Kirshenbaum Totally Explained

Everything about Kirshenbaum totally explained

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`
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.(External Link), (External Link) It may also be helpful to compare it to the SAMPA chart or X-SAMPA chart.

Consonant chart

consonants (the paired signs are voiceless/voiced consonants)> Place of articulation → Bilabial Manner of articulation ↓

Labial		Coronal				Dorsal				Radical	Glottal	Alveolar laterals
Labio‐ dental	Dental	Alveolar	Retro‐ flex	Palato‐ alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio‐ velar	Pharyn‐ geal
Labio‐ dental	Dental	Alveolar	Retro‐ flex	Palato‐ alveolar	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Labio‐ velar	Pharyn‐ geal
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 z
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!

Vowel chart

Kirshenbaum simplified chart of vowels (the paired signs are unrounded/rounded vowels; symbols in parentheses designate vowels that exist in some spoken languages, but don't 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.`

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.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Kirshenbaum'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://kirshenbaum.totallyexplained.com">Kirshenbaum Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.