International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a phonetic notation system.

In sitelen Lasina, letters have about the same sounds as in the IPA. Vowels are ideally a bit more centralized in Toki Pona than their IPA letters suggest. See Phonology.

Transcriptions in the IPA use 2 main kinds of brackets:

Square brackets mark pronunciation. Phonetics can be transcribed broadly or narrowly.
Slashes mark phonemic notation. A phoneme is a feature that distinguishes one word in a language from another. Symbols in phonemic notation can diverge from their phonetic values. For example, the English r phoneme can be written as /r/, even though phonetically, [r] would represent a trill.

Toki Pona chart[edit | edit source]

Consonants
	Labial	Coronal	Dorsal
Nasal	m	n
Stop	p	t	k
Fricative		s
Approximant	w	l	j

Vowels
	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e̞	o̞
Open	ä

Full chart[edit | edit source]

Consonants[edit | edit source]

Pulmonic consonants (voiceless · voiced)
	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosive	p b		t d			ʈ ɖ	c ɟ	k ɡ	q ɢ		ʔ
Nasal	m	ɱ	n			ɳ	ɲ	ŋ	ɴ
Trill	ʙ		r						ʀ
Tap or flap		ⱱ	ɾ			ɽ
Fricative	ɸ β	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ	ʂ ʐ	ç ʝ	x ɣ	χ ʁ	ħ ʕ	h ɦ
Lateral fricative			ɬ ɮ
Approximant		ʋ	ɹ			ɻ	j	ɰ
Lateral approximant			l			ɭ	ʎ	ʟ

Non-pulmonic consonants

Other consonants (voiceless · voiced)
ʍ w	Labial–velar fricative / approximant
ɥ	Labial–palatal approximant
ʜ ʢ	Epiglottal fricative
ʡ	Epiglottal plosive
ɕ ʑ	Alveolo–palatal fricative
ɺ	Alveolar lateral flap
ɧ	Simultaneous ʃ and x

Vowels[edit | edit source]

Vowels (unrounded · rounded)
	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
	ɪ ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
		ə
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
	æ	ɐ
Open	a ɶ		ɑ ɒ

Diacritics[edit | edit source]

Diacritics
◌̥ ◌̬	Voiceless, voiced
◌ʰ	Aspirated
◌̹ ◌̜	More rounded, less rounded
◌̟ ◌̠	Advanced, retracted
◌̈ ◌̽	Centralized, mid-centralized
◌̩ ◌̯	Syllabic, non-syllabic
◌˞	Rhoticity
◌̤ ◌̰	Breathy voiced, creaky voiced
◌̼	Linguolabial
◌ʷ ◌ʲ ◌ˠ ◌ˤ	Labialized, palatalized, velarized, pharyngealized
◌̴	Velarized or pharyngealized, as in ɫ
◌̝ ◌̞	Raised, lowered
◌̘ ◌̙	Advanced tongue root, retracted tongue root
◌̪ ◌̺ ◌̻	Dental, apical, laminal
◌̃	Nasalized
◌ⁿ ◌ˡ ◌̚	Nasal release, lateral release, no audible release

Suprasegmentals[edit | edit source]

Suprasegmentals
ˈ◌	Primary stress
ˌ◌	Secondary stress
◌ː	Long
◌ˑ	Half-long
◌̆	Extra-short
◌ \|	Minor (foot) group
◌ ‖	Major (intonation) group
.	Syllable break
‿	Linking (absence of a break)

Tones and word accents[edit | edit source]

Tones and word accents
Level			Contour
◌̋	˥	Extra high	◌̌	˩˥	Rising
◌́	˦	High	◌̂	˥˩	Falling
◌̄	˧	Mid	◌᷄	˧˥	High rising
◌̀	˨	Low	◌᷅	˩˧	Low rising
◌̏	˩	Extra low	◌᷈	˧˦˨	Rising–falling
ꜜ◌		Downstep	↗︎		Global rise
ꜛ◌		Upstep	↘︎		Global fall