Pronunciation · Tool
IPA keyboard
In short
Click a symbol to insert it and hear it. All 44 English phonemes plus the stress, length and syllable marks, with live Unicode code points and one-tap copy. Nothing to install, nothing stored.
The keyboard
Try one:
Vowels
Long vowels already include the length mark, so you do not need to add it separately.
Diphthongs
Consonants
Stress and length marks
The two most-mistyped characters in phonetics. The stress mark is not an apostrophe and the length mark is not a colon.
Writing a transcription that is actually correct
Most hand-typed IPA has the same three faults, and all of them survive copy-paste into a dictionary or a paper.
- 1Put the stress mark BEFORE the stressed syllable, not on its vowel. It marks a boundary, not a letter.
- 2Use the real characters. The stress mark ˈ is U+02C8 and the length mark ː is U+02D0 — an apostrophe and a colon look close at small sizes and behave completely differently when sorted or searched.
- 3Wrap phonemic transcriptions in slashes and phonetic ones in square brackets. /kæt/ is the sound system; [kʰæt] records that the k was aspirated in one actual utterance.
Frequently asked questions
How do I type IPA symbols on a normal keyboard?
You cannot type most of them directly, because there is no standard IPA keyboard layout. The usual approach even among linguists is to pick symbols from a palette like this one and copy the result, or to paste Unicode escapes into code.
Does this IPA keyboard work on a phone?
Yes. Every symbol is a tap target and the output field is a normal text box, so you can copy from it into any other app. Nothing is installed and nothing is stored.
Where do I put the stress mark?
Before the stressed syllable, not on the vowel. Comfortable is /ˈkʌmftəbl/, with the mark at the very start because the stress falls on the first syllable. Secondary stress uses the lower mark, as in /ˌsəsteɪnəˈbɪləti/.
Why does my transcription look wrong when I paste it elsewhere?
Almost always a font problem rather than an encoding one: the destination font has no glyph for a symbol and substitutes a box. Charis SIL, Doulos SIL and Gentium are free fonts with full IPA coverage.
Can I hear the symbols as I type?
Yes. Every phoneme key plays a real word containing that sound when you press it, in British or American English. The stress, length and syllable marks have no sound of their own, so they insert silently.
Keep exploring
Next step
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