The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ...

It was originally developed in the late 1980s for six European languages by the EEC ESPRIT information technology research and development program. As many symbols as possible have been taken over from the IPA; where this is not possible, other signs that are available are used, e.g. [@] for schwa (IPA ə), [2] for the vowel sound found in French deux (IPA ø), and [9] for the vowel sound found in French neuf (IPA œ). The European Community (EC), most important of three European Communities, was originally founded on March 25, 1957 by the signing of the Treaty of Rome under the name of European Economic Community. ... ESPRIT is an acronym for the European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology of the European Union, run by the Directorate General for Industry of the European Commission. ... In linguistics and phonology, schwa is the tonally-neutral, mid-central unrounded vowel sound, exactly in the middle of the vowel chart. ...

Today, officially, SAMPA has been developed for all the sounds of the following languages:

The characters ["s{mp@] represent the pronunciation of the name SAMPA in English. Like IPA, SAMPA is usually enclosed in square brackets or slashes, which are not part of the alphabet proper and merely signify that it is phonetic as opposed to regular text. Arabic (العربية) is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... This article is on all of the Yue dialects. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... The Modern Hebrew language is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family. ... Scots (or Lallans, meaning Lowlands), often Lowland Scots to distinguish it from the Gaelic of the Highlands, is used in Scotland, as well as parts of Northern Ireland and border areas of the Republic of Ireland, where it is known in official circles as Ulster Scots or Ullans but by... Serbo-Croatian (srpskohrvatski or hrvatskosrpski) is a name for a language of the Western group of the South Slavic languages. ... :) internet use mostly in e-mail and Instant Messenger (IM) programs - smilie face used to show happiness, a happy responce, a smile. ... A solidus, oblique or slash, /, is a punctuation mark. ...

Problems with SAMPA

SAMPA tables are valid only in the language they were created for. The tables of languages are not harmonised so there are conflicts between languages. The result of this problem is that SAMPA cannot be used as an ASCII representation of the general IPA alphabet. To solve this problem X-SAMPA was created, which provides one single table without language-specific differences. The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ... The Extended SAM Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London. ...

SAMPA was devised as a hack to work around the inability of text encodings to represent IPA symbols. However, as Unicode support for IPA symbols becomes more widespread, the necessity for a separate, computer-readable system for representing the IPA in ASCII decreases. A hack in progress in Lobby 7 at MIT. Hack is a term in the slang of the technology culture which has come into existence over the past few decades. ... A text encoding is a method of representing text as binary values in computer storage. ... In computing, Unicode is the international standard whose goal is to provide the means to encode the text of every document people want to store in computers. ...

See also

• A concise version of SAMPA chart for English sounds.
• A more complete SAMPA chart of the sounds found in most of the European languages.
• Kirshenbaum, sometimes called ASCII-IPA is another ASCII phonetic alphabet.
• Table of Unicode characters, 128 to 999
• Table of Unicode characters, 1000 to 1999
• IPA, International Phonetic Alphabet
• IPA in Unicode
• X-SAMPA, a language-independent notation similar to SAMPA, but covering the entire IPA repertoire.

This is a concise version of SAMPA for MUTHER FUCKING English sounds. ... SAMPA charts of consonants and vowels See a concise version of SAMPA for English sounds. ... Kirshenbaum, sometimes called ASCII-IPA, is a system used to represent the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in ASCII. It was developed for Usenet, notably the newsgroups sci. ... There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... This article shows Unicode characters from 128 to 999. ... This article shows Unicode characters from 1000 to 1999. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet is a system of phonetic notation used by linguists to accurately and uniquely represent each of the wide variety of sounds (phones or phonemes) the human vocal apparatus can produce. ... Note: This article contains special characters. ... The Extended SAM Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at the University of London. ...

External links

Look up SAMPA in Wiktionary, the free dictionary

• SAMPA computer readable phonetic alphabet
• Phonemic notation of English in SAMPA
• SAMPA for Scots