SAMPA chart Totally Explained

Everything about Sampa Chart totally explained

SAMPA charts of consonants and vowels See a concise version of SAMPA for English sounds. Note that you'll 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's 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.

Consonants

(the paired signs are voiceless/voiced consonants)

Stops
or affricates

p b

t d

ts dz

tS dZ

c J

k g

q G

?

Fricatives

p B

f v

T D

s z

S Z

C j

x G

X R

X ?

h h

Nasals m F n J N

Laterals l L 5

Rhotics (flaps or trills)

4

r

R

Approximants H P r j w

Note: It is common, especially in Spanish and Italian, 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=rd] (also written [b3`d]), bottle ["bOt=l], button ["bVt=n]

Simplified list of consonants

SAMPA	IPA	Description	Examples
`p`	p	voiceless bilabial stop	English pen
`b`	b	voiced bilabial stop	English but
`t`	t	voiceless alveolar or dental stop	English two, Spanish toma, Italian fata
`d`	d	voiced alveolar or dental stop	English do, Italian cade, Spanish andar
`ts`	ʦ	voiceless alveolar affricate	Italian calza, zoccolo, German Zeit
`dz`	ʣ	voiced alveolar affricate	Italian zona, manzo, Catalan guitza
`tS`	ʧ	voiceless postalveolar affricate	English chair, picture, Spanish mucho, Italian cena, German Deutsche, Catalan cotxe or boig
`dZ`	ʤ	voiced postalveolar affricate	English gin, joy, Italian giorno, Catalan metge
`c`	c	voiceless palatal stop	Greek [ce] 'and', Hungarian tyúk 'hen', like British tune
`J`	J (overstroked j)	voiced palatal stop	Hungarian egy 'one', like British dune
`k`	k	voiceless velar stop	English cat, kill,queen
`g`	g	voiced velar stop	English go, get
`q`	q	voiceless uvular stop	Arabic qof
`p`	ɸ (Greek phi)	voiceless bilabial fricative	Japanese fu
`B`	β (Greek beta)	voiced bilabial fricative
	ϐ (Greek beta alt)	voiced bilabial approximant	Spanish cabo, calvo
`f`	f	voiceless labiodental fricative	English fool, enough, Spanish and Italian falso
`v`	v	voiced labiodental fricative	English voice, German Welt, Italian vedere
`T`	θ (Greek theta)	voiceless dental fricative	English thing, Castilian Spanish caza, Greek thymari (thyme)
	ϑ (Greek theta alt)	voiceless dental approximant	Tuscan Italian sete
`D`	ð (Icelandic eth)	voiced dental fricative	English this, Castillian Spanish juzgar
	δ (Greek delta)	voiced dental approximant	Spanish cada
`s`	s	voiceless alveolar fricative	English see, pass, city, Spanish sí, German groß, Italian suono
`z`	z	voiced alveolar fricative	English zoo, roses, German See, Spanish riesgo, Italian and Catalan rosa
`S`	ʃ	voiceless postalveolar fricative	English she, sure, emotion, French chemin, Italian scendo, German Sprache, Catalan coix
`Z`	ʒ	voiced postalveolar fricative	French jour, English pleasure, Argentinian Spanish lluvia, Ecuadorian Spanish arriba, Tuscan Italian ragione, Catalan boja
`C`	ç (cedilla)	voiceless palatal fricative	Standard German Ich, Greek [Ceri] 'hand', some English pronunciations of human
`j` (`jj`)	ʝ (j with crossed tail)	voiced palatal fricative	Standard Spanish ayuda, yegua, some Spanish accents lluvia (yeísmo), some Italian dialects paglia ["pajja], some German accents ja
`x`	x	voiceless velar fricative	Scots loch, Castilian Spanish ajo,German Buch
`G`	γ (Greek gamma)	voiced velar fricative	Some Spanish accents algo, agua, Arabic ghain
	ɰ	voiced velar approximant	Spanish algo, agua
`X`	ħ (overstroked h)	voiceless pharyngeal fricative	Arabic h.â
`?`	ʕ (Inverted ?)	voiced pharyngeal fricative	Arabic 'ayn
`h`	h	voiceless glottal approximant	English ham,German Hand, Colombian Spanish jamón, Tuscan Italian secondo
`h`	ɦ (h with upper tail to the right)	voiced glottal approximant	Hungarian lehet, English pronunciations of behave
`m`	m	bilabial nasal	English man, Spanish hambre, Italian fame
`F`	ɱ (m with downward right tail)	labiodental nasal	Spanish infierno, enfermo, Italian trionfo, Hungarian kámfor, honvágy
`n`	n	alveolar or dental nasal	English, Spanish and Italian no
`J`	ɲ (n with downward left tail)	palatal nasal	English canyon, Spanishaño, French oignion, Italian gnocchi, Catalan any (year), Hungarian anyu (mommy)
`N`	ŋ (n with downward right tail)	velar nasal	English singer, ring, Spanish blanco, manguera, Italian bianco, pongo, German lange, Tagalog ngayón, ngongò
`l`	l	alveolar lateral	English left, Spanish largo, Italian lungo
`L`	ʎ turned down y, alt. λ (Greek lambda)	palatal lateral	Italian aglio, famiglia, Catalancolla, Castilian Spanish cuello
`5`	ɫ (l with middle tilde)	velarized dental lateral	English milk (dark l), Catalanalga
`4` (`r`)	ɾ (r without upper-left serif)	alveolar flap	Spanish pero, Italian essere
`r` (`rr`)	r	alveolar trill	Spanish perro, rey, Italian arrivare, terra
`r`	ɹ (r rotated 180°)	retroflexed alveolar approximant	English run, very
`R`	ʀ (small capital R)	uvular trill	French rue, standard GermanReich, Farb
`P`	ʋ	labiodental approximant	Dutch Waar
`w`	w	velo-labial approximant	English we, French oui,Spanish hueso, huevo, Italian acqua, guida
`H`	ɥ (turned down h)	palato-labial approximant	French huit
`j`	j	palatal approximant	English yes, Frech yeux,German ja, Italian ione, paio, Spanish pierna

(The sounds of the Spanish b in cabo and d in cada are not represented by the symbols β, δ, despite what the creators of the SAMPA may think. Those sounds are not fricatives but approximants. Look at: (External Link

) - Spanish only)

Vowels

	front	near-front	central	near-back	back
Vowels

close	`i • y`		`1 • }`		`M • u`
near-close		`I • Y`		`U`
close-mid	`e • 2`		`@ • 8`		`7 • o`
mid			`@`
open-mid	`E • 9`		`3 • 3`		`V • O`
near-open		overstroked u, ʉ	central closed rounded vowel	Scottish English pool, Swedish sju
`8`	overstroked o, ɵ	central neutral rounded vowel	Swedish kust
`&`	small capital OE ligature, ɶ	front open rounded vowel	American English that
`M`	ɯ (upside-down m)	back closed unrounded vowel	Japanese fuji, Vietnamese ư Korean 으
`7`	ɤ (squeezed Greek gamma)	back half closed unrounded vowel	Vietnamese ơ Korean 어
`V`	ʌ (turned down v)	back half open unrounded vowel	RP and US English run, enough
`A`	ɑ ('d' with no upper tail)	back open unrounded vowel	English arm, US English law, standard French âme
`u`	u	back closed rounded vowel	English soon, Spanish tú, Frenchgoût, German Hut, Mutter, Italian azzurro, tutto
`U`	ʊ (turned down small capital Greek omega)	back closed rounded vowel somewhat more centralisedand relaxed	English put, (non-US)Buddhist
`o`	o	back half closed rounded vowel	US English sore, Scottish English boat, Spanish yo, French beau, German Sohle, Italian dove, Catalan ona
`O`	ɔ (c mirrored to the left)	back half open rounded vowel	British English law, caught, Italian cosa, Catalan dona, Spanish ojo
`Q`	ɒ ('b' with no upper tail)	back open rounded vowel	British English not, cough, German Toll

Stress is indicated by ["] for primary stress, and [%] for secondary stress, placed before the stressed syllable.(External Link

)

SAMPA charts for specific languages

SAMPA chart for English sounds

(in the Hungarian Wikipedia)Further Information

Get more info on 'Sampa Chart'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://sampa_chart.totallyexplained.com">SAMPA chart Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.