Phonetic alphabet
A phonetic alphabet is any of three things:
- A type of phonetic notation used for transcribing the sounds of human speech into writing. This is a linguistic tool, not a replacement alphabet. Among phonetic alphabets are:
- Americanist phonetic notation
- The International Phonetic Alphabet
- SAMPA, an ASCII version
- X-SAMPA, an extension of SAMPA
- Kirshenbaum, an ASCII version originally developed for usenet newsgroups
- The phonetic symbols in Webster's Third New International Dictionary and the previous Merriam-Webster dictionaries
- A new alphabet for languages which are not phonetic. It would replace the current one (at least for learning a language). For example:
- Herbert Bayer's fonetik alfabet
- John Malone's UNIFON
- Sir James Pitman's ITA, the "initial teaching alphabet"
- Shavian alphabet, in honor of George Bernard Shaw.
- Jan Tschichold's alphabet
- William Bullokar's alphabet
- Benjamin Franklin had some additional characters to add to the alphabet
- A list of standard words used to identify letters in a message transmitted by voice (including over radio, telephone, etc.). Occasionally known as a "radio alphabet". See: