Handbook of the International Phonetic Association : A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (Paperback)

by International Phonetic Association (Author) "There are many different dialects of English spoken in North America, so it is somewhat improper to refer to any one of them simply as..." (more)
Key Phrases: suprasegmental symbols, phonetic diphthongs, orthographic version, Department of Linguistics, Stress Stress, European Portuguese (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"This is an excellent book for speech clinicians, language teachers, and researchers." Dorothy Haubner, ASHA Review

Product Description
This book is a comprehensive guide to the International Phonetic Alphabet, widely used for over a century to transcribe the sounds of languages. The Handbook is in three parts: Part I contains an introduction to phonetic description and exemplification of the use of phonetic symbols; Part II consists of twenty-nine "Illustrations" of the application of the International Phonetic Alphabet to a range of languages; and Part III covers speech pathology, computer codings, and the history of the IPA. This is an essential reference work for phoneticians and linguists more generally.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (June 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521637511
• ISBN-13: 978-0521637510
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #201,555 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last we got it!, April 19, 2000

By	Alberto M. Mioni (Padova (Padua), Italy) - See all my reviews

This is a much needed and superb book. It is a must for all the specialists and beginners in phonetic transcription. At last, we have a general and compact presentation of the current version of IPA, also throwing new light on the rationale of some choices that were not clear or explicit enough in the papers appeared in the Journal of the IPA. A new symbol (for the retroflex implosive of Sindhi) is also added, together with some proposals for a wider usage of little apex letters. I would have appreciated still more details on the (clumsy and much debatable) solutions proposed by present IPA for tonal notations: I feel definitely more at ease on Yuanren Chao's side! The choice of sample languages is quite balanced as for families and geographical distribution. In my opinion, however, the languages should also have been chosen also because of their sociolinguistic relevance. Might we hope, e.g., for something on Spanish and Italian in the next edition?

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What you'd expect, April 22, 2003

By	Julie Peters Akey "kabuka1" (Honolulu, HI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is exactly what one would expect it to be: a thorough explanation of the International Phonetic Alphabet. It has a beginning section on the description of consonant and vowel sounds and thier places of articulation. The best part about the book is it analyzes the phonetic alphabet of most of the world's languages including many lesser used ones such as Bulgarian, Catalan, and Igbo, for example. The back has a description of each of the symbols so one can figure out what sound an unfamiliar symbol represents. This is a good reference book for all linguistics.

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tells one a lot of what a linguist would know already, October 9, 2004

By	Christopher Culver - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

HANDBOOK OF THE IPA is a guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet, the standard manner of transcribing speech in all of the world's languages. This is not a textbook of phonetics, one is expected to already know something of the subject, and definitions of phonetic terminology are given only to clarify certain aspects of the alphabet. There are also no criticisms of the IPA; the handbook aims to be entirely practical and avoid theoretical matters.

The opening section of the book introduces the symbols of the IPA and gives some example transcriptions of individual words from various languages. The bulk of the book is dedicated to transcriptions of a translated text in the IPA and twenty-nine languages in all are represented, though unfortunately most are Indo-European. American English is used instead of Received Pronunciation, which I felt would have been more appropriate.

The work has five appendicies. The first, "Principles of the International Phonetic Association", is really a discussion of the principles of the alphabet and does not mention other aspects of the association's work. The second is an explanation of computer coding of IPA symbols. Much space is dedicated to SGML entities, but this can be seen as historically superseded with the inclusion of the IPA within the Unicode Standard. The third appendix discusses the ExtIPA extentions to the IPA, which I found most interesting. These extensions, intended for the transcription of disordered speech, is one aspect of the IPA which one will not normally encounter in linguistics textbooks. The fourth appendix discusses the history and work of the International Phonetic Association, giving the by-laws and information on how to join.

The most useful, and really the only vital portion of the Handbook comes at the end in the fifth appendix: the four reference charts of the IPA. These are set up in such a fashion to explain the IPA in themselves.

The HANDBOOK will probably be of limited use to most linguists unless they have a particular love for the IPA. The charts in the back of the book are vital, but they are also provided gratis by the assocation. So, since the book tells the linguist what he has already been trained in through other materials, it is difficult to recommend the HANDBOOK.