Using the International Phonetic Alphabet

There are many things a fantasy writer needs to be able to do in addition to all the basic requirements of all fiction.  Inventing names for characters and places can certainly trip you up, and people often ask me where to begin.  Surprising as it may be, learning the International Phonetic Alphabet is among the most important steps towards great character names.

Your reaction may well be to click away from this page immediately.  After all, learning a new writing system can be hard—particularly when it uses one hundred and seven letters.  I ask that you hear me out.  You’ll find it’s a good deal less gruelling than you might think.

Advantages of the International Phonetic Alphabet

So why should you learn a whole new alphabet when you already know the English alphabet?  Well, the simple answer is that English spelling is complex, prone to ambiguities, and insufficient for many other languages.  The English language makes use of anywhere from forty to fifty different sounds, depending on your dialect—far more than the twenty-six letters of its alphabet.

Think of the letter ⟨A⟩ for example, which can stand for at least seven different vowel sounds in English alone.  In the International Phonetic Alphabet, we’d write these as [æ], [ɑː], [eɪ], [ɛː], [ɔː], [ʌ], and [ə].  The advantage of using seven spellings for seven sounds is obvious: fewer ambiguities.

The less ambiguous your pronunciation guide, the less time you’ll have to spend explaining how to pronounce your character names.  Many a fantasy author has spent precious hours devising their own system of phonetic transcription, and that’s just unnecessary when there’s a standardized system out there.

Standardization

Standardization is another of the International Phonetic Alphabet’s great advantages.  Unlike the many disparate systems of phonetic transcription used in the United States, the International Phonetic Alphabet uses the same letters for the same sounds whether you’re here in Canada or anywhere else.

This means that if you see a transcription with the letter [ð], you can be sure it represents a sound called the voiced dental fricative.  A [u] will always stand for a close back rounded vowel, and a [q] will always be a voiceless uvular fricative.

More on what that means in the next section.  The point is that you don’t have to memorize a new alphabet for every website you visit.  You don’t have to teach a new alphabet to everyone who reads your books.  This is the great advantage of a standardized system.

The International Phonetic Alphabet Chart

Another great thing about the International Phonetic Alphabet is that it can help you learn about how speech sounds (or phonemes) work.  Sounds are organized on a chart, based on what you actually do with your tongue to make a sound.  This means you can find and produce sounds you’ve never even heard before.

As long as you know where your hard palate is and how to make a fricative, you can probably make a palatal fricative (spelled /ç/) whether you’ve heard one or not.  If you work at it, you’ll be able to pronounce some rather strange sounds like clicks or—my personal favourite—ejective consonants.

The chart has another advantage for creating fantasy languages: everything’s organized so you can see how sounds relate to each other.  If you look at the chart, you’ll see that some sounds are more similar than others, which has a lot of applications when it comes to making a conlang (or “constructed language”).

Simplicity?

This may sound odd considering we’re talking about an alphabet with over a hundred letters, but the International Phonetic Alphabet’s spelling rules are simpler to learn than the English alphabet.

In English, the letter ⟨t⟩ usually stands for a plosive [t], but when it’s part of the digraph ⟨th⟩, it can mean either a voiceless fricative [θ] or a voiced fricative [ð].  English spelling is full of such idiosyncrasies.

By contrast, a letter in the IPA will only ever stand for one sound.  There’s nothing resembling English ⟨c⟩, which can stand for either the voiceless velar plosive [k] or the voiceless alveolar fricative [s].  If you see an [s] in the IPA, it will never be postalveolar [ʃ].  A [k] will always be [k].  There’s one sound per letter and one letter per sound.

Adding a diacritic (a sort of combining mark) such as [◌̃] or [◌ʰ] always modifies the sound of the letter it’s attached to.  Adding [◌̃] to a vowel means that vowel will be nasalized like the [ɛ̃] in the French word ⟨pain⟩.  A small [◌ʰ]  after a consonant as in [kʰ] means you add a little puff of air.

There aren’t any silent letters to worry about, either. None of this is situational.  For the most part, the International Phonetic Alphabet is consistent enough that once you know the basics, you can use it with confidence moving forward.

Versatility

Intimidating as it may be, another great advantage of the International Phonetic Alphabet is the sheer number of symbols it contains.  An alphabet of twenty-six letters is never going to be enough to transcribe all the sounds in all the languages we know about.  The same holds true if you’re making a fictional language.

What if you want a language with a series of implosive consonants?  This would be hard, considering you’d need to not only explain to your readers what an implosive is, but also figure out a way of representing it in the English alphabet.  If you’re using the IPA, it’s as simple as [ɓ], [ɗ], [ɠ].

In case it sounds like this would be hard to type, I’ll talk later about how you can input these characters on a Mac and on Windows.

In fact, the International Phonetic Alphabet has a way of writing just about any sound the human mouth can produce.  This means you’ll usually be able to find a letter for whatever sound you want to write down.  I can’t stress enough, however, that you don’t need to memorize every character.  You can learn whatever you need and ignore the rest.

Consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet

Now that we’ve looked at why you should use the International Phonetic Alphabet, it’s time to talk about actually making use of this system.  The first thing people usually learn is how consonants work, as these are really the core of phonology; vowels can be thought of as the filler between consonants.

Whereas vowels are made by letting air escape freely, consonants are produced by blocking the flow of air in your mouth in various ways.  We arrange these on a chart based on where in our mouths a consonant is produced (place of articulation) and how we produce it (manner of articulation).  We’ll look at manners of articulation first.

Manners of Articulation in the International Phonetic Alphabet

Consonants are made by pushing air through two articulators: one active and one passive.  The active articulator is usually some part of your tongue, although it can sometimes be your lower lip.  A passive articulator is either your upper lip or some location in your mouth.

Plosive

We make plosives like [b] and [k] by stopping the airflow entirely, letting it build up a little, and then (usually) letting it burst out.  Because of this, plosives are also called “stops.”

Nasal

If you make a plosive but let air out of your nose, we call that a “nasal” or a “nasal stop.”  Nasals and plosives include [m], [n], and the [ŋ] at the end of English words like ⟨thing⟩.

Trill

Trills are produced by vibrating the active articulator against the passive articulator.  The most common of these is the Spanish [r] in ⟨perro⟩.  Other trills exist, but they’re relatively rare.

Tap or Flap

A tap or flap is similar to a stop, except that you don’t give it any time to build up pressure.  Of these, the most familiar is [ɾ], which you may know as the Scottish ⟨r⟩.  In North American English, the same sound appears as a variant (or “allophone”) of [t] in words like ⟨better⟩.

Fricative

You can make a fricative by placing the articulators close together and forcing air through.  Fricatives are the most varied type of consonant, as they are possible at any place of articulation.  These are sounds like [f], [z], and [h].

Sibilants are a special type of fricative that includes sounds like the alveolar sibilant fricatives [s] and [z], as well as most of the sounds we usually transcribe using an ⟨s⟩, such as the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ].  Sibilants are a bit louder and sharper than other fricatives.

Lateral Fricative

In addition to ordinary fricatives, there are two fricatives where you keep the tip of your tongue pressed against your mouth and force air past the sides of your tongue.  We call these “lateral fricatives.”  If you’ve ever heard the Welsh ⟨ll⟩, that’s a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative [ɬ].

Approximant

Somewhere between a fricative and a vowel lies the approximant.  Approximants are consonants where the articulators aren’t quite close enough for turbulent airflow: sounds like the postalveolar approximant [ɹ], which is the ⟨r⟩ in many Irish and North American dialects.  There’s also the [j] at the beginning of ⟨yes⟩.

Lateral Approximant

Just as with fricatives, you can make a lateral approximant by holding your tongue against the roof of your mouth and letting air slide past the sides of your tongue.  The obvious example of a lateral approximant is [l].

There are other manners of articulation, but these are the main ones you’ll encounter.  However, I’ll talk briefly about some of the others.

Click

Clicks are… hard to describe.  There are a lot of them, and they’re often made in slightly different ways.  They include the bilabial [ʘ], alveolar [ǃ], and palatal [ǂ] clicks.  Found almost exclusively in Africa, clicks are usually the result of cultures in which you’re not allowed to say the names of your in-laws.

Implosive

Implosives are like plosives, except that you gulp them.  These include the voiced bilabial implosive [ɓ] in the Yucatec Maya word ⟨b’alam⟩.  Implosives are usually voiced, but occasionally you’ll find a language with voiceless implosives.

Ejective

And now—my personal favourite—ejectives!  Ejectives can be either plosives or fricatives, but they’re almost always plosives.  These are complex, but you basically tighten your vocal chords to build up a bit of extra pressure.  This results in a popping sound.

Ejectives are most common in mountainous regions, although English-speakers sometimes make them at the end of a sentence.  Probably the best-known example of a language with Ejectives is Quechua, although some varieties don’t distinguish them.  We write ejectives by adding an apostrophe after the letter, as in bilabial [pʼ], alveolar [tʼ], velar [kʼ], and uvular [qʼ].

Voicing

I’ve referred here to voiceless and voiced sounds.  Voicing is a common way to distinguish two phonemes from each other.  To voice a consonant like the voiceless alveolar sibilant [s], you just vibrate your vocal chords and it becomes a voiced alveolar sibilant [z].  Not all languages care about voicing, but English does.

Places of Articulation in the International Phonetic Alphabet

You’ll also make different sounds depending on what parts of your mouth interact.  There are a lot of these, so let’s get started.

Bilabial

Bilabial consonants are made with your lips and include [p], [b], and [m].

Labiodental

You make a labiodental consonant using your upper front teeth and your lower lip, leading to sounds like [f] and [v].  In terms of world-building, labiodentals are rare in hunter-gatherer societies.  This is because agriculture and pottery result in softer foods, leading to a jaw shape that’s well-suited to producing these sounds.

Dental

A dental consonant is what happens when you articulate the tip of your tongue against your front teeth.  Dental fricatives in particular are rather rare in language, but English has them: both the voiceless dental fricative [θ] and the voiced [ð].  Many other languages have dental plosives, which we write as voiceless [t̪] and voiced [d̪].

Alveolar

Alveolar consonants are made with your tongue against the alveolar ridge, right behind your teeth.  There are alveolar sounds for every manner of articulation, including the plosives [t] and [d], as well as quite a few other sounds.

The alveolar ridge is home to a nasal [n], a trill [r], a tap/flap [ɾ], sibilants [s] and [z], lateral fricatives [ɬ] and [ɮ], an approximant [ɹ], and lateral approximant [l].

Palato-alveolar

If you put your tongue on the back of your alveolar ridge, you get one of several postalveolar consonants.  These include the ⟨sh⟩ sound in English: the voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant, which we transcribe as [ʃ]. Its voiced equivalent is the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant [ʒ].

Retroflex

If you curl your tongue back a bit so it’s concave and articulate between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate, you’ll hopefully get a retroflex consonant such as the voiced retroflex plosive [ɖ] or voiceless retroflex sibilant [ʂ].  Retroflex consonants are common in the Dravidian languages, and some have made it into some Indo-Aryan languages like Hindustani.

Alveolo-palatal

Alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives are common in many East Asian languages from various language families.  These languages include Japanese, Korean, some Chinese languages, Tibetan, Thai, and Myanmar. Essentially, these consonants are similar to the palato-alveolars, but you also curve the middle of your tongue towards your hard palate.

The most common alveolo-palatals are the voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant [ɕ] and its voiced equivalent [ʑ], found in the Japanese words 島 [ɕima̠] “island” and 火事 [kaʑi] “fire,” respectively.

Palatal

Articulating your tongue against your hard palate will result in a palatal consonant.  The most common palatal consonant is the voiced palatal approximant [j], as in ⟨year⟩.  Mind you, this isn’t the sound we write as ⟨j⟩ in English orthography.  Just think of how almost any other Germanic language pronounces ⟨j⟩.

Velar

Velar consonants are what happens when you articulate the back part of your tongue against your soft palate.  The soft palate is also called the “velum,” hence the name.  Velar consonants include the plosives [k] and [ɡ], as well as the voiceless velar fricative [x] in the Scottish word ⟨loch⟩.  The velar nasal [ŋ] is the ⟨ng⟩ in ⟨ring⟩.

Uvular

If you articulate the back of your tongue against your uvula, you get a uvular consonant.  Uvular consonants include the French ⟨r⟩, which is a voiced uvular fricative [ʁ].  Another common uvular sound is the voiceless uvular plosive [q], which is the ⟨q⟩ in the Arabic word ⟨qāmūs⟩.

Pharyngeal

If you go even further back and pull the root of your tongue towards your pharynx, you’ll make a pharyngeal or epiglottal consonant, depending on how far you go.  These include the epiglottal plosive [ʡ] and voiced pharyngeal fricative [ʕ].

Glottal

You make glottal consonants using just your vocal chords.  The glottal plosive [ʔ] is exceedingly common in the world’s languages.  Most English speakers will know it as the pause in ⟨uh-oh⟩, and in many dialects it’s an allophone of [t].  In Scots, for example, ⟨tae⟩ (cognate with “to” in English) is often pronounced /ʔeː/.

The other common glottal consonant is the voiceless glottal transition [h], which most English-speakers should be familiar with.  It’s not entirely agreed-upon whether this sound is really a fricative or even a real consonant, which is why it’s sometimes referred to simply as an aspirate.

Co-Articulations

Some consonants have not one, but two places of articulation.  Most of the time, these are labio-velar in nature.  It may surprise you to learn that English has two of these as phonemes: the voiced labio-velar approximant [w] and the voiceless [ʍ].

Co-articulated plosives are common in certain parts of Africa.  Yoruba, for instance, has both a voiced labial-velar plosive [g͡b] and a voiceless labial-velar plosive [k͡p].      Swedish has a particularly odd one: the sj-ljudet, which we transcribe as [ɧ].  Linguists still can’t agree on how to describe that one.

Affricates

There are also consonants that start as plosives but become fricatives.  We call these affricates.  English has two of these: the voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate [t͡ʃ] is the sound we normally write as ⟨ch⟩ in English, and the voiced palato-alveolar sibilant affricate [d͡ʒ] is what English renders as ⟨j⟩.  As with co-articulations, we normally write them with a tie bar [◌͡◌] above them.

Pulmonic Consonants in the International Phonetic Alphabet

Here’s a basic chart of the basic pulmonic consonants.  Remember that you don’t need to memorize the letters for sounds you’ll never need to think about.  I recommend you also download the official International Phonetic Alphabet chart from the International Phonetic Association website.

Vowels in the International Phonetic Alphabet

With vowels, things are a bit less clear-cut than with consonants.  Since you’re not constricting airflow, there aren’t places or manners of articulation.  This means vowels can vary greatly—far more than we can show on a chart.  Since we need some way of describing them, vowels are classified according to height, backness, and roundedness.

Height and backness refer mainly to where your tongue is in your mouth, and roundedness refers to the shape you make with your lips.  In addition to the basic vowel qualities, there are several other ways languages distinguish different vowels.  Vowel tone is the most obvious, but some languages even make use of other phonations.

I won’t bore you with every vowel in language—particularly since there’s almost infinite variation.  I will nonetheless go over some of the most common vowels you’ll encounter.

Common Vowels

When it comes to most of the languages you’ll read about, there are five vowel qualities that reign supreme.  These five vowels are the most common around the world, and around half of all languages languages get by with just these five.  They’re the five vowels in Spanish, Hawaiian, Yucatec Maya, Hebrew, and Juǀʼhoan, among many others.

Open Central Unrounded Vowel

First we have the open central unrounded vowel, which we write as [a].  This one letter is probably the most confusing aspect of the International Phonetic Alphabet, since it’s one of the few exceptions to the rule about using only one letter per sound.  In fact, [a] can stand for either the open central unrounded vowel or the open front unrounded vowel, which we more commonly spell [æ].

There’s a reason for this, actually.  You see, [a] is by far the easiest open vowel to type, and the reality is that few languages consider these two vowels to be different from one-another, so it rarely becomes a problem.  This is one of the things you’ll just have to get used to.  For now, just think of [a] as the ⟨a⟩ in ⟨father⟩.

Close-mid Front Unrounded Vowel

Next we have the close-mid front unrounded vowel [e].  Just bear with me when it comes to the names.  This is the ⟨a⟩ in mane.  It’s also the ⟨a⟩ in ⟨Hamish⟩, if you were wondering.

Close Front Unrounded Vowel

The close front unrounded vowel [i] is the ⟨ee⟩ in ⟨free⟩.  This is one of the most common vowels, even among these five.  Unlike in English orthography, [i] will never stand for the ⟨i⟩ in ⟨wine⟩, which is actually two vowel sounds stuck together (we call that a “diphthong”).

Close Mid-back Protruded Vowel

The close mid-back protruded vowel [o] is the ⟨o⟩ in ⟨go⟩.

Close Back Rounded Vowel

Lastly, there’s the close back rounded vowel [u].  This is the ⟨oo⟩ in ⟨doom⟩, and not the ⟨oo⟩ in ⟨book⟩.

Schwa

Aside from the five standard vowels, another important vowel is the mid central vowel [ə], which we also call a “schwa.”  The schwa is a neutral vowel found often in unstressed syllables or as a result of approaching a rhotic sound such as [r], [ɹ], or [ɾ].  The rhotic sound may or may not still be there.

Generally we don’t care if a schwa is rounded or unrounded—or whether it’s mid, close-mid, or open-mid, for that matter.  In English, schwas are usually the result of vowel reduction, and we find them before rhotic sounds.  For example, the ⟨er⟩ in ⟨letter⟩ is usually either [ər] or [əː].

We also find schwas in unstressed syllables.  The ⟨e⟩ in words like ⟨written⟩ [ˈɹɪt(ə)n] is usually a schwa, as is the ⟨a⟩ at the end of ⟨comma⟩ [ˈkɒm.ə].  Other languages like Cymraeg, on the other hand, treat the schwa as its own phoneme.  It can even be stressed, as with the ⟨y⟩ in ⟨ysgrif⟩ (transcribed as /ˈəsɡriv/).

Three Vowel Systems

When a language has a system of only three vowels, they’re usually the open central unrounded vowel [a], the close front unrounded vowel [i], and the close back rounded vowel [u].

Diphthongs

Sometimes a syllable contains two vowel qualities, with one gliding smoothly into the other.  We call these vowels diphthongs.  Although native English-speakers hear the ⟨i⟩ in ⟨kite⟩ as a single sound, it’s actually a prime example of a diphthong.  As diphthongs consist of two sounds, we must write them with two letters in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The ⟨i⟩ in ⟨kite⟩ we would write as [aɪ̯], the ⟨ou⟩ in ⟨house⟩ as [aʊ̯].  The little [◌̯] below the second letter just means it’s the less prominent part of the diphthong; this is often unnecessary, as the context alone usually makes it obvious when two vowels form a diphthong.  And yes, this does mean that the name Smaug is pronounced /smaʊ̯ɡ/, not /smɒːɡ/.

If it doesn’t matter which vowel is shorter than the other, you can also connect the two using a tie bar above [◌͡◌] or below [◌͜◌] them.  For example, we might write the word ⟨write⟩ as /ɹaɪ̯t/.

On the other hand, if there’s a sequence of two vowels that aren’t pronounced as one, such as in words like ⟨peon⟩, we can denote that by placing a full stop in-between the two: /ˈpiː.ən/.  You see this a lot in Japanese, such as in ⟨青い⟩ [à.ó.ꜜì], meaning “blue.”

English Vowels in the International Phonetic Alphabet

English, Germanic language that it is, makes use of a lot of vowel phonemes: anywhere from fourteen to twenty-five if you count diphthongs (twelve or so if you don’t).  That’s nothing compared to Danish, which has something like twenty vowel qualities alone, although it may be possible to dismiss some of those as allophones.

I think it’s useful to know how to transcribe your own language, so I’ll quickly go over the vowels in English.  You’ll find that the six vowel letters in the English alphabet are insufficient for accurately transcribing the language’s highly Germanic vowel system.

First, we have the close vowels: [ɪ] as in ⟨bit⟩, [i] as in ⟨flee⟩, [ʊ] as in ⟨book⟩, and [u] as in ⟨goose⟩.

The close-mid and open-mid vowels include [ɛ] as in ⟨fed⟩, [e] as in ⟨bake⟩, the aforementioned schwa [ə], [ʌ] as in ⟨hut⟩, and [o] as in ⟨boat⟩.

Lastly, we have the open vowels.  These include [æ] as it ⟨wrath⟩, as well as two sounds that have merged in many dialects: the [ɑ] in ⟨palm⟩ and the [ɒ] in ⟨lot⟩.

There might be more than these, depending on where you live, and I deliberately left out any diphthongs.

Basic Diacritics in the International Phonetic Alphabet

You can specify a lot more things with the International Phonetic Alphabet than just places and manners of articulation or vowel qualities.  We transcribe these specific features using diacritics, which are symbols you add to an existing letter to change its sound slightly.

I’ve already talked about some of these, but I’ll go into more detail here.  I’m going to discuss only those diacritics you’re especially likely to make use of.  The others you’ll be able to learn about elsewhere if you’re interested.

Generally diacritics go either above, below, or after the letter they modify, although a few marks related to intonation come before.  It’s actually not as confusing as it sounds—certainly less so than English spelling.

Aspiration

For consonants, the most commonly-used diacritic is [ʰ], which marks a letter as “aspirated” (meaning you give it a little puff of air).  English doesn’t much care whether you aspirate a consonant, but many languages consider [tʰ] a completely different sound from the regular [t].  You can aspirate voiced plosives as well, as with [dʰ].

Syllabic Consonants

Sometimes instead of a vowel forming the nucleus of a syllable, you’ll find it’s a consonant.  Usually these are sonorants such as nasals or liquids, but a few languages do this with fricatives.  If you need to transcribe a syllabic consonant, you can mark it as such by adding [◌̩] to it, as with the [n̩] in ⟨button⟩.

Stress

In English and many other languages, some syllables are stressed and some aren’t.  We mark a stressed syllable by putting a [ˈ◌] before it.  Look at the difference between ⟨incite⟩ (transcribed as /ɪnˈsaɪ̯t/), and  ⟨insight⟩ (transcribed as /ˈɪnsaɪ̯t/).  If a word has primary and secondary stress, you can mark secondary stress with [ˌ◌].

Vowel Length

There are a few things you can do with vowels.  The simplest is vowel length, which is phonemic in many of the world’s languages.  Many languages with only three vowel qualities double that number by distinguishing short vowels from long vowels.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean “vowel length” in the sense you probably learned in school.  The [u] in ⟨boot⟩ and the [ʌ] in ⟨but⟩ are not really different lengths.  In linguistics, vowel length means you pronounce a vowel for a longer duration.  Fun fact: English used to have real phonemic vowel length, but most dialects don’t anymore.

We show vowel length in the International Phonetic Alphabet by adding a [◌ː] to long vowels such as [uː] or [oː].  You can even use two of these diacritics to make a vowel even longer: [aːː].  Some languages also make use of phonemic consonant length, so a short [n] could be distinct from a long [nː].

Nasalization

For those of you who speak French or any other of the more-than-20% of languages that use them, nasalized vowels will be a familiar sound.  The International Phonetic Alphabet doesn’t write them with a silent ⟨n⟩ as French spelling does, as that would violate the rules about using one letter per sound.

Instead, we use a tilde [◌̃] above the vowel to mark it as nasalized, as with [ũ].  An oral vowel like [o] is likely to become a nasal vowel when it comes right before a nasal consonant like [n], resulting in a syllable that ends in [õn].  Oftentimes the consonant will gradually disappear, giving us [õ].

Tone

Tones are a whole subject in and of themselves, so I’ll only cover this briefly here.  Some languages care about the pitch of a vowel, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet, we write these tones using five tone letters: [˥], [˦], [˧], [˨], and [˩].  With some fonts on the computer, these will combine when you put more than one together.

If your language has tones, you can put one or more of these tone letters after the end of a syllable to specify its tone.  If you need to write down a rising tone, for example, you might write a syllable like this: /ma˧˥/.

You can do this even if a word has more than one syllable, and with as many tone letters as you need for a contour: /ˈma˧˥kɛŋ˨˩˦/.

Murmurs and Creakiness

Length, nasalization, and tone aren’t the only way languages tell vowels apart.  A few languages even make use of seemingly minute differences like whether you pronounce a vowel normally [a], in a breathy voice [a̤], or in a creaky voice [a̰].  To speakers of these languages, such vowels are as different as ⟨cat⟩ /ˈkæt/ and ⟨caught⟩ /ˈkɑt/.

International Phonetic Alphabet Examples

It’s a good idea to look at a few words written in the International Phonetic Alphabet.  This will help you get a feel for how it works.  Admittedly, some words may be pronounced differently depending on where you live.  This is unavoidable, as the IPA transcribes sounds, not orthography.

Don’t try to memorize these words.  Just try to get a feel for how the letters in the International Phonetic Alphabet relate to sounds.

Sentences

In addition to looking at individual words, it’s a good idea to examine whole sentences written in the International Phonetic Alphabet.  For this purpose, I’ve transcribed some great quotes from fantasy stories into the IPA.

Don’t feel bad if you don’t understand these right away.  Just keep working at it.

/ɪf ˈmɔːɹ ɒv ʌs ˈvæljuːd fuːd ænd t͡ʃɪəɹ ænd sɒŋ əˈbʌv ˈhɔːdɛd ɡəʊ̯ld ɪt wʊd biː ə ˈmɛɹiə wɜːld/

/niːd əˈləʊ̯n ɪz nɒt iˈnʌf tuː sɛt ˈpaʊə̯(ɹ) fɹiː/

/pɹaɪ̯d ɪz nɒt ðiː ˈɒpəsɪt əv ʃeɪ̯m bʌt ɪts sɔɹs/ /truː hjʊˈmɪlɪti ɪz ðiː ˈoːn.li ˈæntədot tuː ʃeɪ̯m/

/ɔːl wiː hæv tuː dəˈsaɪ̯d ɪz ʍɒt tuː duː wɪθ ðə taɪ̯m ðæt ɪz ˈɡɪvən ʌs/

Computer Input for the International Phonetic Alphabet

When it comes to using the International Phonetic Alphabet on a computer, it all depends on your operating system.  I mostly write on a Mac, where there’s a feature called the “Character Viewer.”

Mac Character Viewer

Windows Character Map

International Phonetic Alphabet Fonts

Fonts like Cambria or Calibri work reasonably well for this, although you may also want to download one of several open-source typefaces that support most or all of the Unicode characters used in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Of these, Charis SIL is my preference, and it’s actually what I use when I’m writing fiction or articles.

Charis SIL

Charis SIL (pronounced /ˈxaɹɪs/) was specially designed for linguistics, with extensive support for the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets as well as the International Phonetic Alphabet. It’s aesthetically pleasing, highly readable even at small resolutions, and does a good job positioning diacritics.

Charis features extensive International Phonetic Alphabet support in bold, italic, and bold italic font variants. All the characters you’re ever likely to need are available. For most people, Charis is what I’d recommend.

DejaVu

If Charis SIL doesn’t inspire you, DejaVu is a family of three fonts with excellent support for many Unicode blocks, including most International Phonetic Alphabet characters. DejaVu Sans and DejaVu Serif should serve the transcription needs of most fantasy writers, and there’s also DejaVu Sans Mono for those who prefer a plain text, monospaced look.

All three DejaVu fonts have great IPA support and various font variants including bold, oblique, bold oblique, and several font weights specific to each font.

International Phonetic Alphabet for Fantasy Writers

With just the information above, you’re well on your way to being able to construct your own fictional languages.  Just remember that you don’t have to be Tolkien to come up with a language sufficient for making up a few character names.  Few of us will ever create a language like Sindarin, and that’s okay.

Whether you’re making a language or just a simple framework for making character names, it’s usually a good idea to make your phonology at least somewhat different from that of English.  Thus, I have included a few tips and ideas for making words that sound interesting.

Language and Culture

Speakers of any particular language are likely to have ideas about how other languages sound—whether a language is “soft,” “harsh,” or any other adjective you care to apply to it.  It’s important to remember that these perceptions are largely subjective.  I personally suspect it may have more to do with one country’s perception of another than with actual phonology.

There’s nothing wrong with designing a phonology to fit the culture in your story that speaks that language.  Just don’t feel pressured into trying to make a language’s phonology “match” your fictional culture if you don’t want it to.  In fact, depending on the culture, your readers will probably perceive the language based on the culture anyway.

It’s relatively rare in real life for culture to affect phonology, although it does happen.  I’ve already mentioned how clicks tend to evolve only in cultures where you’re not allowed to say the names of your in-laws.  They can, however, spread to nearby languages somewhat.

While on the subject of clicks, it’s worth noting that if a language is a real click language, it’s likely to have a lot of click phonemes—often more than English has phonemes in general.

Languages that borrow clicks tend not to have as many.  For example—of the bantu languages that have them at all—Zulu has fifteen clicks, Xhosa has eighteen, and some others have as few as ten.  By contrast, Juǀʼhoan has forty-eight, and varieties of Tâa ǂâã can have anywhere from twenty clicks to eleventy-one.

It’s possible that a culture that practices lip piercing for long enough will lack the voiceless bilabial plosive [p] as a phoneme, although they’ll still probably use the voiced bilabial plosive [b].

Plosives Around the World

Just because English distinguishes sounds based on voicing doesn’t mean your fictional language has to.  It’s a good idea to at least consider other ways a language might classify its phonemes.  In many languages, the voiceless and voiced alveolar plosives [t] and [d] carry the same meaning, making them both allophones of one phoneme.

Languages that don’t care about voicing often have other systems for telling consonants apart—particularly where plosives are concerned.  Hindustani, for example, has a four-way distinction of phonation for plosives: voiceless [p], aspirated [pʰ], voiced [b], and murmured [bʱ].  Other languages might even throw in ejective [pʼ] or implosive [ɓ].

Affricates in Language

The most common affricate consonants are sibilant affricates such as the postalveolar [t͡ʃ] and [d͡ʒ] in English, alveolar [t͡s] and [d͡z] in Italian, or even alveolo-palatal [t͡ɕ] and [d͡ʑ] as in Japanese.  Many languages have this sort of affricate, but there are other, rarer affricates you might want to consider.

There’s a language called Tsonga that has labiodental affricates [p̪͡f] and [b̪͡v].  Nahuatl uses three affricates, all voiceless.  These are alveolar [t͡s], postalveolar [t͡ʃ], and a third: the voiceless alveolar lateral affricate [t͡ɬ].  Yucatec Maya contrasts ordinary affricates [t͡s] and [t͡ʃ] with ejective affricates [t͡sʼ] and [t͡ʃʼ].

Spellings

On the subject of spelling, my advice is to not think about it till you have a name you like.  After you know how it’s pronounced, it should be relatively easy to figure out the spelling.  Remember also that the best spellings are the ones that convey a name’s pronunciation to your readers.

Language Change

One of the best things about using the International Phonetic Alphabet chart for fantasy writing is that you can use it to predict how languages will change over time.  Even if you’re not interested in doing what Tolkien did with the Elvish languages, you can use this knowledge to tweak names till they sound right.

Let’s say you have a word like /eˈpaːtun/.  If that doesn’t sound right for your hypothetical character, you can apply some sound changes and see if you get something you like.  You don’t even have to be completely realistic or consistent with your sound shifts, unless you want to make a full language.

So what can we do with /eˈpaːtun/?  To start, you might look at how the voiceless plosives [p] and [t] each lie between two vowels.  It’s entirely possible that they’ll undergo sonorization, becoming their voiced counterparts [b] and [d] and giving us /eˈbaːdun/.

From there, you might decide that /eˈbaːdun/ should undergo more changes.  For one thing, we might drop that first vowel and get /ˈbaːdun/.  Afterwards, as is not uncommon, we might have the voiced plosive [d] weaken into a fricative [ð], resulting in our word becoming /ˈbaːðun/.

Alternatively, still starting with /eˈpaːtun/, you might start by dropping the first vowel.  Now that we’re working with /ˈpaːtun/, it might make more sense for [p] to become the affricate [p͡f], which then spirantizes to the fricative [f].  The [t], on the other hand, could debuccalize to a glottal stop [ʔ], giving us /ˈfaːʔun/.

Let’s try it a third time.  We’ll still begin with /eˈpaːtun/ and change the [p] to a [b], but this time the [t] will undergo affrication, resulting in /eˈbaːt͡ʃun/.  The [b] might spirantize to a [v], and since there’s a nasal at the end, we’ll nasalize the [u] to an [ũ].  The word /eˈvaːt͡ʃũn/ would probably lose the [n] after that, leaving us with /eˈvaːt͡ʃũ/.

This is all without applying any vowel shifts.  Once we start to do that, words really start to sound different from one another.  When I work with vowels, I rarely try to be realistic; I just try out different vowel combinations till I like how it sounds.

The words you could come up with by shifting sounds like this are almost endless.  Here are just a few of the many words you could make just with /eˈpaːtun/:

/eˈpaːtun/

/ˈʔɔːzũn̥/

/eˈvaːt͡ʃũ/

/ˈheːsõ/

/ˈp͡faːdi/

/ɛˈbaːθod/

/ˈfaːʔun/

A Skill You Can Learn

I know it seems somewhat intimidating to have to learn a whole new writing system, but just remember a few things.  First, you don’t need to learn all of it; there are massive chunks of the International Phonetic Alphabet that I’ll probably never use.  What’s more, it’s much easier to learn one standardized transcription system than it would be to devise your own.

Learning the International Phonetic Alphabet is among the most important steps on the road to great character names.  You’ll likely find at some point that names start to just pop into your head.  Once you know how languages actually form words, you’ll see that creating names for your characters is a skill you can learn and get better at.