Page 26 - Summer 2021

LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT
Figure 3. International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) System for Consonants. Top row, where sounds are formed in the mouth. Left column, how the airstream is modified in the production of individual speech sounds. Available at bit.ly/3py8Oh1, license by Creative Commons.
Figure 4. A: Vowel chart, how vowels are produced. Left column, mouth aperture. Top row, movement of the tongue. Front, the tongue moves forward toward the front teeth; central, a neutral tongue position; back, the tongue retracts toward the back of the mouth. B: Diacritics chart, signs placed under, above, or next to symbols to indicate subtle modifications in pronunciation.
Phonetic Transcription
The International Phonetic Alphabet (International Phonetic Association, 1996) is used to transcribe speech sounds phonetically. It is a technique that was devised by linguists in 1886 to represent speech sounds as accurately as humanly possible. The IPA symbols used in tran- scription are displayed in Figures 3 and 4. The unique symbols in Figures 3 and 4A are arranged in such a way that they represent the areas in the mouth where a sound is produced, how air from the lungs or ambient air is modified, and what the tongue and other articulators do when speech sounds are made. Each symbol represents one and only one sound, and each sound is represented by one and only one symbol.
The IPA system is patterned after the table of elements used in chemistry and consists of some 86 unique symbols for consonants, 28 vowels, 33 diacritics (signs placed above, below, or next to symbols to show a slight modification in pronunciation), and 5 pitch levels (Pullum and Ladusaw, 1986). This impressive arsenal has been used and continues to be used to document endangered languages all over the world. Gambarage (2017) refers to it as “the lingua franca for linguists,” adding that “the IPA transcription is not intended for native speakers; it is for the wider linguistic community who will use the data for analysis and comparative studies.” Ladefoged (2003) notes that it was the primary documenta- tion method during the first half of the twentieth century. Despite its popularity among linguists, critics have long charged that IPA transcription is far from ideal because it relies exclusively on the transcriber’s own hearing acuity.
26 Acoustics Today • Summer 2021