Consonants There is no central authority. The
Western Institute for Endangered Language Documentation (WIELD) has recommended the following conventions since 2016; Note however that WIELD is designed specifically for Native American languages, whereas NAPA, despite its name, is widely used elsewhere, e.g. in Africa. Advanced is and retracted is . Geminate is or . Glottalization is e.g. or (ejectives are not distinguished from other types of glottalization). Palatalization is written . Labialization, velarization, aspiration, voicelessness and prenasalization are as in the IPA. Pharyngeals, epiglottals and glottals are as in the IPA, as are implosives and clicks. Differences from the IPA fall into a few broad categories: use of diacritics to derive the other coronal and dorsal articulations from the alveolar and velar, respectively; use of
c j λ ƛ for affricates;
y for its consonantal value, and
r for a tap rather than a trill.
Notes: • Among the
dental fricatives, are slit fricatives (non-sibilant) while are
grooved fricatives (sibilant).
Rhotics table About 90% of languages only have one phonemic
rhotic consonant. As a result, rhotic consonants are generally transcribed with the character. This usage is common practice in Americanist and also other notational traditions (such as the
IPA). This lack of detail, although economical and phonologically sound, requires a more careful reading of a given language's phonological description to determine the precise phonetics. A list of rhotics is given below. Other flaps are , , etc.
Common alternate symbols There are many alternate symbols seen in Americanist transcription. Below are some equivalent symbols matched with the symbols shown in the consonant chart above. • may be used for (= ), or for . • may be used for (= ). • may be used for (= ). • may be used for (= ). • may be used for (= ). • may be used for . • may be used for . • may be used for . • may be used for . • ʸ may be used for fronted velars (e.g., kʸ = k̯, gʸ = g̑). • Some transcriptions superscript the onset of doubly articulated consonants and the release of fricatives, e.g. , . • There may be a distinction between laminal retroflex and apical retroflex in some transcriptions. • The fronting diacritic may be a caret rather than an inverted breve, e.g. dental and palatal . • Many researchers use the x-
caron (x̌) for the
voiceless uvular fricative. • The use of the standard IPA
belted l (ɬ) for the
voiceless lateral fricative is becoming increasingly common.
Pullum & Ladusaw According to Pullum & Ladusaw (1996), typical Americanist usage at the time was more-or-less as follows. There was, however, little standardization of rhotics, and may be either retroflex or uvular, though as noted above or may be a retroflex flap vs as a uvular trill. Apart from the ambiguity of the rhotics below, and minor graphic variants (ȼ g γ for c ɡ ɣ and the placement of the diacritic in g̑ γ̑), this is compatible with the WIELD recommendations. Only precomposed affricates are shown below; others may be indicated by digraphs (e.g. ). Ejectives and implosives follow the same conventions as in the IPA, apart from the ejective apostrophe being placed above the base letter.
Pike Pike (1947) provides the following set of symbols: Voiceless, voiced and syllabic consonants may also be C̥, C̬ and C̩, as in IPA. Aspirated consonants are C or C̥ʰ / C̬ʱ. Non-audible release is indicated with superscripting, Vꟲ. Fortis is C͈ and lenis C᷂. Labialization is C̮ or Cʷ; palatalization is Ꞔ, or Cʸ; velarization is C⁽ᵘ⁾, and pharyngealization is C̴. Other airstream mechanisms are pulmonic ingressive C←, ejective Cˀ, implosive Cˁ, click C˂, and lingual ejective (spurt) C˃.
Vowels WIELD recommends the following conventions. It does not provide characters for distinctions that are not attested in the literature: proposed the following schema, which was never used. They use a single dot for central vowels and a dieresis to reverse backness. The only central vowels with their own letters are , which already has a dot, and , which would not be distinct if formed with a dot.
Kurath Kurath (1939) is as follows. Enclosed in parentheses are rounded vowels. Apart from and some differences in alignment, it is essentially the IPA.
Chomsky & Halle Chomsky & Halle (1968) proposed the following schema, which was hardly ever used. In addition to the table, there was for an unstressed reduced vowel.
Tone and prosody Pike (1947) provides the following tone marks: • High: or • Mid: or • Norm: or • Low: or Stress is primary ˈCV or and secondary ˌCV or . Short or intermediate and long or final 'pauses' are , , as in IPA. Syllable division is CV.CV, as in IPA, and morpheme boundaries are CV-CV.
Historical charts of 1916 The following charts were agreed by committee of the
American Anthropological Association in 1916. The vowel chart is based on the classification of H. Sweet. The high central vowels are differentiated by moving the centralizing dot to the left rather than with a cross stroke. IPA equivalents are given in a few cases that may not be clear.
Notes: •
surd =
voiceless;
sonant =
voiced;
intermed. =
partially voiced • In the
glottalized stop column, the phonetic symbol appearing on the left side (which is a consonant plus an overhead single quotation mark) represents a weakly
glottalized stop (i.e. weakly
ejective). The symbol on the right side is strongly glottalized (i.e. it is articulated very forcefully). Example: = weakly glottalized, = strongly glottalized. (Cf. = [k] followed by glottal stop.) This convention is only shown for the glottalized stops, but may be used for any of the glottalized consonants. • "Laryngeal" refers to either
pharyngeal or
epiglottal.
Anthropos (1907) The journal
Anthropos published the alphabet to be used in their articles in 1907. It is the same basic system that Sapir and Boas introduced to the United States. Transcription is italic, without other delimiters.
Variation between authors Following are symbols that differ among well-known Americanist sources. ==Encoding==