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Data with phonetic characters using Easy IPA

Module by: Joseph Grimes

Summary: The whole IPA alphabet, including diacritics and modifiers, is available to you through Easy IPA. If you touch type, you'll find yourself touch typing the IPA characters you use frequently in your collection.

You can type anything the International Phonetic Alphabet offers without having to lift your hands from the keyboard. Here's how Easy IPA works:

  1. Type the character from a to z that looks most like the character you want.
  2. Type Control-space by putting your little finger on the Control key, and while holding it down, tap the space bar once with your index finger.
  3. Look at the popup box that contains all the IPA characters that are kind of like the one you typed in Step 1.
  4. Choose the IPA character you want.
  5. Type the number or letter associated with it.
  6. The IPA character replaces the a to z character you typed.

That's Easy IPA in a nutshell. Say you type an "a" to get an a-like vowel symbol such as ash (also called digraph). Then you type Control-space. Up come all the a-like characters:

Figure 1: Characters kind of like a in Wordcorr's Easy IPA table.
Figure 1 (01003TableFor a Ctrl-space.jpg)

Ash is indexed as "2", so you type 2. It replaces the "a" you typed before the Control-space. If you wanted "a-breve" (not an IPA symbol, but comparative linguists use it anyway so we stuck it in the table) you'd type "c" to select it.

For IPA modifiers and some other characters, you type certain characters outside the a-z range before you type Control-space:

  • Glottal stop and similar characters: type "?" and Control-space.
  • Symbols for clicks: type "!" and Control-space.
  • Modifier characters: type "^" (Shift-6) and Control-space for some, ":" (colon) and Control-space for others.
  • Prosodic modifier characters: type ":" (colon) and Control-space.

For IPA diacritics that go under, above or through the base character proper:

  • Diacritics that mainly go under the base character, type "," (comma) and Control-space.
  • Diacritics that go above the base character, type "~" (tilde) and Control-space.
  • Diacritics that mainly go through the base character, type "-" (tilde) and Control-space.

Or, on a single line: Ctrl-Sp after ? glottal; ! click; ^ : modifier; , ~ - diacritic

Figure 2: IPA transcriptions from the Wordcorr Data panel. Diacritical marks are not well aligned here, but they are elsewhere.
Figure 2 (Data-IPA.jpg)

Hint:

When you're typing in data, you don't use all the characters in the International Phonetic Alphabet. For the ones you use a lot, your brain quickly learns the motor sequence (like "a" Control-space "2" for ash). If you touch type, you'll soon find yourself touch typing the part of IPA you use without a blink. You don't even have to take your hands off the keyboard to look for a mouse or a reference card. Install Wordcorr and give it a try.

Programmers:

If you'd like to use Easy IPA in an application of your own, the Open Source Java source code is on the SourceForge CVS (anonymous access OK) as gui/input/IPAKeyListener.java. Please give credit to the National Science Foundation and Wordcorr.

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