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International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabet used across the world where each symbol represents the sounds of spoken language. (noun)

An example of a part of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the sound of a "p" which is shown in the IPA as "/p/."

See International Phonetic Alphabet in Webster's New World College Dictionary

an alphabet (sense ) for international use, designed to represent each human speech sound by a single symbol

See International Phonetic Alphabet in American Heritage Dictionary 4

noun Abbr. IPA

A phonetic alphabet and diacritic modifiers sponsored by the International Phonetic Association to provide a uniform and universally understood system for transcribing the speech sounds of all languages.

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