Kirshenbaum

System for representing the International Phonetic Alphabet in ASCII format

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

Comparison of Kirshenbaum with X-SAMPA

The system 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	Kirshenbaum
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	`%`	`,`

Kirshenbaum 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.

Consonant chart

Kirshenbaum chart of consonants (the paired signs are voiceless/voiced consonants)
Place of articulation →	Bilabial	Labio‐ dental	Dental	Alveolar	Retro‐ flex	Palato‐ alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio‐ velar	Pharyn‐ geal	Glottal
Place of articulation →	Labial		Coronal				Dorsal				Laryngeal		Alveolar laterals
Manner of articulation ↓	Bilabial	Labio‐ dental	Dental	Alveolar	Retro‐ flex	Palato‐ alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio‐ velar	Pharyn‐ geal	Glottal
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			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

IPA help
audio
full chart
template

IPA: Non-pulmonic consonants

		BL	LD	D	A	PA	RF	P	V	U	EG
Ejective	Stop	pʼ			tʼ		ʈʼ	cʼ	kʼ	qʼ	ʡʼ
	Affricate		p̪fʼ	t̪θʼ	tsʼ	t̠ʃʼ	tʂʼ		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
Implosive	Voiceless	ɓ̥			ɗ̥		ᶑ̊	ʄ̊	ɠ̊	ʛ̥

IPA help
audio
full chart
template

Vowel chart

	Front	Central	Back	Rhotic
Kirshenbaum 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)
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 Kirshenbaum 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 Kirshenbaum 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]

Notes and references

Notes

^ ^a ^b Kirshenbaum assigned ⟨c!⟩ to IPA ⟨ʗ⟩, which it used indifferently for both alveolar ⟨ǃ⟩ and palatal ⟨ǂ⟩ clicks.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c Kirshenbaum, Evan (2011-09-06). "Representing IPA phonetics in ASCII" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-04-19.
^ Kirshenbaum, Evan. "Hewlett Packard Labs". HP labs. Archived from the original on 2004-02-19. Retrieved 2005-09-20.
^ Moran, Steve; Cysouw, Michael (2018). The Unicode Cookbook for Linguistics. Language Science Press. p. 46. doi:10.5281/zenodo.1296780. ISBN 9783961100903. ISSN 2364-8899.
^ Kirshenbaum, Evan. "Usenet IPA/ASCII transcription". Archived from the original on 2011-09-26.
^ Kirshenbaum, Evan. "FAQ: Summary of IPA/ASCII transcription for English". Archived from the original on 2011-08-08.
^ Korpela, Jukka K. (28 June 2006). Unicode Explained. O'Reilly Media. p. 367. ISBN 9780596101213.
^ van Leussen, Jan-Wilem; Tromp, Maarten (26 July 2007), Latin to Speech, p. 6, CiteSeerX 10.1.1.396.7811
^ "Language Subtag Registry". IANA. 2021-03-05. Retrieved 30 April 2021.

External links

Kirshenbaum specification (PDF file)
Tutorial and guide with sound samples
History

International Phonetic Alphabet (chart)

IPA topics

IPA	International Phonetic Association History of the alphabet Extensions for disordered speech (extIPA) Voice Quality Symbols (VoQS) Journal of the IPA (JIPA)
Special topics	Cursive forms Case variants Obsolete and nonstandard symbols Naming conventions Sinological extensions World Orthography IPA chart for English dialects
Encodings	ASCII encodings SAMPA X-SAMPA Kirshenbaum TIPA Phonetic symbols in Unicode IPA number IPA Braille

Consonants

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			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 affricate									ts	dz	t̠ʃ	d̠ʒ	tʂ	dʐ	tɕ	dʑ
Non-sibilant affricate	pɸ	bβ	p̪f	b̪v			t̪θ	d̪ð	tɹ̝̊	dɹ̝	t̠ɹ̠̊˔	d̠ɹ̠˔			cç	ɟʝ	kx	ɡɣ	qχ	ɢʁ	ʡʜ	ʡʢ	ʔh
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 affricate									tɬ	dɮ			tꞎ	d𝼅	c𝼆	ɟʎ̝	k𝼄	ɡʟ̝
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

IPA help
audio
full chart
template

Symbols to the right in a cell are voiced, to the left are voiceless. Shaded areas denote articulations judged impossible.

Non-pulmonic consonants

		BL	LD	D	A	PA	RF	P	V	U	EG
Ejective	Stop	pʼ			tʼ		ʈʼ	cʼ	kʼ	qʼ	ʡʼ
	Affricate		p̪fʼ	t̪θʼ	tsʼ	t̠ʃʼ	tʂʼ		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
Implosive	Voiceless	ɓ̥			ɗ̥		ᶑ̊	ʄ̊	ɠ̊	ʛ̥

IPA help
audio
full chart
template

Co-articulated consonants

Labial–alveolar

Labial–velar

Fricative/approximant

ɥ̊

Labial–palatal

Labial–velar

Sj-sound (variable)

Lateral approximant

Velarized alveolar

Labial–velar

Labial–alveolar

IPA help
full chart
template

Other	Nasal labial–velar approximant [w̃] Nasal palatal approximant [j̃] Voiceless bidental fricative [h̪͆] Voiceless bilabially post-trilled dental stop [t̪ʙ̥] Voiceless nasal glottal approximant [h̃]