Easy Reference Table for the IPA The International Phonetic Alphabet or "IPA" is a method of portraying sounds independently of any given phonetic system of a language. The chart below is a handy reference table for the main IPA sounds. Examples come from English whenever possible or from languages commonly heard by English speakers.

IPA phonetic tables for consonants are typically arrayed across the top by where the sound originates in the mouth, starting with the teeth and lips and moving towards the back of the throat to the right. From top to bottom the lines relate to how the sound is made, usually starting with the nose (nasal), then the lips or even the back of the mouth with a puff of air (plosives, stops or fricatives), then affricates (soft sounds like "sh" or "ch"), trills and flaps (usually "r" sounds) and laterals (usually "L" sounds) and approximants (sounds almost like vowels, the "w" or "j" sound in German "ja").

The table below is organized in an order than approximates alphabetical order, with non-letter-like symbols at the end. Note the convention of using slashes (example: /e/) to express phonemes, the theoretical sound of the letter, brackets (example: [e]) to express phones, the actual sounds made, and angle brackets (example: ) to express how the sound is actually written. Some special characters are often written with connecting lines or ligatures, which are excluded here to make the table more widely accessible.

The symbols are arranged by similarity to letters of the Latin alphabet. Symbols which do not resemble any letter are placed at the end. Diacritical marks are shown and explained in a separate table that follows the first one.

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