Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet possesses a variety of obsolete and nonstandard symbols. Throughout the history of the IPA, characters representing phonetic values have been modified or completely replaced. An example is for standard. Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that such things should be indicated with diacritics: for is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series has been dropped.
Other characters have been added in for specific phonemes which do not possess a specific symbol in the IPA. Those studying modern Chinese phonology have used to represent the sound of -i in Pinyin hanzi which has been variously described as,, or.
There are also unsupported symbols from local traditions that find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with affricates such as, and many Americanist symbols.
While the IPA does not itself have a set of capital letters, many languages have adopted symbols from the IPA as part of their orthographies, and in such cases they have invented capital variants of these. This is especially common in Africa. An example is Kabiyé of northern Togo, which has Ɔ Ɛ Ŋ Ɣ. Other pseudo-IPA capitals supported by Unicode are Ɓ/Ƃ Ƈ Ɗ/Ƌ Ə/Ǝ Ɠ Ħ Ɯ Ɲ Ɵ Ʃ Ʈ Ʊ Ʋ Ʒ.
Capital letters are also used as cover symbols in phonotactic descriptions: C=Consonant, V=Vowel, etc.
This list does not include commonplace extensions of the IPA, such as doubling a symbol for a greater degree of a feature, nor superscripting for a lesser degree of a feature. The asterisk, as in for the fortis stop of Korean, is the convention the IPA uses when it has no symbol for a phone or feature.
For symbols and values which were discarded by 1932, see History of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
| Symbol or exemplar | Name | Meaning | Standard IPA equivalent | Notes |
| question mark | glottal stop | typewriter substitution | ||
| digit seven | glottal stop | typewriter substitution | ||
| turned small delta | a voiced "labialized" alveolar or dental fricative | Intended for the voiced whistled sibilant, ɀ, of Shona and related languages | ||
| small sigma | a voiceless "labialized" alveolar or dental fricative | Intended for the voiceless whistled sibilant, ȿ, of Shona and related languages | ||
| ezh with tail | labialized voiced postalveolar fricative | Intended for w before front vowels in Twi; may also be used for the lightly rounded English. | ||
| reversed esh with top loop | labialized voiceless postalveolar fricative | Intended for hw before front vowels in Twi; may also be used for the lightly rounded English. | ||
| barred two | voiced alveolar affricate | withdrawn 1976 | ||
| rotated epiglottal plosive | voiceless alveolar affricate | withdrawn 1976 | ||
| right-leg N | moraic nasal | ,, | Intended for the moraic nasal of Japanese. withdrawn 1976 | |
| letters with left hook | palatalization | Typically used in the transcription of Slavic languages such as Russian. superseded 1989 | ||
| double-loop g | voiced velar fricative | From 1895 to 1900, represented that consonant before 1895, after 1900 | ||
| double-loop g | voiced velar plosive | The standard Unicode Basic Latin/ASCII lower-case Times New Roman, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL, DejaVu Serif, serif;">g may have a double-loop g glyph. The preferred IPA single-loop g is in the IPA Extensions Unicode block. For a time it was proposed that the double-loop g might be used for and the single-loop g for, but the distinction never caught on. | ||
| single-loop g with stroke | voiced velar fricative | Superseded double-loop g in 1900, superseded by gamma between 1928 and 1930. The character ǥ may not have the single-loop shape in some fonts. | ||
| etc. | subscript w | labialization | etc. | Diacritic may appear above letters with descenders such as and. superseded 1989 |
| curly-tail ezh | voiced alveolo-palatal fricative | Irregular, instead of with a tail. withdrawn 1989 | ||
| curly-tail esh | voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative | Irregular, instead of with a tail. Used for Russian щ. withdrawn 1989 | ||
| curly-tail n, d and t | Alveolo-palatal consonants | used by some Sinologists. | ||
| r with caron | voiced strident apico-alveolar trill | Intended for ř in Czech and related languages. from 1909, replaced by in 1949, withdrawn 1989 | ||
| long-leg r | voiced strident apico-alveolar trill | Intended for ř in Czech and related languages. from 1909, replaced by in 1949, withdrawn 1989 | ||
| lambda | voiced alveolar lateral affricate | Used by Americanists | ||
| barred lambda | voiceless alveolar lateral affricate | Used by Americanists | ||
| lowercase L with stroke | voiceless alveolar lateral fricative | Used by Americanists | ||
| s c z with caron | postalveolars | ; | Used by Americanists, Uralicists, Semiticists, Slavicists | |
| j, g, ezh with caron | voiced postalveolar affricate | Used by Americanists, Slavicists etc. | ||
| x with dot | voiceless uvular fricative | Used by Americanists | ||
| baby gamma | close-mid back unrounded vowel | rejected 1989; Unicode LATIN SMALL LETTER RAMS HORN represents either glyph | ||
| Greek rho | bilabial trill | in common use before an official letter was adopted | ||
| barred small capital I / upsilon | near-close central unrounded / rounded vowel | used by the OED among others | ||
| closed epsilon | open-mid front rounded vowel | duplicate symbol | ||
| closed epsilon | open-mid central rounded vowel | superseded 1996 | ||
| closed omega | near-close near-back rounded vowel | longstanding duplicate symbol; rejected 1989 | ||
| omega | near-close near-back unrounded vowel | or | Bloch & Trager for. | |
| small iota | near-close near-front unrounded vowel | Longstanding duplicate symbol; rejected 1989 | ||
| dotless small i | near-close near-front unrounded vowel | mistake or typographic substitute; or used by Americanists | ||
| voiceless and voiced labiodental plosive | used by Africanists | |||
| or | slashed 0 or uppercase slashed O | null initial | Usually used in phonology to mean "no sound values". However, in Chinese linguistics, some scholars considered it as "weak" glottal stop or something similar as sound value of the "existent" first consonant of syllables started by a vowel, and this opinion can be connected with ㅇ in hangul. can be confusing with close-mid front rounded vowel. | |
| hooktop P, T, C, K, Q | voiceless implosives | Short-term additions to the IPA; withdrawn 1993 | ||
| turned T | dental click | superseded 1989; see click letters | ||
| stretched C | alveolar click | superseded 1989; see click letters | ||
| inverted glottal stop | alveolar lateral click | superseded 1989; see click letters | ||
| turned K | velar click | Proposed symbol withdrawn 1970; articulation judged impossible but later reanalyzed and found paralinguistically. For several years used for a voiceless velodorsal stop in the extIPA. | ||
| ou | close-mid back unrounded vowel or voiced velar fricative | or | a mistake in either case | |
| or R | small capital R or capital R | long vowel or prolonged moraic N | Used by Japanologists. This symbol represents phonemic long vowel or rarely prolonged moraic N. It is represented variously in the Japanese kana: Chōonpu or others. | |
| reversed small capital R or Cyrillic ya | voiced epiglottal trill | or | rare | |
| reversed fishhook R / turned iota | syllabic denti-alveolar approximant | used by Sinologists, and by Japanologists studying the phonology of the Miyako language | ||
| squat reversed esh | syllabic retroflex approximant | used by Sinologists. See Chinese vowels | ||
| turned h with fishhook | labialized syllabic denti-alveolar approximant | used by Sinologists | ||
| turned h with fishhook and tail | labialized syllabic retroflex approximant | used by Sinologists | ||
| small capital A | open central vowel | used by Sinologists | ||
| small capital E | mid front unrounded vowel | Bloch & Trager. Used by Sinologists and some Koreanists | ||
| ⱻ | small capital turned E | close-mid near-back unrounded vowel | used by some Koreanists who study Gyeongsang dialect, where there is no phonemic differentiation between and . | |
| small capital Ω | mid back rounded vowel | Bloch & Trager | ||
| small capital U | near-close near-back rounded vowel | Americanist notation | ||
| etc. | uppercase letters | etc. | Uppercase alternatives to symbols shaped like small capitals | |
| ꞯ | small capital Q | pharyngeal stop | Proposed for the pharyngeal stop of Formosan languages. | |
| ꞯ | small capital Q | sokuon | Used by Japanologists. This is a phonemic symbol for sokuon which written as Hiragana っ and Katakana ッ in Japanese Kana. | |
| Q | capital Q | sokuon | Used by Japanologists. This is a phonemic symbol for sokuon which written as Hiragana っ and Katakana ッ in Japanese Kana. | |
| ꞎ | belted | Voiceless lateral fricatives | now in the extIPA | |
| Retroflex lateral flap | ||||
| etc. | underdot | etc. | ||
| etc., etc. | curl or circumflex | alveolo-palatal | etc. | used by Sinologists |
| , etc. | no audible release | , etc. | Withdrawn | |
| etc. | uppercase letters | fortis | , etc. | used by some Koreanists |
| / etc. | lower-pitched rising / falling tone contour | In a language which distinguishes more than one rising or falling tone. | ||
| , | left quote or reversed comma | "weak" aspiration | First symbol may be left single quotation mark or modifier letter apostrophe ; second symbol may be single high-reversed-9 quotation mark or modifier letter reversed comma | |
| etc. | ligatures | affricates | etc., etc. | Formerly an acceptable variant |
| etc. | prime | palatalization | etc. | Traditional in accounts of Irish phonology |
| asterisk | syntactic gemination | none | Used in some Italian dictionaries | |
| open corner | release/burst | IPA number 490 | ||
| or | Americanist notation | |||
| Americanist notation | ||||
| Americanist notation | ||||
| or | Uralicist notation | |||
| Americanist and Uralicist notation | ||||
| Americanist and Uralicist notation | ||||
| etc. | Used by some Koreanists for fortis sounds; equivalent to, etc. above. | |||
| box | unreleased | used where IPA would get confused with the corners used to indicate change of pitch in the Japanese pitch accent system | ||
| high, mid and low-level tone or intonation | superseded | is a placeholder | ||
| extra-high and extra-low level tone or intonation | superseded | |||
| falling or high falling, mid falling and low-falling tone or intonation | superseded | |||
| rising and low rising tone or intonation | superseded | |||
| dipping and low dipping tone or intonation | superseded | |||
| peaking tone or intonation | superseded | |||
| atonic syllable with high, mid and low pitch | superseded | |||
| acute accent, circumflex, grave accent, breve | primary stress, weakened primary stress, secondary stress and no stress | ˈ◌,, ˌ◌, ◌ | Some English phoneticians and phonologists use acute and grave accents as primary and secondary stress symbols. Some linguists use the circumflex as weakened primary stress in compound words and the breve as no stress. These symbols are also written on the English spellings such as "élĕvàtŏr ôpěràtŏr." | |
| vertical line below or above | moraic | Used by Japanologists. In the standard IPA, these symbols represents syllabic sounds, but Japanologists use them for phonetic variants of the moraic N. | ||
| Diacritics | Tones in Chinese variants | Standard IPA diacritics for tones or tone letters | Sinologists uses tone marks which romanization systems like Hanyu Pinyin to represent tones bypassing the standard IPA specification. |
The table below shows examples of expansion in the meaning of IPA symbols in broad transcription.
| , or sometimes. | |
| or. | |
| Frequently used for any rhotic sound, especially in phonological transcriptions. | |
| Often a substitute for in printing when the distinction between and is not needed. | |
| Often a substitute for in handwriting when the distinction between and is not needed. | |
| ,,, and respectively, especially by some Japanologists and Koreanists. | |
| Sinologist, Japanoligists and Koreanists uses this symbol as alveolo-palatal nasal letter. Sinologists also use , an unofficial IPA symbol. | |
| In Korean phonology, this symbol uses a phonemic symbol which covers phonetic variants of coronal lateral approximants and rhotic consonants. This phoneme is reprented by Hangul consonant ㄹ in the Korean orthography. | |
| Koreanists and sometimes Sinologists uses this symbol as alveolo-palatal lateral approximant letter. Sinologists also use , an unofficial IPA symbol. |