X-SAMPA

IPA_Unicode_0x0061

IPA_Unicode_0x0062

IPA_Unicode_0x0253

IPA_Unicode_0x0063

IPA_Unicode_0x0064

IPA_Unicode_0x0256

IPA_Unicode_0x0257

X-SAMPA (Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet) is a phonetic alphabet developed by John C. Wells as an extension of SAMPA (Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet). It is designed to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in plain ASCII text, which is useful for computer processing and digital communication.

History

X-SAMPA was created in 1995 to address the limitations of SAMPA, which was initially developed for European languages. X-SAMPA extends the range of symbols to cover the entire IPA, making it more versatile for representing a wide variety of languages.

Design

X-SAMPA uses a combination of ASCII characters to represent IPA symbols. Each IPA symbol is mapped to a unique X-SAMPA code, allowing for precise phonetic transcription without the need for special fonts or software. This makes it particularly useful for linguistics, speech synthesis, and speech recognition.

Usage

X-SAMPA is widely used in linguistics and computational linguistics for the transcription of speech sounds. It is also used in language documentation and phonetic research.

Comparison with IPA

While X-SAMPA is designed to be a one-to-one representation of the IPA, there are some differences in notation due to the constraints of ASCII characters. For example, the IPA symbol [ʃ] (voiceless postalveolar fricative) is represented as /S/ in X-SAMPA.

Examples

Here are some examples of X-SAMPA transcriptions:

• The word "cat" in IPA [kæt] is transcribed as /k{t/ in X-SAMPA.
• The word "shoe" in IPA [ʃuː] is transcribed as /Su:/ in X-SAMPA.

Related Systems

• SAMPA
• IPA
• Kirshenbaum
• ARPABET

See Also

• Phonetic transcription
• ASCII
• Linguistics
• Speech synthesis
• Speech recognition

External Links

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