Links to Phonetics Resources

A. Links to Phonetics Resources

Table of Contents

The IPA is grateful to the members of the Education Committee who compiled many of these links and added their comments.

Note:

  • The links marked with the symbol ⊗ may not fully work with some browsers, in particular, with Safari (the default bowser for Mac) due to the lack of plugins available compared to Chrome and Firefox. Please try a different browser if you have problems downloading or playing files.
  • The IPA does not guarantee the maintenance or validity of these sites, but provides the links as a general service to the Phonetics community.

A.1 Learning the IPA symbols

A.2 IPA symbols, phonetics fonts, and languages illustrated

A.3 Pronouncing dictionaries

A.4 Articulatory phonetics

Vocal-tract diagrams
The speaking vocal tract
The larynx, phonation, and VOT

A.5 Speech acoustics and hearing

Speech acoustics
Hearing

A.6 Speech perception

A.7 Phonetics databases and atlases

  • Sound inventories
    • User interface to the UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database (UPSID) compiled by Ian Maddieson and Kristin Precoda. You can search for sound segments and segment frequency in 451 languages. Interface created by Henning Reetz, University of Frankfurt.
      http://web.phonetik.uni-frankfurt.de/upsid_info.html
    • PHOIBLE is a repository of cross-linguistic phonological inventory data by S. Moran and D. McCloy. Users can search segments, tones, sound inventories and language families and view them on the map
      https://phoible.org/
      PHOIBLE includes an online interface to UPSID:
      https://phoible.org/contributors/UPSID
    • The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is an interactive database of phonological, grammatical and lexical properties of languages by M. Dryer, Matthew & M. Haspelmath. The user can search for inventories, segments, features, tones, stress and any combination of features and view them on the map
      https://wals.info/
  • Spoken corpora
  • Atlas of North American English by W. Labov, S. Ash and Ch. Boberg. It illustrates phonetics, phonology and sound-change in progress in American English dialects, as well as the principles and methods of dialect study
    https://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/home.html
  • Speaking atlas of the languages and dialects of France, Western Europe and America as well as Mediterranean, Caribbean and Pacific languages. The ‘North wind and the sun’ fable spoken in the different dialects and languages of these areas. CNRS, France.
  • Description and illustration of British regional accents and sound change, by Sidney Wood
    https://swphonetics.com/
  • Sound Comparisons: Exploring Diversity in Phonetics Across Language Families, from the Max Planck and Harvard Research Center. Sound files and transcriptions of the different pronunciations of the 'same' 100 words ('cognates') across a language family. Ten language families illustrated. Place the mouse over any map or table to hear the word
    https://soundcomparisons.com/#home

A.8 Tools and software

A.9 Links to lists of resources and online demonstrations

Last updated: March 2025.