Kirshenbaum, sometimes called ASCII-IPA or erkIPA, is a system used to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in ASCII. 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 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'. Examples where the two systems have a different mapping between characters and sounds are:
| 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 | % | , |
Contents |
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.
| Place of articulation → | Labial | Coronal | Dorsal | Radical | Glottal | Alveolar laterals | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilabial | Labio‐ dental |
Dental | Alveolar | Retro‐ flex |
Palato‐ alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Labio‐ velar |
Pharyn‐ geal |
|||
| 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! | c! | k! | l! | |||||||
| Kirshenbaum simplified chart of vowels (the paired signs are unrounded/rounded vowels; symbols in parentheses designate vowels that exist in some spoken languages, but do not have IPA signs) |
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| 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. | |
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.