The International Phonetic Alphabet follows the principle of one-to-one correspondence between () and ().

Conformity of international phonetic symbols (phonemes? ) and (phonetic symbol) correspond to each other.

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), also known as "IPA" in the early days, is a system for phonetic notation, which is based on the Latin alphabet and designed by the International Phonetics Society as a standardized marking method for spoken pronunciation. Users of international phonetic symbols include linguists, speech therapists, foreign language teachers, singers, lexicographers and translators.

According to the design of International Phonetic Alphabet, it can only distinguish the following opposing components of oral quality: phoneme, intonation and the separation of words and syllables. There is another widely used international phonetic symbol expansion system to express the sound quality such as interdental sound (or disyllabic sound) and the sound produced by cleft lip and palate.

Following the principle of "one sound, one symbol and one sound", the International Phonetic Alphabet was originally used for phonetic notation in Indo-European languages and African languages. After years of development, with the efforts of China linguist Zhao Yuanren and others, the International Phonetic Alphabet has gradually improved and can be used to annotate Chinese and other oriental languages.

Until 2005, the International Phonetic Alphabet * * had 65,438+007 single letters, and 56 phonetic symbols and suprasegmental components. The International Phonetics Society occasionally adds or deletes some symbols or corrects some symbols.