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SAMPA charts of consonants and vowelsSee a concise version of SAMPA for English sounds.
Note that you will need a font that supports the Unicode IPA Extensions to see the IPA characters.
Warning: this chart is an attempt to gather information of national SAMPA subcharts: the charts here contain conflicting characters. Most of the information here is therefore only valid for English and some other European languages. For a unified, general ASCII representation of the IPA symbols X-SAMPA should be used.
1 Consonants
| (the paired signs are voiceless/voiced consonants)
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| Bilabial
| Labiodentals
| Dentals
| Alveolars
| Postalveolars
| Palatals
| Velars
| Uvulars
| Pharyngeals
| Glottals
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Stops
or affricates
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| FricativesFricative consonants are produced by air flowing through a narrow channel made by placing two articulating organs close together (e. the tip of the tongue and the upper teeth, as in the pronunciation of English initial "th" in thick or the back of the ton
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| NasalsA nasal is a sound produced when the air is allowed to escape through the nose, while its oral passage may be blocked by the lips or tongue (a nasal stop) or opened (a nasal vowel). Nasal stops are often called simply "nasals". Here are some nasal consona
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| F
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| n
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| J
| N
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| LateralsLaterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue. Most commonly the tip of the tongue makes contact with the upper teeth (se
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| l
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| L
| 5
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| RhoticsRhotic consonants or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquids. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum. However, "b (flaps or trills)
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| R
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| ApproximantsApproximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without au
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| r\
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| w
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'Note': It is (especially in Spanish and Italian) common use to represent the alveolar trill with [rr] and the alveolar flap with [r]. In Spanish, too, [jj] is used to represent the palatal fricative against the semivowel [j]. It has been proposed to use [4] for the alveolar flap, in which case [r] can be used to represent the trill (as its equivalent in the IPA system), and [j\] for the palatal fricative, keeping in this way the policy of using one letter per one IPA symbol (The backslash is used to generate alternative symbols).
Consonant modifiers:
- [ ` ] after a consonant indicates retroflex.
- [ _a ] apical (IPA subscript inverted bridge): [s_a] apical 's'
- [ _d ] dental (IPA subscript bridge)
- [ _G ] velarized diacritic (IPA superscipt gamma)
- [ _h ] aspirated diacritic (IPA superscript h)
- [ _j, ' ] palatalized. (IPA superscript j)
- [ _m ] laminal (IPA subscript box)
- [ _w ] labialized diacritic (IPA superscript w)
- [ _< ] implosive (voiced stops) (IPA hooktop)
- [ _> ] ejective (voiceless stops)
- [ _=, = ] syllabic, as in US bird [b=r\d] (also written [b3`d]), bottle ["bOt=l], button ["bVt=n]
