Usenet ASCII-IPA transcription

See also: Comparison of ASCII encodings of the International Phonetic Alphabet

ASCII-IPA or erkIPA is a transliteration system used to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in ASCII, in order to allow typewriting IPA symbols with a regular keyboard. It was developed for Usenet, notably the newsgroups sci.lang and alt.usage.english. It is sometimes called Kirshenbaum notation or even Kirshenbaum /ˈkɜːrʃənbɔːm/, after Evan Kirshenbaum, who led the collaboration that created it, and the Kirshenbaum specification that defines it. The eSpeak open source software speech synthesizer uses this ASCII-IPA scheme.

Comparison of Usenet ASCII-IPA with X-SAMPA

ASCII-IPA uses almost all lower-case letters to represent the directly corresponding IPA character, but unlike X-SAMPA, has the notable exception of the letter 'r'. A non-comprehensive list of sounds where the two systems use different characters:

Sound	IPA	X-SAMPA	Usenet
alveolar trill	r	r	r<trl>
alveolar approximant	ɹ	r\	r
near-open front unrounded vowel	æ	{	&
open back rounded vowel	ɒ	Q	A.
open-mid central unrounded vowel	ɜ	3	V"
primary stress	ˈ	"	'
secondary stress	ˌ	%	,

ASCII-IPA charts of consonants and vowels

This chart is based on information provided in the Kirshenbaum specification.^[1][2] It may also be helpful to compare it to the SAMPA chart or X-SAMPA chart ~ see Comparison of ASCII encodings of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Consonant chart

ASCII-IPA chart of consonants (the paired signs are voiceless/voiced consonants)

Place of articulation →	Labial		Coronal				Dorsal				Laryngeal		Alveolar laterals
	Bilabial	Labio‐ dental	Dental	Alveolar	Retro‐ flex	Palato‐ alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio‐ velar	Pharyn‐ geal	Glottal
Manner of articulation ↓
Nasals	m	M	n[	n	n.		n^	N	n"	n<lbv>
Stops	p b		t[ d[	t d	t. d.		c J	k g	q G	t<lbv> d<lbv>		?
Fricatives	P B	f v	T D	s z	s. z.	S Z	C C<vcd>	x Q	X g"	w<vls> w	H H<vcd>	h<?>	s<lat> z<lat>
Approximants		r<lbd>	r[	r	r.		j	j<vel>	g"	w		h
Laterals			l[	l	l.		l^	L
Trills	b<trl>			r<trl>					r"
Flaps				*	*.								*<lat>
Ejectives	p`		t[`	t`			c`	k`	q`
Implosives	b`		d`	d`			J`	g`	G`
Clicks	p!		t!	c![Note 1]			c![Note 1]	k!					l!

The IPA consonant chart, for comparison, uses many symbols that are less widely supported:

IPA: Pulmonic consonants
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 n̪̊ n̪ n̥ n n̠̊ n̠ ɳ̊ ɳ ɲ̊ ɲ ŋ̊ ŋ ɴ̥ ɴ Plosive p b p̪ b̪ t̼ d̼ t̪ d̪ t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ Sibilant fricative s̪ z̪ 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 β̞ ʋ ð̞ ɹ ɹ̠ ɻ j ɰ ʁ̞ ʔ̞ Tap/flap ⱱ̟ ⱱ ɾ̼ ɾ̥ ɾ ɽ̊ ɽ ɢ̆ ʡ̮ Trill ʙ̥ ʙ r̥ r r̠ ɽ̊r̥ ɽr ʀ̥ ʀ ʜ ʢ Lateral fricative ɬ̪ ɬ ɮ ꞎ 𝼅 𝼆 ʎ̝ 𝼄 ʟ̝ Lateral approximant l̪ l̥ l l̠ ɭ̊ ɭ ʎ̥ ʎ ʟ̥ ʟ ʟ̠ Lateral tap/flap ɺ̥ ɺ 𝼈̊ 𝼈 ʎ̮ ʟ̆
IPA help  audio full chart template

IPA: Non-pulmonic consonants
BL LD D A PA RF P V U Ejective Stop pʼ tʼ ʈʼ cʼ kʼ qʼ Affricate p̪fʼ t̪θʼ tsʼ t̠ʃʼ tʂʼ tɕʼ kxʼ qχʼ Fricative ɸʼ fʼ θʼ sʼ ʃʼ ʂʼ ɕʼ xʼ χʼ Lateral affricate tɬʼ c𝼆ʼ k𝼄ʼ q𝼄ʼ Lateral fricative ɬʼ Click (top: velar; bottom: uvular) Tenuis kʘ qʘ kǀ qǀ kǃ qǃ k𝼊 q𝼊 kǂ qǂ Voiced ɡʘ ɢʘ ɡǀ ɢǀ ɡǃ ɢǃ ɡ𝼊 ɢ𝼊 ɡǂ ɢǂ Nasal ŋʘ ɴʘ ŋǀ ɴǀ ŋǃ ɴǃ ŋ𝼊 ɴ𝼊 ŋǂ ɴǂ ʞ   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
IPA help  audio full chart template

Vowel chart

ASCII-IPA simplified chart of vowels (the paired signs are unrounded/rounded vowels; symbols in parentheses designate vowels that exist in some oral languages, but do not have IPA signs)
	Front	Central	Back	Rhotic
Close	i y	i" u"	u- u
Near-close	I I.		(U-) U
Close-mid	e Y	@<umd> @.	o- o	R<umd>
Mid		@		R
Open-mid	E W	V" O"	V O
Near-open	&	&"	(no symbols)
Open	a a.	(a" A".)	A A.

The IPA vowel chart, by comparison, uses many symbols that are less widely supported:

IPA: Vowels
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
IPA help  audio full chart template Legend: unrounded • rounded

Vowel modifiers and diacritics

Modifiers and diacritics follow the symbol they modify.

Modifier/diacritic	Meaning
~	Nasalized
:	Long
-	Unrounded
.	Rounded
"	Centralized
<?>	Murmured
<r>	Rhoticized

Stress is indicated by ' for primary stress, and , for secondary stress, placed before the stressed syllable.

Background

The ASCII-IPA system started developing in August 1992 through a usenet group,^[3] after "being fed up with describing the sound of words by using other words".^[4] It should be usable for both phonemic and narrow phonetic transcription.

• It should be possible to represent all symbols and diacritics in the IPA.
• The previous guideline notwithstanding, it is expected that (as in the past) most use will be in transcribing English, so where tradeoffs are necessary, decisions should be made in favor of ease of representation of phonemes which are common in English.
• The representation should be readable.
• It should be possible to mechanically translate from the representation to a character set which includes IPA. The reverse would also be nice.^[1]

The developers decided to use the existing IPA alphabet, mapping each segment to a single keyboard character, and adding extra ASCII characters optionally for IPA diacritics.

An early (1993), different set in ASCII was derived from the pronunciation guide in Merriam-Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, which uses straight letters to describe the sound.^[5]

Kirshenbaum's document, Representing IPA phonetics in ASCII,^[1] is commonly used as an example of an "IPA ASCII" system.^[6]

The eSpeak software speech synthesizer uses the ASCII-IPA scheme to represent phonemes with ASCII characters.^[7]

Encoding

IETF language tags have registered fonkirsh as a variant subtag identifying text as transcribed in this convention.^[8]