What the Sections and Symbols on the IPA Chart Mean

The IPA chart organizes every symbol by how and where a sound is produced, so the layout itself is the explanation. On ipachart.com you can click any symbol to hear it. The chart splits into five sections: Vowels, Pulmonic consonants, Non-pulmonic consonants, Other symbols, and Affricates. Each section answers a different question about a sound.

Vowels: height, backness, and rounding

Vowels are arranged on a grid with two axes:

• Vertical axis = tongue height — from Close (tongue high, as in the vowel of "see") down through Close-mid, Open-mid, to Open (tongue low, as in "cat").
• Horizontal axis = backness — Front, Central, Back, i.e. how far forward the tongue sits.

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one on the right is rounded (lips pursed), the left is unrounded. So i vs y, or u vs ɯ, differ only in lip shape, not tongue position.

This is why the vowel space looks like a trapezoid rather than a rectangle: the tongue physically can't reach the top-front and bottom-back corners at once.

Pulmonic consonants: place × manner, with voicing pairs

These are sounds made with air from the lungs — the bulk of most languages' consonant inventories. The table is a grid:

• Columns = place of articulation, moving from the front of the mouth to the back: Bilabial → Labiodental → Dental → Alveolar → Post-alveolar → Retroflex → Palatal → Velar → Uvular → Pharyngeal → Glottal.
• Rows = manner of articulation: Plosive, Nasal, Trill, Tap or Flap, Fricative, Lateral Fricative, Approximant, Lateral Approximant.

Two conventions matter:

1. Where symbols appear in pairs, the right one is voiced (vocal folds vibrate), the left is voiceless. Example: p / b, s / z.
2. Grey shaded cells mark articulations judged impossible — you can't, for instance, produce a glottal nasal.

Non-pulmonic consonants: clicks, implosives, ejectives

These use airstreams other than normal lung pressure:

Clicks are common in some southern African languages; ejectives appear in many languages worldwide.

Other symbols and affricates

Other symbols covers sounds that don't fit the main grids — for example ʍ (voiceless labial-velar fricative), ɥ (voiced labial-palatal approximant), ɕ / ʑ (alveolo-palatal fricatives), and ɧ (simultaneous ʃ and x).

Affricates are single sounds that begin as a plosive and release as a fricative, written with a tie bar: t͡s, t͡ʃ, d͡ʒ, and so on. They're listed separately because they combine two manners of articulation.

One caveat the site itself makes

The recordings are a rough guide. Real pronunciation varies by language and context. The site notes, for instance, that English voiceless plosives usually end with aspiration (a puff of air), but the voiceless plosives on the page are not aspirated. Treat each clip as a reference point, not a fixed target.

Practical notes

• Clicking a symbol plays its audio; the chart needs JavaScript and a browser with HTML5 Audio support (any current popular browser works).
• Audio clips are credited to Peter Isotalo, User:Denelson83, and the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive.