim ruskim yaziku)	Pannonian Rusyn	Cyrl	rsk	708	14	14 October 2024
Seediq Wikipedia	Seediq Wikipidiya	Seediq	Latn	trv	1,201	14	16 March 2021
Shan Wikipedia	ဝီႇၶီႇၽီးတီးယႃးတႆး (Wiː-kʰiː-pʰiː-tiː-jaɑː- táy)	Shan	Mymr	shn	13,828	14	14 November 2018
Tok Pisin Wikipedia	Wikipedia long Tok Pisin	Tok Pisin	Latn	tpi	1,387	14	Unknown date
Zhuang Wikipedia	Veizgiek Bakgoh Vahcuengh	Zhuang (Standard Zhuang)	Latn	za	3,003	14	Unknown date
Amis Wikipedia	Wikipitiya 'Amis	Amis	Latn	ami	1,146	13	28 October 2021
Dagaare Wikipedia	Dagaare Wikipiideɛ	Dagaare	Latn	dga	2,066	13	6 November 2023
Komi-Permyak Wikipedia	Перем коми Википедия (Perem komi Vikipedija)	Komi-Permyak	Cyrl	koi	3,469	13	19 October 2010
Nias Wikipedia	Wikipedia Li Niha	Nias	Latn	nia	1,756	13	11 January 2021
Talysh Wikipedia	Tolyšə Vikipedijə	Talysh	Latn	tly	9,140	13	30 August 2023
Cheyenne Wikipedia	Vekepete'a Tsėhésenėstsestȯtse	Cheyenne	Latn	chy	722	12	Unknown date
Fijian Wikipedia	Vaka-Viti Wikipedia	Fijian	Latn	fj	1,580	12	Unknown date
Kabiye Wikipedia	Wikipediya kabɩyɛ	Kabiye	Latn	kbp	1,714	12	23 June 2017
Southern Ndebele Wikipedia	Wikiphidiya yelimi lesiNdebele	Southern Ndebele	Latn	nr	177	12	14 October 2024
Fon Wikipedia	Wikipedya ɖò Fɔngbemɛ	Fon	Latn	fon	2,541	11	3 October 2023
Kikuyu Wikipedia	Wikipedia Gĩgĩkũyũ	Kikuyu	Latn	ki	1,874	11	Unknown date
Lak Wikipedia	Лакку мазрал Википедия (Lak:u mazral Vikipediaˤ)	Lak	Cyrl	lbe	1,264	11	Unknown date
Mandailing Batak Wikipedia	Wikipedia Saro Mandailing	Mandailing Batak	Latn	btm	1,164	11	21 June 2024
Pontic Wikipedia	Ποντιακόν Βικιπαίδεια (Pontiakón Bikipaídeia)	Pontic Greek	Grek	pnt	491	11	5 March 2009
Tetum Wikipedia	Wikipédia iha lia-tetun	Tetum	Latn	tet	1,372	11	Unknown date
Tongan Wikipedia	Wikipedia ʻi lea fakatonga	Tongan	Latn	to	2,023	11	January 2004 (unknown day)
Tyap Wikipedia	Wukipedia nTyap	Tyap	Latn	kcg	1,346	11	16 May 2022
Ripuarian Wikipedia	Wikkipedija en Ripoarisch Platt	Ripuarian	Latn	ksh	3,001	11	6 July 2005
Guianan Creole Wikipedia	Wikipédja an kriyòl gwiyannen	French Guianese Creole	Latn	gcr	1,072	10	22 November 2019
Sango Wikipedia	Wïkïpêdïyäa na Sängö	Sango	Latn	sg	321	10	Unknown date
Chamorro Wikipedia	Wikipedia Chamoru	Chamorro	Latn	ch	557	9	Unknown date
Dinka Wikipedia	Wikipedia Thuɔŋjäŋ	Dinka	Latn	din	339	9	12 July 2017
Gurene Wikipedia	Gurenɛ Wikipedia	Farefare (Gurene)	Latn	gur	937	9	27 February 2023
Iñupiaq Wikipedia	Uiqipitia Iñupiatun	Iñupiaq	Latn	ik	599	9	Unknown date
Kabardian Wikipedia	Адыгэбзэ Уикипедиэ (Adıgəbzə Wikipediă)	Kabardian	Cyrl	kbd	1,649	9	18 March 2011
Komering Wikipedia	Wikipidiya basa Kumoring	Komering	Latn	kge	2,564	9	24 September 2024
Mooré Wikipedia	Wikipidiya Mossi	Mooré	Latn	mos	1,042	9	24 September 2024
Pali Wikipedia	पालि विकिपीडिया (Pāli vikipīḍiyā)	Pali	Deva	pi	2,559	9	Unknown date
Sranan Tongo Wikipedia	Sranan Wikipedia	Sranan Tongo	Latn	srn	1,131	9	12 November 2008
Tahitian Wikipedia	Vitipetia Reo Tahiti	Tahitian	Latn	ty	1,225	9	Unknown date
Tigrinya Wikipedia	ዊኪፐድያ ብትግርኛ (Wikipädya bətəgrəñña)	Tigrinya	Ethi	ti	337	9	Unknown date
Atayal Wikipedia	Wikibitia na Tayal	Atayal	Latn	tay	2,584	8	16 March 2021
Norfuk Wikipedia	Norfuk Wikkapedya	Norfuk	Latn	pih	0	7	Unknown date
Obolo Wikipedia	Wìkìpedia Usem Obolo	Obolo	Latn	ann	424	7	14 October 2024
Paiwan Wikipedia	wikipidiya nua pinayuanan	Paiwan	Latn	pwn	373	7	28 October 2021
Southern Altai Wikipedia	Тӱштӱк алтай Википедия (Tüštük altay Vikipediya)	Southern Altai	Cyrl	alt	1,102	7	22 February 2021
Tai Nuea Wikipedia	ᥝᥤᥱ ᥑᥤᥱ ᥚᥤᥱ ᥖᥤᥱ ᥕᥣᥱ ᥖᥭᥰ ᥖᥬᥲ ᥑᥨᥒᥰ	Tai Nuea	Tale	tdd	341	7	14 October 2024
Tigre Wikipedia	ዊኪፒድያ ህግየ ትግሬ	Tigre	Ethi	tig	39	6	12 December 2024
Bajau Sama Wikipedia	Wikipidia Bajau Sama	West Coast Bajau	Latn	bdr	233	5	6 August 2024

Inactive editions

The table below lists all the inactive language editions of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia editions

Wikipedia name in English	Wikipedia name in native language	Language	Script (ISO 15924 code)	WP code	Launch date	Closure date	Logo
Afar Wikipedia (closed)		Afar	Latn	aa (closed)	Unknown date	10 May 2008
Akan Wikipedia (closed)	Wikipidia Akan	Akan	Latn	ak (closed)	Unknown date	1 April 2023
Choctaw Wikipedia (closed)		Choctaw	Latn	cho (closed)	Unknown date	3 July 2007
Herero Wikipedia (closed)		Herero	Latn	hz (closed)	Unknown date	24 July 2007
Hiri Motu Wikipedia (closed)		Hiri Motu	Latn	ho (closed)	Unknown date	9 July 2007
Kanuri Wikipedia (closed)		Kanuri	Latn	kr (closed)	Unknown date	3 May 2007
Klingon Wikipedia (deleted)		Klingon	Latn	tlh (deleted)	June 2004 (unknown day)	Closure: Unknown date Deletion: August 2005 (unknown day)
Kwanyama Wikipedia (closed)		Ovambo (Kwanyama)	Latn	kj (closed)	Unknown date	10 July 2007
Marshallese Wikipedia (closed)		Marshallese	Latn	mh (closed)	Unknown date	4 May 2008
Moldovan Wikipedia (deleted)		Romanian (Moldovan)	Cyrl	mo (deleted)	Unknown date	Closure: 21 November 2006 Deletion: 23 November 2017
Muscogee Wikipedia (closed)		Muscogee	Latn	mus (closed)	Unknown date	10 July 2007
Nauruan Wikipedia (closed)	Wikipediya Naoero	Nauruan	Latn	na (closed)	Unknown date	1 May 2023
Ndonga Wikipedia (closed)		Ovambo (Ndonga)	Latn	ng (closed)	Unknown date	10 January 2010
Northern Luri Wikipedia (locked)		Northern Luri	Arab	lrc (closed)	16 June 2015	14 January 2021
Siberian Wikipedia (deleted)		fictitious "artificial Siberian language"	Cyrl	ru-sib (deleted)	1 October 2006	Closure: 19 September 2007 Deletion: 16 October 2007
Sichuan Yi Wikipedia (closed)		Nuosu	Yiii	ii (closed)	Unknown date	29 July 2007
Toki Pona Wikipedia (deleted)		Toki Pona	Latn	tokipona (deleted)	4 April 2004	Closure: 2008 (unknown date) Deletion: 24 March 2009

Special editions

The table below lists all the special editions of Wikipedia.

The Nostalgia Wikipedia is an archive of the English Wikipedia's initial display.

Wikipedia editions

Wikipedia name in English	Wikipedia name in native language	Language	Script (ISO 15924 code)	WP code	Launch date	Closure date (if applicable)	Logo
September 11 Wiki (deleted)	September 11 Wiki	English	Latn	sep11 (deleted)	2001 (unknown date)	Made read-only: 2006 (unknown date) Closure: 2008 (unknown date)
Test Wikipedia	Test Wikipedia	English	Latn	test	Unknown date
Test2 Wikipedia	Test2 Wikipedia	English	Latn	test2	Unknown date
Wikipedia 10 (closed)	Wikipedia 10	English	Latn	ten (closed)	Unknown date	Unknown date
Nostalgia Wikipedia	Nostalgia Wikipedia	English	Latn	nostalgia	Unknown date

See also

• History of Wikipedia
• List of online encyclopedias
• Languages used on the Internet
• Wikimedia Foundation § Wikimedia projects

External links

• Wikipedia:List of Wikipedias
• Wikipedia portal
• Media related to Wikipedia at Wikimedia Commons
• Wikipedia at Wikinews
• Learning materials related to Wikipedia at Wikiversity
• Works related to Wikipedia press releases at Wikisource

For the spelling alphabet used in spoken communication over radio, see NATO phonetic alphabet.

International Phonetic Alphabet
"IPA", transcribed narrowly as [aɪ̯ pʰiː eɪ̯]
Script type	Alphabet – partially featural
Time period	1888 to present
Languages	Used for phonetic and phonemic transcription of any oral language
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs Proto-Sinaitic script Phoenician alphabet Greek alphabet Latin script Lepsius Standard Alphabet Palaeotype alphabet, English Phonotypic Alphabet Romic alphabet International Phonetic Alphabet
Unicode
Unicode range	See Phonetic symbols in Unicode § Unicode blocks

The official summary chart of the IPA, revised in 2020

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standard written representation for the sounds of speech. The IPA is used by linguists, lexicographers, foreign language students and teachers, speech–language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators, and translators.

The IPA is designed to represent those qualities of speech that are part of lexical (and, to a limited extent, prosodic) sounds in oral language: phones, intonation and the separation of syllables. To represent additional qualities of speech – such as tooth gnashing, lisping, and sounds made with a cleft palate – an extended set of symbols may be used.

Segments are transcribed by one or more IPA symbols of two basic types: letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English digraph ⟨ch⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a single letter: [c], or with multiple letters plus diacritics: [t̠̺͡ʃʰ], depending on how precise one wishes to be. Slashes are used to signal phonemic transcription; therefore, /tʃ/ is more abstract than either [t̠̺͡ʃʰ] or [c] and might refer to either, depending on the context and language.

Occasionally, letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 segmental letters, an indefinitely large number of suprasegmental letters, 44 diacritics (not counting composites), and four extra-lexical prosodic marks in the IPA. These are illustrated in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and on the International Phonetic Association's website.

History

Main article: History of the International Phonetic Alphabet

In 1886, a group of French and English 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 phonétique internationale). The idea of the alphabet had been suggested to Passy by Otto Jespersen. It was developed by Passy along with other members of the association, principally Daniel Jones. The original IPA alphabet was based on the Romic alphabet, an English spelling reform created by Henry Sweet that in turn was based on the Palaeotype alphabet of Alexander John Ellis, but to make it usable for other languages the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language. For example, the sound [ʃ] (the sh in shoe) was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ for English but with ⟨x⟩ for French and German; with German, ⟨c⟩ was used for the [x] sound of Bach. With a growing number of transcribed languages this proved impractical, and in 1888 the values of the letters were made uniform across languages. This would provide the base for all future revisions.

Since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After relatively frequent revisions and expansions from the 1890s to the 1940s, the IPA remained nearly static until the Kiel Convention in 1989, which substantially revamped the alphabet. A smaller revision took place in 1993 with the resurrection of letters for mid central vowels and the retirement of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap. Apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely of renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces.

Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology (extIPA) were created in 1990 and were officially adopted by the International Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics Association in 1994. They were substantially revised in 2015.

Description

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 letters to represent single sounds, the way English does with ⟨sh⟩, ⟨th⟩ and ⟨ng⟩, nor single letters to represent multiple sounds, the way ⟨x⟩ represents /ks/ or /ɡz/ in English.
• There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, the way ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ in several European languages have a "hard" or "soft" pronunciation.
• The IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as "selectiveness". However, if a large number of phonemically distinct letters can be derived with a diacritic, that may be used instead.

The alphabet is designed for transcribing sounds (phones), not phonemes, though it is used for phonemic transcription as well. A few letters that did not indicate specific sounds have been retired – ⟨ˇ⟩, once used for the "compound" tone of Swedish and Norwegian, and ⟨ƞ⟩, once used for the moraic nasal of Japanese – though one remains: ⟨ɧ⟩, used for the sj-sound of Swedish. When the IPA is used for broad phonetic or for phonemic transcription, the letter–sound correspondence can be rather loose. The IPA has recommended that more 'familiar' letters be used when that would not cause ambiguity. For example, ⟨e⟩ and ⟨o⟩ for [ɛ] and [ɔ], ⟨t⟩ for [t̪] or [ʈ], ⟨f⟩ for [ɸ], etc. Indeed, in the illustration of Hindi in the IPA Handbook, the letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ are used for /t͡ʃ/ and /d͡ʒ/.

Among the symbols of the IPA, 107 letters represent consonants and vowels, 31 diacritics are used to modify these, and 17 additional signs indicate suprasegmental qualities such as length, tone, stress, and intonation. These are organized into a chart; the chart displayed here is the official chart as posted at the website of the IPA.

Letter forms

Loop-tail ⟨g⟩ and open-tail ⟨ɡ⟩ are graphic variants. Open-tail ⟨ɡ⟩ was the original IPA symbol, but both are now considered correct. See history of the IPA for details.

The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet. For this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither: for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, originally had the form of a question mark with the dot removed. A few letters, such as that of the voiced pharyngeal fricative, ⟨ʕ⟩, were inspired by other writing systems (in this case, the Arabic letter ⟨ﻉ⟩, ʿayn, via the reversed apostrophe).

Some letter forms derive from existing letters:

• The right-swinging tail, as in ⟨ʈ ɖ ɳ ɽ ʂ ʐ ɻ ɭ ⟩, indicates retroflex articulation. It originates from the hook of an r.
• The top hook, as in ⟨ɠ ɗ ɓ⟩, indicates implosion.
• Several nasal consonants are based on the form ⟨n⟩: ⟨n ɲ ɳ ŋ⟩. ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ŋ⟩ derive from ligatures of gn and ng, and ⟨ɱ⟩ is an ad hoc imitation of ⟨ŋ⟩.
• Letters turned 180 degrees for suggestive shapes, such as ⟨ɐ ɔ ə ɟ ɥ ɯ ɹ ʌ ʍ ʎ⟩ from ⟨a c e f h m r v w y⟩. Either the original letter may be reminiscent of the target sound, e.g., ⟨ɐ ə ɹ ʍ⟩ – or the turned one, e.g., ⟨ɔ ɟ ɥ ɯ ʌ ʎ⟩. Rotation was popular in the era of mechanical typesetting, as it had the advantage of not requiring the casting of special type for IPA symbols, much as the sorts had traditionally often pulled double duty for ⟨b⟩ and ⟨q⟩, ⟨d⟩ and ⟨p⟩, ⟨n⟩ and ⟨u⟩, ⟨6⟩ and ⟨9⟩ to reduce cost.

  

  An example of a font that uses turned small-capital omega ⟨ꭥ⟩ for the vowel letter ʊ. The symbol had originally been a small-capital ⟨ᴜ⟩.

• Among consonant letters, the small capital letters ⟨ɢ ʜ ʟ ɴ ʀ ʁ⟩, and also ⟨ꞯ⟩ in extIPA, indicate more guttural sounds than their base letters – ⟨ʙ⟩ is a late exception. Among vowel letters, small capitals indicate lax vowels. Most of the original small-cap vowel letters have been modified into more distinctive shapes – e.g. ⟨ʊ ɤ ɛ ʌ⟩ from U Ɐ E A – with only ⟨ɪ ʏ⟩ remaining as small capitals.

Typography and iconicity

The International Phonetic Alphabet is based on the Latin script, and uses as few non-Latin letters as possible. The Association created the IPA so that the sound values of most letters would correspond to "international usage" (approximately Classical Latin). Hence, the consonant letters ⟨b⟩, ⟨d⟩, ⟨f⟩, ⟨ɡ⟩, ⟨h⟩, ⟨k⟩, ⟨l⟩, ⟨m⟩, ⟨n⟩, ⟨p⟩, ⟨s⟩, ⟨t⟩, ⟨v⟩, ⟨w⟩, and ⟨z⟩ have more or less their word-initial values in English (g as in gill, h as in hill, though p t k are unaspirated as in spill, still, skill); and the vowel letters ⟨a⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨i⟩, ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ correspond to the (long) sound values of Latin: [i] is like the vowel in machine, [u] is as in rule, etc. Other Latin letters, particularly ⟨j⟩, ⟨r⟩ and ⟨y⟩, differ from English, but have their IPA values in Latin or other European languages.

This basic Latin inventory was extended by adding small-capital and cursive forms, diacritics and rotation. The sound values of these letters are related to those of the original letters, and their derivation may be iconic. For example, letters with a rightward-facing hook at the bottom represent retroflex equivalents of the source letters, and small capital letters usually represent uvular equivalents of their source letters.

There are also several letters from the Greek alphabet, though their sound values may differ from Greek. For most Greek letters, subtly different glyph shapes have been devised for the IPA, specifically ⟨ɑ⟩, ⟨ꞵ⟩, ⟨ɣ⟩, ⟨ɛ⟩, ⟨ɸ⟩, ⟨ꭓ⟩ and ⟨ʋ⟩, which are encoded in Unicode separately from their parent Greek letters. One, however – ⟨θ⟩ – has only its Greek form, while for ⟨ꞵ ~ β⟩ and ⟨ꭓ ~ χ⟩, both Greek and Latin forms are in common use. The tone letters are not derived from an alphabet, but from a pitch trace on a musical scale.

Beyond the letters themselves, there are a variety of secondary symbols which aid in transcription. Diacritic marks can be combined with the letters to add tone and phonetic detail such as secondary articulation. There are also special symbols for prosodic features such as stress and intonation.

Brackets and transcription delimiters

There are two principal types of brackets used to set off (delimit) IPA transcriptions:

Symbol	Use
[ ... ]	Square brackets are used with phonetic notation, whether broad or narrow – that is, for actual pronunciation, possibly including details of the pronunciation that may not be used for distinguishing words in the language being transcribed, but which the author nonetheless wishes to document. Such phonetic notation is the primary function of the IPA.
/ ... /	Slashes are used for abstract phonemic notation, which note only features that are distinctive in the language, without any extraneous detail. For example, while the 'p' sounds of English pin and spin are pronounced differently (and this difference would be meaningful in some languages), the difference is not meaningful in English. Thus, phonemically the words are usually analyzed as /ˈpɪn/ and /ˈspɪn/, with the same phoneme /p/. To capture the difference between them – the allophones of /p/ – they can be transcribed phonetically as [pʰɪn] and [spɪn]. Phonemic notation commonly uses IPA symbols that are rather close to the default pronunciation of a phoneme, but for legibility often uses simple and 'familiar' letters rather than precise notation, for example /r/ and /o/ for the English [ɹʷ] and [əʊ̯] sounds, or /c, ɟ/ for [t͜ʃ, d͜ʒ] as mentioned above.

Less common conventions include:

Symbol	Use
{ ... }	Braces ("curly brackets") are used for prosodic notation. See Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for examples in this system.
( ... )	Parentheses are used for indistinguishable or unidentified utterances. They are also seen for silent articulation (mouthing), where the expected phonetic transcription is derived from lip-reading, and with periods to indicate silent pauses, for example (…) or (2 sec). The latter usage is made official in the extIPA, with unidentified segments circled instead.
⸨ ... ⸩	Double parentheses indicate either a transcription of obscured speech or a description of the obscuring noise. The IPA specifies that they mark the obscured sound, as in ⸨2σ⸩, two audible syllables obscured by another sound. The current extIPA specifications prescribe double parentheses for the extraneous noise, such as ⸨cough⸩ for a cough by another person (not the speaker) or ⸨knock⸩ for a knock on a door, but the IPA Handbook identifies IPA and extIPA usage as equivalent. Early publications of the extIPA explain double parentheses as marking "uncertainty because of noise which obscures the recording", and that within them "may be indicated as much detail as the transcriber can detect."

All three of the above are provided by the IPA Handbook. The following are not, but may be seen in IPA transcription or in associated material (especially angle brackets):

Symbol	Field	Description
⟦ ... ⟧	Phonetics	Double square brackets are used for especially precise phonetic transcription, often finer than is normally practicable. This is consistent with the IPA convention of doubling a symbol to indicate greater degree. Double brackets may indicate that a letter has its cardinal IPA value. For example, ⟦a⟧ is an open front vowel, rather than the perhaps slightly different value (such as open central) that "[a]" may be used to transcribe in a particular language. Thus, two vowels transcribed for easy legibility as [e] and [ɛ] may be clarified as actually being ⟦e̝⟧ and ⟦e⟧; [ð] may be more precisely ⟦ð̠̞ˠ⟧. Double brackets may also be used for a specific token or speaker; for example, the pronunciation of a particular child as opposed to the adult pronunciation that is their target.
⫽ ... ⫽ { ... } | ... | ‖ ... ‖	Morphophonology	Double slashes are used for morphophonemic transcription. This is also consistent with the IPA convention of doubling a symbol to indicate greater degree – in this case, more abstract than phonemic transcription. Also commonly seen are the braces of set theory, especially when enclosing the set of phonemes that constitute the morphophoneme, e.g. {t d} or {t|d} or {/t/, /d/} for a conflated /t/ and /d/. Braces have a conflicting use to delimit prosodic transcription within the Voice Quality Symbols, which are an extension of IPA used in extIPA, but are not otherwise used in IPA proper. Other delimiters sometimes seen are pipes and double pipes taken from Americanist phonetic notation. However, these conflict with the pipes used in basic IPA prosodic transcription.
\ ... \ ⫽ ... ⫽ | ... | ! ... !	Diaphonology	Backslashes are used for diaphonemic transcription, for example setting off pronunciations in dictionaries that do not target a specific preferred dialect. Other delimiters are double slashes, – the same notation as for morphophonology, – exclamation marks, and pipes.
⟨ ... ⟩ ⟪ ... ⟫ | ... |	Graphemics	Angle brackets are used to mark both original Latin orthography and transliteration from another script; they are also used to identify individual graphemes of any script. In IPA literature, they are used to indicate the IPA letters themselves rather than the sound values that they carry. For example, ⟨cot⟩ would be used for the orthography of the English word cot, as opposed to its pronunciation /ˈkɒt/. Italics are usual when words are written as themselves (as with cot in the previous sentence) rather than to specifically note their orthography. However, italics are sometimes ambiguous, and italic markup is not always accessible to sight-impaired readers who rely on screen reader technology. Double angle brackets may occasionally be useful to distinguish original orthography from transliteration, or the idiosyncratic spelling of a manuscript from the normalized orthography of the language. Pipes are sometimes used instead of double angle brackets to denote the distinct allographs of a grapheme that are known as glyphs. For example, print |g| and script |ɡ| are two glyph variants of the grapheme ⟨g⟩ of Latin script.

Some examples of contrasting brackets in the literature:

In some English accents, the phoneme /l/, which is usually spelled as ⟨l⟩ or ⟨ll⟩, is articulated as two distinct allophones: the clear [l] occurs before vowels and the consonant /j/, whereas the dark [ɫ]/[lˠ] occurs before consonants, except /j/, and at the end of words.

the alternations /f/ – /v/ in plural formation in one class of nouns, as in knife /naɪf/ – knives /naɪvz/, which can be represented morphophonemically as {naɪV} – {naɪV+z}. The morphophoneme {V} stands for the phoneme set {/f/, /v/}.

[ˈf\faɪnəlz ˈhɛld ɪn (.) ⸨knock on door⸩ bɑɹsə{_𝑝ˈloʊnə and ˈmədɹɪd _𝑝}] — f-finals held in Barcelona and Madrid.

Other representations

Main articles: Cursive forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet and IPA Braille

IPA letters have cursive forms designed for use in manuscripts and when taking field notes, but the Handbook recommended against their use, as cursive IPA is "harder for most people to decipher". A braille representation of the IPA for blind or visually impaired professionals and students has also been developed.

Modifying the IPA chart

The authors of textbooks or similar publications often create revised versions of the IPA chart to express their own preferences or needs. The image displays one such version. All pulmonic consonants are moved to the consonant chart. Only the black symbols are on the official IPA chart; additional symbols are in grey. The grey fricatives are part of the extIPA, and the grey retroflex letters are mentioned or implicit in the Handbook. The grey click is a retired IPA letter that is still in use.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is occasionally modified by the Association. After each modification, the Association provides an updated simplified presentation of the alphabet in the form of a chart. (See History of the IPA.) Not all aspects of the alphabet can be accommodated in a chart of the size published by the IPA. The alveolo-palatal and epiglottal consonants, for example, are not included in the consonant chart for reasons of space rather than of theory (two additional columns would be required, one between the retroflex and palatal columns and the other between the pharyngeal and glottal columns), and the lateral flap would require an additional row for that single consonant, so they are listed instead under the catchall block of "other symbols". The indefinitely large number of tone letters would make a full accounting impractical even on a larger page, and only a few examples are shown, and even the tone diacritics are not complete; the reversed tone letters are not illustrated at all.

The procedure for modifying the alphabet or the chart is to propose the change in the Journal of the IPA. (See, for example, December 2008 on an open central unrounded vowel and August 2011 on central approximants.) Reactions to the proposal may be published in the same or subsequent issues of the Journal (as in August 2009 on the open central vowel). A formal proposal is then put to the Council of the IPA – which is elected by the membership – for further discussion and a formal vote.

Many users of the alphabet, including the leadership of the Association itself, deviate from its standardized usage. The Journal of the IPA finds it acceptable to mix IPA and extIPA symbols in consonant charts in their articles. (For instance, including the extIPA letter ⟨𝼆⟩, rather than ⟨ʎ̝̊⟩, in an illustration of the IPA.)

Usage

Further information: Phonetic transcription

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 less detail is called a broad transcription. Both are relative terms, and both are generally enclosed in square brackets. Broad phonetic transcriptions may restrict themselves to easily heard details, or only to details that are relevant to the discussion at hand, and may differ little if at all from phonemic transcriptions, but they make no theoretical claim that all the distinctions transcribed are necessarily meaningful in the language.

Phonetic transcriptions of the word international in two English dialects

For example, the English word little may be transcribed broadly as [ˈlɪtəl], approximately describing many pronunciations. A narrower transcription may focus on individual or dialectical details: [ˈɫɪɾɫ] in General American, [ˈlɪʔo] in Cockney, or [ˈɫɪːɫ] in Southern US English.

Phonemic transcriptions, which express the conceptual counterparts of spoken sounds, are usually enclosed in slashes (/ /) and tend to use simpler letters with few diacritics. The choice of IPA letters may reflect theoretical claims of how speakers conceptualize sounds as phonemes or they may be merely a convenience for typesetting. Phonemic approximations between slashes do not have absolute sound values. For instance, in English, either the vowel of pick or the vowel of peak may be transcribed as /i/, so that pick, peak would be transcribed as /ˈpik, ˈpiːk/ or as /ˈpɪk, ˈpik/; and neither is identical to the vowel of the French pique, which would also be transcribed /pik/. By contrast, a narrow phonetic transcription of pick, peak, pique could be: [pʰɪk], [pʰiːk], [pikʲ].

Linguists

IPA is popular for transcription by linguists. Some American linguists, however, use a mix of IPA with Americanist phonetic notation or Sinological phonetic notation or otherwise use nonstandard symbols for various reasons. Authors who employ such nonstandard use are encouraged to include a chart or other explanation of their choices, which is good practice in general, as linguists differ in their understanding of the exact meaning of IPA symbols and common conventions change over time.

Dictionaries

English

Many British dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary and some learner's dictionaries such as the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary and the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, now use the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent the pronunciation of words. However, most American (and some British) volumes use one of a variety of pronunciation respelling systems, intended to be more comfortable for readers of English and to be more acceptable across dialects, without the implication of a preferred pronunciation that the IPA might convey. For example, the respelling systems in many American dictionaries (such as Merriam-Webster) use ⟨y⟩ for IPA [ j] and ⟨sh⟩ for IPA [ ʃ ], reflecting the usual spelling of those sounds in English. (In IPA, [y] represents the sound of the French ⟨u⟩, as in tu, and [sh] represents the sequence of consonants in grasshopper.)

Other languages

The IPA is also not universal among dictionaries in languages other than English. Monolingual dictionaries of languages with phonemic orthographies generally do not bother with indicating the pronunciation of most words, and tend to use respelling systems for words with unexpected pronunciations. Dictionaries produced in Israel use the IPA rarely and sometimes use the Hebrew alphabet for transcription of foreign words. Bilingual dictionaries that translate from foreign languages into Russian usually employ the IPA, but monolingual Russian dictionaries occasionally use pronunciation respelling for foreign words. The IPA is more common in bilingual dictionaries, but there are exceptions here too. Mass-market bilingual Czech dictionaries, for instance, tend to use the IPA only for sounds not found in Czech.

Standard orthographies and case variants

Main article: Case variants of IPA letters

IPA letters have been incorporated into the alphabets of various languages, notably via the Africa Alphabet in many sub-Saharan languages such as Hausa, Fula, Akan, Gbe languages, Manding languages, Lingala, etc. Capital case variants have been created for use in these languages. For example, Kabiyè of northern Togo has Ɖ ɖ, Ŋ ŋ, Ɣ ɣ, Ɔ ɔ, Ɛ ɛ, Ʋ ʋ. These, and others, are supported by Unicode, but appear in Latin ranges other than the IPA extensions.

In the IPA itself, however, only lower-case letters are used. The 1949 edition of the IPA handbook indicated that an asterisk ⟨*⟩ might be prefixed to indicate that a word was a proper name, but this convention was not included in the 1999 Handbook, which notes the contrary use of the asterisk as a placeholder for a sound or feature that does not have a symbol.

Classical singing

The IPA has widespread use among classical singers during preparation as they are frequently required to sing in a variety of foreign languages. They are also taught by vocal coaches to perfect diction and improve tone quality and tuning. Opera librettos are authoritatively transcribed in IPA, such as Nico Castel's volumes and Timothy Cheek's book Singing in Czech. Opera singers' ability to read IPA was used by the site Visual Thesaurus, which employed several opera singers "to make recordings for the 150,000 words and phrases in VT's lexical database ... for their vocal stamina, attention to the details of enunciation, and most of all, knowledge of IPA".

Letters

See also: International Phonetic Alphabet chart

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

Pulmonic consonant letters are arranged singly or in pairs of voiceless (tenuis) and voiced sounds, with these then grouped in columns from front (labial) sounds on the left to back (glottal) sounds on the right. In official publications by the IPA, two columns are omitted to save space, with the letters listed among "other symbols" even though theoretically they belong in the main chart. They are arranged in rows from full closure (occlusives: stops and nasals) at top, to brief closure (vibrants: trills and taps), to partial closure (fricatives), and finally minimal closure (approximants) at bottom, again with a row left out to save space. In the table below, a slightly different arrangement is made: All pulmonic consonants are included in the pulmonic-consonant table, and the vibrants and laterals are separated out so that the rows reflect the common lenition pathway of stop → fricative → approximant, as well as the fact that several letters pull double duty as both fricative and approximant; affricates may then be created by joining stops and fricatives from adjacent cells. Shaded cells represent articulations that are judged to be impossible or not distinctive.

Vowel letters are also grouped in pairs – of unrounded and rounded vowel sounds – with these pairs also arranged from front on the left to back on the right, and from maximal closure at top to minimal closure at bottom. No vowel letters are omitted from the chart, though in the past some of the mid central vowels were listed among the "other symbols".

Consonants

See also: IPA consonant chart with audio

Pulmonic consonants

A pulmonic consonant is a consonant made by obstructing the glottis (the space between the vocal folds) or oral cavity (the mouth) and either simultaneously or subsequently letting out air from the lungs. Pulmonic consonants make up the majority of consonants in the IPA, as well as in human language. All consonants in English fall into this category.

The pulmonic consonant table, which includes most consonants, is arranged in rows that designate manner of articulation, meaning how the consonant is produced, and columns that designate place of articulation, meaning where in the vocal tract the consonant is produced. The main chart includes only consonants with a single place of articulation.

Place →	Labial					Coronal										Dorsal					Laryngeal
Manner ↓	Bi­labial		Labio­dental		Linguo­labial		Dental		Alveolar		Post­alveolar		Retro­flex		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Pharyn­geal/epi­glottal		Glottal
Nasal	m̥	m	ɱ̊	ɱ		n̼			n̥	n			ɳ̊	ɳ	ɲ̊	ɲ	ŋ̊	ŋ	ɴ̥	ɴ
Plosive	p	b	p̪	b̪	t̼	d̼			t	d			ʈ	ɖ	c	ɟ	k	ɡ	q	ɢ	ʡ		ʔ
Sibilant fricative									s	z	ʃ	ʒ	ʂ	ʐ	ɕ	ʑ
Non-sibilant fricative	ɸ	β	f	v	θ̼	ð̼	θ	ð	θ̠	ð̠	ɹ̠̊˔	ɹ̠˔	ɻ̊˔	ɻ˔	ç	ʝ	x	ɣ	χ	ʁ	ħ	ʕ	h	ɦ
Approximant				ʋ						ɹ				ɻ		j		ɰ						ʔ̞
Tap/flap		ⱱ̟		ⱱ		ɾ̼			ɾ̥	ɾ			ɽ̊	ɽ						ɢ̆		ʡ̆
Trill	ʙ̥	ʙ							r̥	r			ɽ̊r̥	ɽr					ʀ̥	ʀ	ʜ	ʢ
Lateral fricative									ɬ	ɮ			ꞎ	𝼅	𝼆	ʎ̝	𝼄	ʟ̝
Lateral approximant										l				ɭ		ʎ		ʟ		ʟ̠
Lateral tap/flap									ɺ̥	ɺ			𝼈̥	𝼈		ʎ̆		ʟ̆

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Notes

• In rows where some letters appear in pairs (the obstruents), the letter to the right represents a voiced consonant, except breathy-voiced [ɦ]. In the other rows (the sonorants), the single letter represents a voiced consonant.
• While IPA provides a single letter for the coronal places of articulation (for all consonants but fricatives), these do not always have to be used exactly. When dealing with a particular language, the letters may be treated as specifically dental, alveolar, or post-alveolar, as appropriate for that language, without diacritics.
• Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
• The letters [β, ð, ʁ, ʕ, ʢ] are canonically voiced fricatives but may be used for approximants.
• In many languages, such as English, [h] and [ɦ] are not actually glottal, fricatives, or approximants. Rather, they are bare phonation.
• It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives [ʃ ʒ], [ɕ ʑ], and [ʂ ʐ].
• [ʜ, ʢ] are defined as epiglottal fricatives under the "Other symbols" section in the official IPA chart, but they may be treated as trills at the same place of articulation as [ħ, ʕ] because trilling of the aryepiglottic folds typically co-occurs.
• Some listed phones are not known to exist as phonemes in any language.

Non-pulmonic consonants

Non-pulmonic consonants are sounds whose airflow is not dependent on the lungs. These include clicks (found in the Khoisan languages and some neighboring Bantu languages of Africa), implosives (found in languages such as Sindhi, Hausa, Swahili and Vietnamese), and ejectives (found in many Amerindian and Caucasian languages).

		BL	LD	D	A	PA	RF	P	V	U	EG
Ejective	Stop	pʼ			tʼ		ʈʼ	cʼ	kʼ	qʼ	ʡʼ
	Fricative	ɸʼ	fʼ	θʼ	sʼ	ʃʼ	ʂʼ	ɕʼ	xʼ	χʼ
	Lateral fricative				ɬʼ
Click (top: velar; bottom: uvular)	Tenuis	kʘ qʘ		kǀ qǀ	kǃ qǃ			kǂ qǂ
	Voiced	ɡʘ ɢʘ		ɡǀ ɢǀ	ɡǃ ɢǃ			ɡǂ ɢǂ
	Nasal	ŋʘ ɴʘ		ŋǀ ɴǀ	ŋǃ ɴǃ			ŋǂ ɴǂ
	Tenuis lateral				kǁ qǁ
	Voiced lateral				ɡǁ ɢǁ
	Nasal lateral				ŋǁ ɴǁ
Implosive	Voiced	ɓ			ɗ		ᶑ	ʄ	ɠ	ʛ
	Voiceless	ɓ̥			ɗ̥		ᶑ̊	ʄ̊	ɠ̊	ʛ̥

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Notes

• Clicks have traditionally been described as consisting of a forward place of articulation, commonly called the click "type" or historically the "influx", and a rear place of articulation, which when combined with the quality of the click is commonly called the click "accompaniment" or historically the "efflux". The IPA click letters indicate only the click type (forward articulation and release). Therefore, all clicks require two letters for proper notation: ⟨k͡ǀ, ɡ͡ǀ, q͡ǀ⟩, etc., or with the order reversed if both the forward and rear releases are audible. The letter for the rear articulation is frequently omitted, in which case a ⟨k⟩ may usually be assumed. However, some researchers dispute the idea that clicks should be analyzed as doubly articulated, as the traditional transcription implies, and analyze the rear occlusion as solely a part of the airstream mechanism. In transcriptions of such approaches, the click letter represents both places of articulation, with the different letters representing the different click types, and diacritics are used for the elements of the accompaniment: ⟨ǀ, ǀ̬, ǀ̃⟩, etc.
• Letters for the voiceless implosives ⟨ƥ, ƭ, ƈ, ƙ, ʠ⟩ are no longer supported by the IPA, though they remain in Unicode. Instead, the IPA typically uses the voiced equivalent with a voiceless diacritic: ⟨ɓ̥, ɗ̥⟩, etc.
• The letter for the retroflex implosive, ⟨ᶑ⟩, is not "explicitly IPA approved", but has the expected form if such a symbol were to be approved.
• The ejective diacritic is placed at the right-hand margin of the consonant, rather than immediately after the letter for the stop: ⟨t͜ʃʼ⟩, ⟨kʷʼ⟩. In imprecise transcription, it often stands in for a superscript glottal stop in glottalized but pulmonic sonorants, such as [mˀ], [lˀ], [wˀ], [aˀ] – also transcribable as creaky [m̰], [l̰], [w̰], [a̰].

Affricates

Affricates and co-articulated stops are represented by two letters joined by a tie bar, either above or below the letters with no difference in meaning. Affricates are optionally represented by ligatures – e.g. ⟨ʧ, ʤ ⟩ – though this is no longer official IPA usage because a great number of ligatures would be required to represent all affricates this way. Alternatively, a superscript notation for a consonant release is sometimes used to transcribe affricates, for example ⟨tˢ⟩ for [t͜s], paralleling [kˣ] ~ [k͜x]. The letters for the palatal plosives ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ are often used as a convenience for [t͜ʃ] and [d͜ʒ] or similar affricates, even in official IPA publications, so they must be interpreted with care.

		Bi­labial		Labio­dental		Dental		Alveolar		Post­alveolar		Retro­flex		Palatal		Velar		Uvular		Epi­glottal		Glottal
Pulmonic	Sibilant							ts	dz	t̠ʃ	d̠ʒ	tʂ	dʐ	tɕ	dʑ
	Non-sibilant	pɸ	bβ	p̪f	b̪v	t̪θ	d̪ð	tɹ̝̊	dɹ̝	t̠ɹ̠̊˔	d̠ɹ̠˔			cç	ɟʝ	kx	ɡɣ	qχ	ɢʁ	ʡʜ	ʡʢ	ʔh
	Lateral							tɬ	dɮ			tꞎ	d𝼅	c𝼆	ɟʎ̝	k𝼄	ɡʟ̝
Ejective	Central					t̪θʼ		tsʼ		t̠ʃʼ		tʂʼ				kxʼ		qχʼ
	Lateral							tɬʼ						c𝼆ʼ		k𝼄ʼ

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Co-articulated consonants

Co-articulated consonants are sounds that involve two simultaneous places of articulation (are pronounced using two parts of the vocal tract). In English, the [w] in "went" is a coarticulated consonant, being pronounced by rounding the lips and raising the back of the tongue. Similar sounds are [ʍ] and [ɥ]. In some languages, plosives can be double-articulated, for example in the name of Laurent Gbagbo.

Nasal

n͡m

Labial–alveolar

ɳ͡m

Labial–retroflex

ŋ͡m

Labial–velar

Plosive

t͡p

d͡b

Labial–alveolar

ʈ͡p

ɖ͡b

Labial–retroflex

k͡p

ɡ͡b

Labial–velar

q͡ʡ

Uvular–epiglottal

q͡p

Labial–uvular

Fricative/approximant

ɥ̊

ɥ

Labialized palatal

ʍ

w

Labialized velar

ɧ

Sj-sound (variable)

Lateral approximant

ɫ

Velarized alveolar

Implosive

ɠ̊͜ɓ̥

ɠ͡ɓ

Labial–velar

Ejective

t͡pʼ

Labial–alveolar

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Notes

• [ɧ], the Swedish sj-sound, is described by the IPA as a "simultaneous [ʃ] and [x]", but it is unlikely such a simultaneous fricative actually exists in any language.
• Multiple tie bars can be used: ⟨a͡b͡c⟩ or ⟨a͜b͜c⟩. For instance, a pre-voiced velar affricate may be transcribed as ⟨g͡k͡x⟩
• If a diacritic needs to be placed on or under a tie bar, the combining grapheme joiner (U+034F) needs to be used, as in [b͜͏̰də̀bdʊ̀] 'chewed' (Margi). Font support is spotty, however.

Vowels

Main article: Vowel

See also: IPA vowel chart with audio

Tongue positions of cardinal front vowels, with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness.

X-ray photos show the sounds [i, u, a, ɑ].

The IPA defines a vowel as a sound which occurs at a syllable center. Below is a chart depicting the vowels of the IPA. The IPA maps the vowels according to the position of the tongue.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
Near-close	ɪ ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
Mid	e̞ ø̞	ə	ɤ̞ o̞
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
Near-open	æ	ɐ
Open	a ɶ	ä	ɑ ɒ

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The vertical axis of the chart is mapped by vowel height. Vowels pronounced with the tongue lowered are at the bottom, and vowels pronounced with the tongue raised are at the top. For example, [ɑ] (the first vowel in father) is at the bottom because the tongue is lowered in this position. [i] (the vowel in "meet") is at the top because the sound is said with the tongue raised to the roof of the mouth.

In a similar fashion, the horizontal axis of the chart is determined by vowel backness. Vowels with the tongue moved towards the front of the mouth (such as [ɛ], the vowel in "met") are to the left in the chart, while those in which it is moved to the back (such as [ʌ], the vowel in "but") are placed to the right in the chart.

In places where vowels are paired, the right represents a rounded vowel (in which the lips are rounded) while the left is its unrounded counterpart.

Diphthongs

Diphthongs are typically specified with a non-syllabic diacritic, as in ⟨ui̯⟩ or ⟨u̯i⟩, or with a superscript for the on- or off-glide, as in ⟨uⁱ⟩ or ⟨ᵘi⟩. Sometimes a tie bar is used: ⟨u͜i⟩, especially when it is difficult to tell if the diphthong is characterized by an on-glide or an off-glide or when it is variable.

Notes

• ⟨a⟩ officially represents a front vowel, but there is little if any distinction between front and central open vowels (see Vowel § Acoustics), and ⟨a⟩ is frequently used for an open central vowel. If disambiguation is required, the retraction diacritic or the centralized diacritic may be added to indicate an open central vowel, as in ⟨a̠⟩ or ⟨ä⟩.

Diacritics and prosodic notation

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

By being made superscript, any IPA letter may function as a diacritic, conferring elements of its articulation to the base letter. Those superscript letters listed below are specifically provided for by the IPA Handbook; other uses can be illustrated with ⟨tˢ⟩ ([t] with fricative release), ⟨ᵗs⟩ ([s] with affricate onset), ⟨ⁿd⟩ (prenasalized [d]), ⟨bʱ⟩ ([b] with breathy voice), ⟨mˀ⟩ (glottalized [m]), ⟨sᶴ⟩ ([s] with a flavor of [ʃ], i.e. a voiceless alveolar retracted sibilant), ⟨oᶷ⟩ ([o] with diphthongization), ⟨ɯᵝ⟩ (compressed [ɯ]). Superscript diacritics placed after a letter are ambiguous between simultaneous modification of the sound and phonetic detail at the end of the sound. For example, labialized ⟨kʷ⟩ may mean either simultaneous [k] and [w] or else [k] with a labialized release. Superscript diacritics placed before a letter, on the other hand, normally indicate a modification of the onset of the sound (⟨mˀ⟩ glottalized [m], ⟨ˀm⟩ [m] with a glottal onset). (See § Superscript IPA.)

Airstream diacritics
◌ʼ	kʼ sʼ	Ejective
Syllabicity diacritics
◌̩	ɹ̩ n̩	Syllabic	◌̯	ɪ̯ ʊ̯	Non-syllabic
◌̍	ɻ̍ ŋ̍		◌̑	y̑
Consonant-release diacritics
◌ʰ	tʰ	Aspirated	◌̚	p̚	No audible release
◌ⁿ	dⁿ	Nasal release	◌ˡ	dˡ	Lateral release
◌ᶿ	tᶿ	Voiceless dental fricative release	◌ˣ	tˣ	Voiceless velar fricative release
◌ᵊ	dᵊ	Mid central vowel release
Phonation diacritics
◌̥	n̥ d̥	Voiceless	◌̬	s̬ t̬	Voiced
◌̊	ɻ̊ ŋ̊
◌̤	b̤ a̤	Breathy voiced	◌̰	b̰ a̰	Creaky voiced
Articulation diacritics
◌̪	t̪ d̪	Dental (◌͆ is dentolabial or underbite in extIPA)	◌̼	t̼ d̼	Linguolabial
◌͆	ɮ͆
◌̺	t̺ d̺	Apical	◌̻	t̻ d̻	Laminal
◌̟	u̟ t̟	Advanced (fronted)	◌̠	i̠ t̠	Retracted (backed)
◌᫈	ɡ᫈		◌᫢	q᫢
◌̈	ë ä	Centralized	◌̽	e̽ ɯ̽	Mid-centralized
◌̝	e̝ r̝	Raised ([r̝], [ɭ˔] are fricatives)	◌̞	e̞ β̞	Lowered ([β̞], [ɣ˕] are approximants)
◌˔	ɭ˔		◌˕	y˕ ɣ˕
Co-articulation diacritics
◌̹	ɔ̹ x̹	More rounded / less spread (over-rounding)	◌̜	ɔ̜ xʷ̜	Less rounded / more spread (under-rounding)
◌͗	y͗ χ͗		◌͑	y͑ χ͑ʷ
◌ʷ	tʷ dʷ	Labialized	◌ʲ	tʲ dʲ	Palatalized
◌ˠ	tˠ dˠ	Velarized	◌̴	ɫ ᵶ	Velarized or pharyngealized
◌ˤ	tˤ aˤ	Pharyngealized
◌̘	e̘ o̘	Advanced tongue root (expanded pharynx)	◌̙	e̙ o̙	Retracted tongue root
◌꭪	y꭪		◌꭫	y꭫
◌̃	ẽ z̃	Nasalized	◌˞	ɚ ɝ	Rhoticity

Notes:

Subdiacritics (diacritics normally placed below a letter) may be moved above a letter to avoid conflict with a descender, as in voiceless ⟨ŋ̊⟩. The raising and lowering diacritics have optional spacing forms ⟨˔⟩, ⟨˕⟩ that avoid descenders.

The state of the glottis can be finely transcribed with diacritics. A series of alveolar plosives ranging from open-glottis to closed-glottis phonation is:

Phonation scale

Open glottis	[t]	voiceless
	[d̤]	breathy voice, also called murmured
	[d̥]	slack voice
Sweet spot	[d]	modal voice
	[d̬]	stiff voice
	[d̰]	creaky voice
Closed glottis	[ʔ͜t]	glottal closure

Additional diacritics are provided by the Extensions to the IPA for speech pathology.

Suprasegmentals

These symbols describe the features of a language above the level of individual consonants and vowels, that is, at the level of syllable, word or phrase. These include prosody, pitch, length, stress, intensity, tone and gemination of the sounds of a language, as well as the rhythm and intonation of speech. Various ligatures of pitch/tone letters and diacritics are provided for by the Kiel Convention and used in the IPA Handbook despite not being found in the summary of the IPA alphabet found on the one-page chart.

Under capital letters below we will see how a carrier letter may be used to indicate suprasegmental features such as labialization or nasalization. Some authors omit the carrier letter, for e.g. suffixed [kʰuˣt̪s̟]ʷ or prefixed [ʷkʰuˣt̪s̟], or place a spacing variant of a diacritic such as ⟨˔⟩ or ⟨˜⟩ at the beginning or end of a word to indicate that it applies to the entire word.

Length, stress, and rhythm
ˈke	Primary stress (appears before stressed syllable)	ˌke	Secondary stress (appears before stressed syllable)
eː kː	Long (long vowel or geminate consonant)	eˑ	Half-long
		ə̆ ɢ̆	Extra-short
ek.ste eks.te	Syllable break (internal boundary)	es‿e	Linking (lack of a boundary; a phonological word)
Intonation
|	Minor or foot break	‖	Major or intonation break
↗︎	Global rise	↘︎	Global fall
Up- and down-step
ꜛke	Upstep	ꜜke	Downstep

Notes:

Pitch diacritics
ŋ̋ e̋	Extra high	ŋ̌ ě	Rising	ŋ᷄ e᷄	Mid-rising
ŋ́ é	High	ŋ̂ ê	Falling	ŋ᷅ e᷅	Low-rising
ŋ̄ ē	Mid	ŋ᷈ e᷈	Peaking (rising–falling)	ŋ᷇ e᷇	High-falling
ŋ̀ è	Low	ŋ᷉ e᷉	Dipping (falling–rising)	ŋ᷆ e᷆	Mid-falling
ŋ̏ ȅ	Extra low	(etc.)

Chao tone letters
˥e	꜒e	e˥	e꜒	High
˦e	꜓e	e˦	e꜓	Half-high
˧e	꜔e	e˧	e꜔	Mid
˨e	꜕e	e˨	e꜕	Half-low
˩e	꜖e	e˩	e꜖	Low
˩˥e	꜖꜒e	e˩˥	e꜖꜒	Rising (low to high or generic)
˥˩e	꜒꜖e	e˥˩	e꜒꜖	Falling (high to low or generic)
(etc.)

The old staveless tone letters, which are effectively obsolete, include high ⟨ˉe⟩, mid ⟨˗e⟩, low ⟨ˍe⟩, rising ⟨ˊe⟩, falling ⟨ˋe⟩, low rising ⟨ˏe⟩ and low falling ⟨ˎe⟩.

Stress

Officially, the stress marks ⟨ˈ ˌ⟩ appear before the stressed syllable, and thus mark the syllable boundary as well as stress (though the syllable boundary may still be explicitly marked with a period). Occasionally the stress mark is placed immediately before the nucleus of the syllable, after any consonantal onset. In such transcriptions, the stress mark does not mark a syllable boundary. The primary stress mark may be doubled ⟨ˈˈ⟩ for extra stress (such as prosodic stress). The secondary stress mark is sometimes seen doubled ⟨ˌˌ⟩ for extra-weak stress, but this convention has not been adopted by the IPA. Some dictionaries place both stress marks before a syllable, ⟨¦⟩, to indicate that pronunciations with either primary or secondary stress are heard, though this is not IPA usage.

Boundary markers

There are three boundary markers: ⟨.⟩ for a syllable break, ⟨|⟩ for a minor prosodic break and ⟨‖⟩ for a major prosodic break. The tags 'minor' and 'major' are intentionally ambiguous. Depending on need, 'minor' may vary from a foot break to a break in list-intonation to a continuing–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a comma), and while 'major' is often any intonation break, it may be restricted to a final–prosodic unit boundary (equivalent to a period). The 'major' symbol may also be doubled, ⟨‖‖⟩, for a stronger break.

Although not part of the IPA, the following additional boundary markers are often used in conjunction with the IPA: ⟨μ⟩ for a mora or mora boundary, ⟨σ⟩ for a syllable or syllable boundary, ⟨+⟩ for a morpheme boundary, ⟨#⟩ for a word boundary (may be doubled, ⟨##⟩, for e.g. a breath-group boundary), ⟨$⟩ for a phrase or intermediate boundary and ⟨%⟩ for a prosodic boundary. For example, C# is a word-final consonant, %V a post-pausa vowel, and σC a syllable-initial consonant.

Pitch and tone

See also: tone letter

⟨ꜛ ꜜ⟩ are defined in the Handbook as "upstep" and "downstep", concepts from tonal languages. However, the upstep symbol can also be used for pitch reset, and the IPA Handbook uses it for prosody in the illustration for Portuguese, a non-tonal language.

Phonetic pitch and phonemic tone may be indicated by either diacritics placed over the nucleus of the syllable – e.g., high-pitch ⟨é⟩ – or by Chao tone letters placed either before or after the word or syllable. There are three graphic variants of the tone letters: with or without a stave, and facing left or facing right from the stave. The stave was introduced with the 1989 Kiel Convention, as was the option of placing a staved letter after the word or syllable, while retaining the older conventions. There are therefore six ways to transcribe pitch/tone in the IPA: i.e., ⟨é⟩, ⟨˦e⟩, ⟨e˦⟩, ⟨꜓e⟩, ⟨e꜓⟩ and ⟨ˉe⟩ for a high pitch/tone. Of the tone letters, only left-facing staved letters and a few representative combinations are shown in the summary on the Chart, and in practice it is currently more common for tone letters to occur after the syllable/word than before, as in the Chao tradition. Placement before the word is a carry-over from the pre-Kiel IPA convention, as is still the case for the stress and upstep/downstep marks. The IPA endorses the Chao tradition of using the left-facing tone letters, ⟨˥ ˦ ˧ ˨ ˩⟩, for underlying tone, and the right-facing letters, ⟨꜒ ꜓ ꜔ ꜕ ꜖⟩, for surface tone, as occurs in tone sandhi, and for the intonation of non-tonal languages. In the Portuguese illustration in the 1999 Handbook, tone letters are placed before a word or syllable to indicate prosodic pitch (equivalent to [↗︎] global rise and [↘︎] global fall, but allowing more precision), and in the Cantonese illustration they are placed after a word/syllable to indicate lexical tone. Theoretically therefore prosodic pitch and lexical tone could be simultaneously transcribed in a single text, though this is not a formalized distinction.

Rising and falling pitch, as in contour tones, are indicated by combining the pitch diacritics and letters in the table, such as grave plus acute for rising [ě] and acute plus grave for falling [ê]. Only six combinations of two diacritics are supported, and only across three levels (high, mid, low), despite the diacritics supporting five levels of pitch in isolation. The four other explicitly approved rising and falling diacritic combinations are high/mid rising [e᷄], low rising [e᷅], high falling [e᷇], and low/mid falling [e᷆].

The Chao tone letters, on the other hand, may be combined in any pattern, and are therefore used for more complex contours and finer distinctions than the diacritics allow, such as mid-rising [e˨˦], extra-high falling [e˥˦], etc. There are 20 such possibilities. However, in Chao's original proposal, which was adopted by the IPA in 1989, he stipulated that the half-high and half-low letters ⟨˦ ˨⟩ may be combined with each other, but not with the other three tone letters, so as not to create spuriously precise distinctions. With this restriction, there are 8 possibilities.

The old staveless tone letters tend to be more restricted than the staved letters, though not as restricted as the diacritics. Officially, they support as many distinctions as the staved letters, but typically only three pitch levels are distinguished. Unicode supports default or high-pitch ⟨ˉ ˊ ˋ ˆ ˇ ˜ ˙⟩ and low-pitch ⟨ˍ ˏ ˎ ꞈ ˬ ˷⟩. Only a few mid-pitch tones are supported – such as ⟨˗ ˴⟩ – and then only accidentally.

Although tone diacritics and tone letters are presented as equivalent on the chart, "this was done only to simplify the layout of the chart. The two sets of symbols are not comparable in this way." Using diacritics, a high tone is ⟨é⟩ and a low tone is ⟨è⟩; in tone letters, these are ⟨e˥⟩ and ⟨e˩⟩. One can double the diacritics for extra-high ⟨e̋⟩ and extra-low ⟨ȅ⟩; there is no parallel to this using tone letters. Instead, tone letters have mid-high ⟨e˦⟩ and mid-low ⟨e˨⟩; again, there is no equivalent among the diacritics. Thus in a three-register tone system, ⟨é ē è⟩ are equivalent to ⟨e˥ e˧ e˩⟩, while in a four-register system, ⟨e̋ é è ȅ⟩ may be equivalent to ⟨e˥ e˦ e˨ e˩⟩.

The correspondence breaks down even further once they start combining. For more complex tones, one may combine three or four tone diacritics in any permutation, though in practice only generic peaking (rising-falling) e᷈ and dipping (falling-rising) e᷉ combinations are used. Chao tone letters are required for finer detail (e˧˥˧, e˩˨˩, e˦˩˧, e˨˩˦, etc.). Although only 10 peaking and dipping tones were proposed in Chao's original, limited set of tone letters, phoneticians often make finer distinctions, and indeed an example is found on the IPA Chart. The system allows the transcription of 112 peaking and dipping pitch contours, including tones that are level for part of their length.

Original (restricted) set of Chao tone letters

Register	Level	Rising	Falling	Peaking	Dipping
e˩	e˩˩	e˩˧	e˧˩	e˩˧˩	e˧˩˧
e˨	e˨˨	e˨˦	e˦˨	e˨˦˨	e˦˨˦
e˧	e˧˧	e˧˥	e˥˧	e˧˥˧	e˥˧˥
e˦	e˦˦			e˧˥˩	e˧˩˥
e˥	e˥˥	e˩˥	e˥˩	e˩˥˧	e˥˩˧

More complex contours are possible. Chao gave an example of [꜔꜒꜖꜔] (mid-high-low-mid) from English prosody.

Chao tone letters generally appear after each syllable, for a language with syllable tone – ⟨a˧vɔ˥˩⟩ – or after the phonological word, for a language with word tone (⟨avɔ˧˥˩⟩). The IPA gives the option of placing the tone letters before the word or syllable – ⟨˧a˥˩vɔ⟩, ⟨˧˥˩avɔ⟩ – but this is rare for lexical tone. Reversed tone letters may be used to clarify that they apply to the following rather than to the preceding syllable – ⟨꜔a꜒꜖vɔ⟩, ⟨꜔꜒꜖avɔ⟩. The staveless letters are not directly supported by Unicode, but some fonts allow the stave in Chao tone letters to be suppressed.

Comparative degree

IPA diacritics may be doubled to indicate an extra degree (greater intensity) of the feature indicated. This is a productive process, but apart from extra-high and extra-low tones being marked by doubled high- and low-tone diacritics, ⟨ə̋, ə̏⟩, the major prosodic break ⟨‖⟩ being marked as a doubled minor break ⟨|⟩, and a couple other instances, such usage is not enumerated by the IPA.

For example, the stress mark may be doubled (or even tripled, etc.) to indicate an extra degree of stress, such as prosodic stress in English. An example in French, with a single stress mark for normal prosodic stress at the end of each prosodic unit (marked as a minor prosodic break), and a double or even triple stress mark for contrastive/emphatic stress: [ˈˈɑ̃ːˈtre | məˈsjø ‖ ˈˈvwala maˈdam ‖] Entrez monsieur, voilà madame. Similarly, a doubled secondary stress mark ⟨ˌˌ⟩ is commonly used for tertiary (extra-light) stress, though a proposal to officially adopt this was rejected. In a similar vein, the effectively obsolete staveless tone letters were once doubled for an emphatic rising intonation ⟨˶⟩ and an emphatic falling intonation ⟨˵⟩.

Length is commonly extended by repeating the length mark, which may be phonetic, as in [ĕ e eˑ eː eːˑ eːː] etc., as in English shhh! [ʃːːː], or phonemic, as in the "overlong" segments of Estonian:

• vere /vere/ 'blood [gen.sg.]', veere /veːre/ 'edge [gen.sg.]', veere /veːːre/ 'roll [imp. 2nd sg.]'
• lina /linɑ/ 'sheet', linna /linːɑ/ 'town [gen. sg.]', linna /linːːɑ/ 'town [ill. sg.]'

(Normally additional phonemic degrees of length are handled by the extra-short or half-long diacritic, i.e. ⟨e eˑ eː⟩ or ⟨ĕ e eː⟩, but the first two words in each of the Estonian examples are analyzed as typically short and long, /e eː/ and /n nː/, requiring a different remedy for the additional words.)

Delimiters are similar: double slashes indicate extra phonemic (morpho-phonemic), double square brackets especially precise transcription, and double parentheses especially unintelligible.

Occasionally other diacritics are doubled:

• Rhoticity in Badaga /be/ "mouth", /be˞/ "bangle", and /be˞˞/ "crop".
• Mild and strong aspiration, [kʰ], [kʰʰ].
• Nasalization, as in Palantla Chinantec lightly nasalized /ẽ/ vs heavily nasalized /ẽ̃/, though some care can be needed to distinguish this from the extIPA diacritic for velopharyngeal frication in disordered speech, /e͌/, which has also been analyzed as extreme nasalization.
• Weak vs strong ejectives, [kʼ], [kˮ].
• Especially lowered, e.g. [t̞̞] (or [t̞˕], if the former symbol does not display properly) for /t/ as a weak fricative in some pronunciations of register.
• Especially retracted, e.g. [ø̠̠] or [s̠̠], though some care might be needed to distinguish this from indications of alveolar or alveolarized articulation in extIPA, e.g. [s͇].
• Especially guttural, e.g. [ɫ] (velarized l), [ꬸ] (pharyngealized l).
• The transcription of strident and harsh voice as extra-creaky /a᷽/ may be motivated by the similarities of these phonations.

The extIPA provides combining parentheses for weak intensity, which when combined with a doubled diacritic indicate an intermediate degree. For instance, increasing degrees of nasalization of the vowel [e] might be written ⟨e ẽ᪻ ẽ ẽ̃᪻ ẽ̃⟩.

Ambiguous letters

As noted above, IPA letters are often used quite loosely in broad transcription if no ambiguity would arise in a particular language. Because of that, IPA letters have not generally been created for sounds that are not distinguished in individual languages. A distinction between voiced fricatives and approximants is only partially implemented by the IPA, for example. Even with the relatively recent addition of the palatal fricative ⟨ʝ⟩ and the velar approximant ⟨ɰ⟩ to the alphabet, other letters, though defined as fricatives, are often ambiguous between fricative and approximant. For forward places, ⟨β⟩ and ⟨ð⟩ can generally be assumed to be fricatives unless they carry a lowering diacritic. Rearward, however, ⟨ʁ⟩ and ⟨ʕ⟩ are perhaps more commonly intended to be approximants even without a lowering diacritic. ⟨h⟩ and ⟨ɦ⟩ are similarly either fricatives or approximants, depending on the language, or even glottal "transitions", without that often being specified in the transcription.

Another common ambiguity is among the letters for palatal consonants. ⟨c⟩ and ⟨ɟ⟩ are not uncommonly used as a typographic convenience for affricates, typically [t͜ʃ] and [d͜ʒ], while ⟨ɲ⟩ and ⟨ʎ⟩ are commonly used for palatalized alveolar [n̠ʲ] and [l̠ʲ]. To some extent this may be an effect of analysis, but it is common to match up single IPA letters to the phonemes of a language, without overly worrying about phonetic precision.

It has been argued that the lower-pharyngeal (epiglottal) fricatives ⟨ʜ⟩ and ⟨ʢ⟩ are better characterized as trills, rather than as fricatives that have incidental trilling. This has the advantage of merging the upper-pharyngeal fricatives [ħ, ʕ] together with the epiglottal plosive [ʡ] and trills [ʜ ʢ] into a single pharyngeal column in the consonant chart. However, in Shilha Berber the epiglottal fricatives are not trilled. Although they might be transcribed ⟨ħ̠ ʢ̠⟩ to indicate this, the far more common transcription is ⟨ʜ ʢ⟩, which is therefore ambiguous between languages.

Among vowels, ⟨a⟩ is officially a front vowel, but is more commonly treated as a central vowel. The difference, to the extent it is even possible, is not phonemic in any language.

For all phonetic notation, it is good practice for an author to specify exactly what they mean by the symbols that they use.

Superscript letters

Main article: Unicode subscripts and superscripts § Superscript IPA

See also: Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet § Superscript variants

Superscript IPA letters are used to indicate secondary aspects of articulation. These may be aspects of simultaneous articulation that are considered to be in some sense less dominant than the basic sound, or may be transitional articulations that are interpreted as secondary elements. Examples include secondary articulation; onsets, releases, aspiration and other transitions; shades of sound; light epenthetic sounds and incompletely articulated sounds. Morphophonemically, superscripts may be used for assimilation, e.g. ⟨aʷ⟩ for the effect of labialization on a vowel /a/, which may be realized as phonemic /o/. The IPA and ICPLA endorse Unicode encoding of superscript variants of all contemporary segmental letters in the IPA proper and of all additional fricatives in extIPA, including the "implicit" IPA retroflex letters ⟨ꞎ 𝼅 𝼈 ᶑ 𝼊 ⟩.

Superscripts are often used as a substitute for the tie bar, for example ⟨tᶴ⟩ for [t͜ʃ] and ⟨kᵖ⟩ or ⟨ᵏp⟩ for [k͜p]. However, in precise notation there is a difference between a fricative release in [tᶴ] and the affricate [t͜ʃ], between a velar onset in [ᵏp] and doubly articulated [k͜p].

Superscript letters can be meaningfully modified by combining diacritics, just as baseline letters can. For example, a superscript dental nasal in ⟨ⁿ̪d̪⟩, a superscript voiceless velar nasal in ⟨ᵑ̊ǂ⟩, and labial-velar prenasalization in ⟨ᵑ͡ᵐɡ͡b⟩. Although the diacritic may seem a bit oversized compared to the superscript letter it modifies, e.g. ⟨ᵓ̃⟩, this can be an aid to legibility, just as it is with the composite superscript c-cedilla ⟨ᶜ̧⟩ and rhotic vowels ⟨ᵊ˞ ᶟ˞⟩. Superscript length marks can be used to indicate the length of aspiration of a consonant, e.g. [pʰ tʰ𐞂 kʰ𐞁]. Another option is to use extIPA parentheses and a doubled diacritic: ⟨p⁽ʰ⁾ tʰ kʰʰ⟩.

Obsolete and nonstandard symbols

Main articles: Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet, Click letter, and Sinological extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet

A number of IPA letters and diacritics have been retired or replaced over the years. This number includes duplicate symbols, symbols that were replaced due to user preference, and unitary symbols that were rendered with diacritics or digraphs to reduce the inventory of the IPA. The rejected symbols are now considered obsolete, though some are still seen in the literature.

The IPA once had several pairs of duplicate symbols from alternative proposals, but eventually settled on one or the other. An example is the vowel letter ⟨ɷ⟩, rejected in favor of ⟨ʊ⟩. Affricates were once transcribed with ligatures, such as ⟨ʧ ʤ ⟩ (and others, some of which not found in Unicode). These have been officially retired but are still used. Letters for specific combinations of primary and secondary articulation have also been mostly retired, with the idea that such features should be indicated with tie bars or diacritics: ⟨ƍ⟩ for [zʷ] is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosives, ⟨ƥ ƭ ƈ ƙ ʠ ⟩, were dropped soon after their introduction and are now usually written ⟨ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ʄ̊ ɠ̊ ʛ̥ ⟩. The original set of click letters, ⟨ʇ, ʗ, ʖ, ʞ⟩, was retired but is still sometimes seen, as the current pipe letters ⟨ǀ, ǃ, ǁ, ǂ⟩ can cause problems with legibility, especially when used with brackets ([ ] or / /), the letter ⟨l⟩ (small L), or the prosodic marks ⟨|, ‖⟩. (For this reason, some publications which use the current IPA pipe letters disallow IPA brackets.)

Individual non-IPA letters may find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with:

• Affricates, such as the Americanist barred lambda ⟨ƛ⟩ for [t͜ɬ] or ⟨č⟩ for [t͜ʃ ].
• The Karlgren letters for Chinese vowels, ⟨ɿ, ʅ , ʮ, ʯ ⟩.
• Digits for tonal phonemes that have conventional numbers in a local tradition, such as the four tones of Standard Chinese. This may be more convenient for comparison between related languages and dialects than a phonetic transcription would be, because tones vary more unpredictably than segmental phonemes do.
• Digits for tone levels, which are simpler to typeset, though the lack of standardization can cause confusion (e.g. ⟨1⟩ is high tone in some languages but low tone in others; ⟨3⟩ may be high, medium or low tone, depending on the local convention).
• Iconic extensions of standard IPA letters that are implicit in the alphabet, such as retroflex ⟨ᶑ⟩ and ⟨ꞎ⟩. These are referred to in the Handbook and have been included in Unicode at IPA request.
• Even presidents of the IPA have used para-IPA notation, such as resurrecting the old diacritic ⟨◌̫⟩ for purely labialized sounds (not simultaneously velarized), the lateral fricative letter ⟨ꞎ ⟩, and either the old dot diacritic ⟨ṣ ẓ⟩ or the novel letters ⟨ ᶘ ᶚ⟩ for the not-quite-retroflex fricatives of Polish sz, ż and of Russian ш ж.

In addition, it is common to see ad hoc typewriter substitutions, generally capital letters, for when IPA support is not available, e.g. S for ⟨ ʃ ⟩. (See also SAMPA and X-SAMPA substitute notation.)

Extensions

Main article: Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet

Chart of the Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet (extIPA), as of 2015

The Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for Disordered Speech, commonly abbreviated "extIPA" and sometimes called "Extended IPA", are symbols whose original purpose was to accurately transcribe disordered speech. At the Kiel Convention in 1989, a group of linguists drew up the initial extensions, which were based on the previous work of the PRDS (Phonetic Representation of Disordered Speech) Group in the early 1980s. The extensions were first published in 1990, then modified, and published again in 1994 in the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, when they were officially adopted by the ICPLA. While the original purpose was to transcribe disordered speech, linguists have used the extensions to designate a number of sounds within standard communication, such as hushing, gnashing teeth, and smacking lips, as well as regular lexical sounds such as lateral fricatives that do not have standard IPA symbols.

In addition to the Extensions to the IPA for disordered speech, there are the conventions of the Voice Quality Symbols, which include a number of symbols for additional airstream mechanisms and secondary articulations in what they call "voice quality".

Associated notation

Capital letters and various characters on the number row of the keyboard are commonly used to extend the alphabet in various ways.

Associated symbols

There are various punctuation-like conventions for linguistic transcription that are commonly used together with IPA. Some of the more common are:

⟨*⟩

(a) A reconstructed form.

(b) An ungrammatical form (including an unphonemic form).

⟨**⟩

(a) A reconstructed form, deeper (more ancient) than a single ⟨*⟩, used when reconstructing even further back from already-starred forms.

(b) An ungrammatical form. A less common convention than ⟨*⟩ (b), this is sometimes used when reconstructed and ungrammatical forms occur in the same text.

⟨×⟩, ⟨✗⟩

An ungrammatical form. A less common convention than ⟨*⟩ (b), this is sometimes used when reconstructed and ungrammatical forms occur in the same text.

⟨?⟩

A doubtfully grammatical form.

⟨%⟩

A generalized form, such as a typical shape of a wanderwort that has not actually been reconstructed.

⟨#⟩

A word boundary – e.g. ⟨#V⟩ for a word-initial vowel.

⟨$⟩

A phonological word boundary; e.g. ⟨H$⟩ for a high tone that occurs in such a position.

⟨+⟩

A morpheme boundary; e.g. ⫽ˈnɛl+t⫽ for English knelt.

⟨_⟩

The location of a segment – e.g. ⟨V_V⟩ for an intervocalic position, or ⟨_#⟩ for word-final position.

⟨~⟩

Alternation or contrast – e.g. [f] ~ [v] or [f ~ v] for variation between [f] and [v], noting that a /uː/ ~ /ʊ/ contrast is maintained or lost, or indicating the change of a root in e.g. ⫽ˈniːl ~ ˈnɛl+t⫽ for English kneel ~ knelt.

⟨∅⟩

A null segment or morpheme. This may indicate the absence of an affix, e.g. ⟨kæt-∅⟩ for where an affix might appear but does not (cat instead of cats), or a deleted segment that leaves a feature behind, such as ⟨∅ʷ⟩ for an theoretical labialized segment that is only realized as labialization on adjacent segments.

Capital letters

Full capital letters are not used as IPA symbols, except as typewriter substitutes (e.g. N for ⟨ŋ⟩, S for ⟨ ʃ ⟩, O for ⟨ɔ⟩ – see SAMPA). They are, however, often used in conjunction with the IPA in two cases:

1. for (archi)phonemes and for natural classes of sounds (that is, as wildcards). The extIPA chart, for example, uses capital letters as wildcards in its illustrations.
2. as carrying letters for the Voice Quality Symbols.

Wildcards are commonly used in phonology to summarize syllable or word shapes, or to show the evolution of classes of sounds. For example, the possible syllable shapes of Mandarin can be abstracted as ranging from /V/ (an atonic vowel) to /CGVNᵀ/ (a consonant-glide-vowel-nasal syllable with tone), and word-final devoicing may be schematized as C → C̥/_#. They are also used in historical linguistics for a sound that is posited but whose nature has not been determined beyond some generic category such as {nasal} or {uvular}. In speech pathology, capital letters represent indeterminate sounds, and may be superscripted to indicate they are weakly articulated: e.g. [ᴰ] is a weak indeterminate alveolar, [ᴷ] a weak indeterminate velar.

There is a degree of variation between authors as to the capital letters used, but ⟨C⟩ for {consonant}, ⟨V⟩ for {vowel} and ⟨N⟩ for {nasal} are ubiquitous in English-language material. Other common conventions are ⟨T⟩ for {tone/accent} (tonicity), ⟨P⟩ for {plosive}, ⟨F⟩ for {fricative}, ⟨S⟩ for {sibilant}, ⟨G⟩ for {glide/semivowel}, ⟨L⟩ for {lateral} or {liquid}, ⟨R⟩ for {rhotic} or {resonant/sonorant}, ⟨₵⟩ for {obstruent}, ⟨Ʞ⟩ for {click}, ⟨A, E, O, Ɨ, U⟩ for {open, front, back, close, rounded vowel} and ⟨B, D, Ɉ, K, Q, Φ, H⟩ for {labial, alveolar, post-alveolar/palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, glottal consonant}, respectively, and ⟨X⟩ for {any sound}, as in ⟨CVX⟩ for a heavy syllable {CVC, CVV̯, CVː}. The letters can be modified with IPA diacritics, for example ⟨Cʼ⟩ for {ejective}, ⟨Ƈ ⟩ for {implosive}, ⟨N͡C⟩ or ⟨ᴺC⟩ for {prenasalized consonant}, ⟨Ṽ⟩ for {nasal vowel}, ⟨CʰV́⟩ for {aspirated CV syllable with high tone}, ⟨S̬⟩ for {voiced sibilant}, ⟨N̥⟩ for {voiceless nasal}, ⟨P͡F⟩ or ⟨Pꟳ⟩ for {affricate}, ⟨Cᴳ⟩ for a consonant with a glide as secondary articulation (e.g. ⟨Cʲ⟩ for {palatalized consonant} and ⟨Cʷ⟩ for {labialized consonant}) and ⟨D̪⟩ for {dental consonant}. ⟨H⟩, ⟨M⟩, ⟨L⟩ are also commonly used for high, mid and low tone, with ⟨LH⟩ for rising tone and ⟨HL⟩ for falling tone, rather than transcribing them overly precisely with IPA tone letters or with ambiguous digits.

Typical examples of archiphonemic use of capital letters are ⟨I⟩ for the Turkish harmonic vowel set {i y ɯ u}; ⟨D⟩ for the conflated flapped middle consonant of American English writer and rider; ⟨N⟩ for the homorganic syllable-coda nasal of languages such as Spanish and Japanese (essentially equivalent to the wild-card usage of the letter); and ⟨R⟩ in cases where a phonemic distinction between trill /r/ and flap /ɾ/ is conflated, as in Spanish enrejar /eNreˈxaR/ (the n is homorganic and the first r is a trill, but the second r is variable). Similar usage is found for phonemic analysis, where a language does not distinguish sounds that have separate letters in the IPA. For instance, Castillian Spanish has been analyzed as having phonemes /Θ/ and /S/, which surface as [θ] and [s] in voiceless environments and as [ð] and [z] in voiced environments (e.g. hazte /ˈaΘte/ → [ˈaθte], vs hazme /ˈaΘme/ → [ˈaðme], or las manos /laS ˈmanoS/ → [lazˈmanos]).

⟨V⟩, ⟨F⟩ and ⟨C⟩ have completely different meanings as Voice Quality Symbols, where they stand for "voice" (VoQS jargon for secondary articulation), "falsetto" and "creak". These three letters may take diacritics to indicate what kind of voice quality an utterance has, and may be used as carrier letters to extract a suprasegmental feature that occurs on all susceptible segments in a stretch of IPA. For instance, the transcription of Scottish Gaelic [kʷʰuˣʷt̪ʷs̟ʷ] 'cat' and [kʷʰʉˣʷt͜ʃʷ] 'cats' (Islay dialect) can be made more economical by extracting the suprasegmental labialization of the words: Vʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟] and Vʷ[kʰʉˣt͜ʃ]. The conventional wildcards ⟨X⟩ or ⟨C⟩ might be used instead of VoQS ⟨V⟩ so that the reader does not misinterpret ⟨Vʷ⟩ as meaning that only vowels are labialized (i.e. Xʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟] for all segments labialized, Cʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟] for all consonants labialized), or the carrier letter may be omitted altogether (e.g. ʷ[kʰuˣt̪s̟], [ʷkʰuˣt̪s̟] or [kʰuˣt̪s̟]ʷ). (See § Suprasegmentals for other transcription conventions.)

This summary is to some extent valid internationally, but linguistic material written in other languages may have different associations with capital letters used as wildcards. For example, in German ⟨K⟩ and ⟨V⟩ are used for Konsonant (consonant) and Vokal (vowel); in Russian, ⟨С⟩ and ⟨Г⟩ are used for согласный (soglasnyj, consonant) and гласный (glasnyj, vowel). In French, tone may be transcribed with ⟨H⟩ and ⟨B⟩ for haut (high) and bas (low).

Segments without letters

The blank cells on the summary IPA chart can be filled without much difficulty if the need arises.

The missing retroflex letters, namely ⟨ᶑ ꞎ 𝼅 𝼈 𝼊 ⟩, are "implicit" in the alphabet, and the IPA supported their adoption into Unicode. Attested in the literature are the retroflex implosive ⟨ᶑ ⟩, the voiceless retroflex lateral fricative ⟨ꞎ ⟩, the retroflex lateral flap ⟨𝼈 ⟩ and the retroflex click ⟨𝼊 ⟩; the first is also mentioned in the IPA Handbook, and the lateral fricatives are provided for by the extIPA.

The epiglottal trill is arguably covered by the generally trilled epiglottal "fricatives" ⟨ʜ ʢ⟩. Ad hoc letters for near-close central vowels, ⟨ᵻ ᵿ⟩, are used in some descriptions of English, though those are specifically reduced vowels – forming a set with the IPA reduced vowels ⟨ə ɐ⟩ – and the simple points in vowel space are easily transcribed with diacritics: ⟨ɪ̈ ʊ̈⟩ or ⟨ɨ̞ ʉ̞⟩. Diacritics are able to fill in most of the remainder of the charts. If a sound cannot be transcribed, an asterisk ⟨*⟩ may be used, either as a letter or as a diacritic (as in ⟨k*⟩ sometimes seen for the Korean "fortis" velar).

Consonants

Representations of consonant sounds outside of the core set are created by adding diacritics to letters with similar sound values. The Spanish bilabial and dental approximants are commonly written as lowered fricatives, [β̞] and [ð̞] respectively. Similarly, voiced lateral fricatives can be written as raised lateral approximants, [ɭ˔ ʎ̝ ʟ̝], though the extIPA also provides ⟨𝼅⟩ for the first of these. A few languages such as Banda have a bilabial flap as the preferred allophone of what is elsewhere a labiodental flap. It has been suggested that this be written with the labiodental flap letter and the advanced diacritic, [ⱱ̟]. Similarly, a labiodental trill would be written [ʙ̪] (bilabial trill and the dental sign), and the labiodental plosives are now universally ⟨p̪ b̪⟩ rather than the ad hoc letters ⟨ȹ ȸ⟩ once found in Bantuist literature. Other taps can be written as extra-short plosives or laterals, e.g. [ ɟ̆ ɢ̆ ʟ̆], though in some cases the diacritic would need to be written below the letter. A retroflex trill can be written as a retracted [r̠], just as non-subapical retroflex fricatives sometimes are. The remaining pulmonic consonants – the uvular laterals ([ʟ̠ 𝼄̠ ʟ̠˔]) and the palatal trill – while not strictly impossible, are very difficult to pronounce and are unlikely to occur even as allophones in the world's languages.

Vowels

The vowels are similarly manageable by using diacritics for raising, lowering, fronting, backing, centering, and mid-centering. For example, the unrounded equivalent of [ʊ] can be transcribed as mid-centered [ɯ̽], and the rounded equivalent of [æ] as raised [ɶ̝] or lowered [œ̞] (though for those who conceive of vowel space as a triangle, simple [ɶ] already is the rounded equivalent of [æ]). True mid vowels are lowered [e̞ ø̞ ɘ̞ ɵ̞ ɤ̞ o̞] or raised [ɛ̝ œ̝ ɜ̝ ɞ̝ ʌ̝ ɔ̝], while centered [ɪ̈ ʊ̈] and [ä] (or, less commonly, [ɑ̈]) are near-close and open central vowels, respectively.

The only known vowels that cannot be represented in this scheme are vowels with unexpected roundedness. For unambiguous transcription, such sounds would require dedicated diacritics. Possibilities include ⟨ʏʷ⟩ or ⟨ɪʷ⟩ for protrusion and ⟨uᵝ⟩ (or VoQS ⟨ɯᶹ⟩) for compression. However, these transcriptions suggest that the sounds are diphthongs, and so while they may be clear for a language like Swedish where they are diphthongs, they may be misleading for languages such as Japanese where they are monophthongs. The extIPA 'spread' diacritic ⟨◌͍⟩ is sometimes seen for compressed ⟨u͍⟩, ⟨o͍⟩, ⟨ɔ͍⟩, ⟨ɒ͍⟩, though again the intended meaning would need to be explained or they would be interpreted as being spread the way that cardinal ⟦i⟧ is. For protrusion (w-like labialization without velarization), Ladefoged & Maddieson use the old IPA omega diacritic for labialization, ⟨◌̫⟩, for protruded ⟨y᫇⟩, ⟨ʏ̫⟩, ⟨ø̫⟩, ⟨œ̫⟩. This is an adaptation of an old IPA convention of rounding an unrounded vowel letter like i with a subscript omega (⟨◌̫⟩) and unrounding a rounded letter like u with a subscript turned omega. As of 2024, the turned omega diacritic is in the pipeline for Unicode, and is under consideration for compression in extIPA. Kelly & Local use a combining w diacritic ⟨◌ᪿ⟩ for protrusion (e.g. ⟨yᷱ øᪿ⟩) and a combining ʍ diacritic ⟨◌ᫀ⟩ for compression (e.g. ⟨uᫀ oᫀ⟩). Because their transcriptions are manuscript, these are effectively the same symbols as the old IPA diacritics, which indeed are historically cursive w and ʍ. However, the more angular ⟨◌ᫀ⟩ of typescript might misleadingly suggest the vowel is protruded and voiceless (like [ʍ]) rather than compressed and voiced.

Symbol names

Main article: Naming conventions of the International Phonetic Alphabet

In both print and speech, an IPA symbol is often distinguished from the sound it transcribes because IPA letters very often do not have their cardinal IPA values in practice. This is commonly the case in phonemic and broad phonetic transcription, making articulatory descriptions of IPA letters, such as "mid front rounded vowel" or "voiced velar stop", inappropriate as names for those letters. While the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association states that no official names exist for its symbols, it admits the presence of one or two common names for each. The symbols also have nonce names in the Unicode standard. In many cases, the names in Unicode and the IPA Handbook differ. For example, the Handbook calls ⟨ɛ⟩ "epsilon", while Unicode calls it "small letter open e".

The traditional names of the Latin and Greek letters are usually used for unmodified letters. Letters which are not directly derived from these alphabets, such as ⟨ʕ⟩, may have a variety of names, sometimes based on the appearance of the symbol or on the sound that it represents. In Unicode, some of the letters of Greek origin have Latin forms for use in IPA; the others use the characters from the Greek block.

For diacritics, there are two methods of naming. For traditional diacritics, the IPA notes the name in a well known language; for example, ⟨é⟩ is "e-acute", based on the name of the diacritic in English and French. Non-traditional diacritics are often named after objects they resemble, so ⟨d̪⟩ is called "d-bridge".

Geoffrey Pullum and William Ladusaw list a variety of names in use for both current and retired IPA symbols in their Phonetic Symbol Guide. Many of them found their way into Unicode.

Computer support

Unicode

Main article: Phonetic symbols in Unicode § IPA

Unicode supports nearly all of the IPA. Apart from basic Latin and Greek and general punctuation, the primary blocks are IPA Extensions, Spacing Modifier Letters and Combining Diacritical Marks, with lesser support from Phonetic Extensions, Phonetic Extensions Supplement, Combining Diacritical Marks Supplement, and scattered characters elsewhere. The extended IPA is supported primarily by those blocks and Latin Extended-G.

IPA numbers

Main article: IPA number

After the Kiel Convention in 1989, most IPA symbols were assigned an identifying number to prevent confusion between similar characters during the printing of manuscripts. The codes were never much used and have been superseded by Unicode.

Typefaces

The sequence ⟨˨˦˧꜒꜔꜓k͜𝼄a͎̽᷅ꟸ⟩ in the fonts Gentium Book Plus, Andika, Brill, Noto Serif, DejaVu Sans and Calibri. All but DejaVu align diacritics well. Asterisks are characters not supported by that font. In Noto and DejaVu, the red tone letters do not link properly, and in DejaVu the stacked diacritics overstrike each other. This is a test sequence: Noto and Calibri support most IPA adequately.

Many typefaces have support for IPA characters, but good diacritic rendering remains rare. Web browsers generally do not need any configuration to display IPA characters, provided that a typeface capable of doing so is available to the operating system.

Free fonts

Typefaces that provide full IPA and nearly full extIPA support, including properly rendering the diacritics, include Gentium Plus, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, and Andika developed by SIL International. Indeed, the IPA chose Doulos to publish their chart in Unicode format. In addition to the level of support found in commercial and system fonts, these fonts support the full range of old-style (pre-Kiel) staveless tone letters, through a character variant option that suppresses the stave of the Chao tone letters. They also have an option to maintain the [a] ~ [ɑ] vowel distinction in italics. The only notable gaps are with the extIPA: the combining parentheses, which enclose diacritics, are not supported, nor is the enclosing circle that marks unidentified sounds, and which Unicode considers to be a copy-edit mark and thus not eligible for Unicode support.

The basic Latin Noto fonts commissioned by Google also have significant IPA support, including diacritic placement, only failing with the more obscure IPA and extIPA characters and superscripts of the Latin Extended-F and Latin Extended-G blocks. The extIPA parentheses are included, but they do not enclose diacritics as they are supposed to.

DejaVu is the second free Unicode font chosen by the IPA to publish their chart. It was last updated in 2016 and so does not support the Latin F or G blocks. Stacked diacritics tend to overstrike each other.

As of 2018, the IPA was developing their own font, unitipa, based on TIPA.

Proprietary system fonts

Calibri, the default font of Microsoft Office, has nearly complete IPA support with good diacritic rendering, though it is not as complete as some free fonts (see image at right). Other widespread Microsoft fonts, such as Arial and Times New Roman, have poor support.

The Apple system fonts Geneva, Lucida Grande and Hiragino (certain weights) have only basic IPA support.

Notable commercial fonts

Brill has complete IPA and extIPA coverage of characters added to Unicode by 2020, with good diacritic and tone-letter support. It is a commercial font but is freely available for non-commercial use.

ASCII and keyboard transliterations

Further information: Comparison of ASCII encodings of the International Phonetic Alphabet

Several systems have been developed that map the IPA symbols to ASCII characters. Notable systems include SAMPA and X-SAMPA. The usage of mapping systems in on-line text has to some extent been adopted in the context input methods, allowing convenient keying of IPA characters that would be otherwise unavailable on standard keyboard layouts.

IETF language tags

IETF language tags have registered fonipa as a variant subtag identifying text as written in IPA. Thus, an IPA transcription of English could be tagged as en-fonipa. For the use of IPA without attribution to a concrete language, und-fonipa is available.

Computer input using on-screen keyboard

Online IPA keyboard utilities are available, though none of them cover the complete range of IPA symbols and diacritics. Examples are the IPA 2018 i-charts hosted by the IPA, IPA character picker by Richard Ishida at GitHub, Type IPA phonetic symbols at TypeIt.org, and an IPA Chart keyboard by Weston Ruter also at GitHub. In April 2019, Google's Gboard for Android added an IPA keyboard to its platform. For iOS there are multiple free keyboard layouts available, such as the IPA Phonetic Keyboard.

See also

• Afroasiatic phonetic notation – Phonetic notationPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Americanist phonetic notation – Phonetic alphabet developed in the 1880s
• Articulatory phonetics – A branch of linguistics studying how humans make sounds
• Case variants of IPA letters – International Phonetic Alphabet variants
• Cursive forms of the International Phonetic Alphabet – Deprecated cursive forms of IPA symbols
• Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet – Disordered speech additions to the phonetic alphabet
• Index of phonetics articles
• International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration – Transliteration scheme for Indic scripts
• Sound correspondences between English accents
• List of international common standards
• Luciano Canepari – Italian linguist (born 1947)
• Phonetic symbols in Unicode
• RFE Phonetic Alphabet – phonetic transcription system for Iberian languages, proposed by Tomás Navarro Tomás and adopted by Centro de Estudios Históricos for use in its journal Revista de Filología Española (whence its name)Pages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• SAMPA – Computer-readable phonetic script
• Semyon Novgorodov – Yakut politician and linguist – inventor of IPA-based Yakut scripts
• TIPA – TeX macro package provides IPA support for LaTeX
• UAI phonetic alphabet – Phonetic transcriptionPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet – Phonetic alphabet for Uralic languagesPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Voice Quality Symbols – Set of phonetic symbols used for voice quality, such as to transcribe disordered speech
• X-SAMPA – Remapping of the IPA into ASCII

References

Works cited

• International Phonetic Association (1999). Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-65236-7. (hb); ISBN 0-521-63751-1 (pb).
• Roach, P.J. (1989). "Report on the 1989 Kiel convention". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 19 (2): 67–80. doi:10.1017/s0025100300003868. S2CID 249412330.
• International Phonetic Association (1949). The Principles of the International Phonetic Association: being a description of the International Phonetic Alphabet and the manner of using it, illustrated by texts in 51 languages.
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19815-6.
• Kelly, John; Local, John (1989). Doing Phonology: Observing, Recording, Interpreting. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-2894-9.
• Heselwood, Barry (30 November 2013). Phonetic Transcription in Theory and Practice. Edinburgh University Press. doi:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640737.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-7486-4073-7. S2CID 60269763. Archived from the original on 29 May 2023. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
• Laver, John (1994). Principles of Phonetics. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-45031-4. (hb); ISBN 0-521-45655-X (pb).
• Esling, John H. (2010). "Phonetic Notation". In Hardcastle, William J.; Laver, John; Gibbon, Fiona E. (eds.). The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 678–702. doi:10.1002/9781444317251.ch18. ISBN 978-1-4051-4590-9.

Further reading

• Ball, Martin J.; John H. Esling; B. Craig Dickson (1995). "The VoQS system for the transcription of voice quality". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 25 (2): 71–80. doi:10.1017/S0025100300005181. S2CID 145791575.
• Hill, Kenneth C.; Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Ladusaw, William (March 1988). "Review of Phonetic Symbol Guide by G. K. Pullum & W. Ladusaw". Language. 64 (1): 143–144. doi:10.2307/414792. JSTOR 414792.
• Jones, Daniel (1988). English pronouncing dictionary (revised 14th ed.). London: Dent. ISBN 0-521-86230-2. OCLC 18415701.
• Ladefoged, Peter (September 1990). "The revised International Phonetic Alphabet". Language. 66 (3): 550–552. doi:10.2307/414611. JSTOR 414611.
• Ladefoged, Peter; Morris Halle (September 1988). "Some major features of the International Phonetic Alphabet". Language. 64 (3): 577–582. doi:10.2307/414533. JSTOR 414533.
• Skinner, Edith; Timothy Monich; Lilene Mansell (1990). Speak with Distinction. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers. ISBN 1-55783-047-9.
• Fromkin, Victoria; Rodman, Robert; Hyams, Nina (2011). An Introduction to Language (9th ed.). Boston: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. pp. 233–234. ISBN 978-1-4282-6392-5.

External links

• Official website
• Interactive IPA chart