# The missing sounds in the International Phonetic Alphabet
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 11, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046 "2019-09-11T15:43:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/1 "2019-09-11T15:43:24Z")
So [THIS CHART](https://www.google.com/search?q=International+Phonetic+Alphabet&sa=X&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOOQUeLQz9U3MC5JNjQSLyjKzyvNS85MLMnMz1NIzCnISExKLSmOEk7OSCwqUUCRPsUI1whlphubl0OZaSkVBjAFRZZwpnlhxSlGThDTsKDAIvcUIxeIbVlmWphsAZUwM0krroSyjdLzSix-MYoHYHfWIlZ5z7yS1KI8sHhijkJARn5eaklmsoIjVAkARI7Slt4AAAA&biw=1920&bih=937&sxsrf=ACYBGNSlP9nNW-dqB5T34nbbtz6_U2nloA:1568216202270&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=7AbT4uehj7JW9M%253A%252C5qOChlj54CPd_M%252C%252Fm%252F03tc1&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQ8pbaQT1RbVBV50hhkt8G0hzBi0Q&ved=2ahUKEwix86rNjMnkAhVDmK0KHR0-D3MQ_B0wHHoECAgQAw#imgrc=O_FxT-8LHue6UM:&vet=1) of consonants is a diagram of what the human mouth can do. The symbols represent a sound found in some language somewhere. The dark squares are sounds the human mouth just cannot make. The blank white squares are sounds we can make, they just don’t have a symbol because they have never been found in any language. For instance, Palatal Lateral Frictive would be called ‘snoring’.
I would love to know what the other white boxes would sound like.
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### Author:  [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2019, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/2 "2019-09-11T16:48:16Z")
[Here’s a link which isn’t needlessly obfuscated.](https://www.omniglot.com/writing/ipa.htm)
[There’s a whole Wikipedia page on extensions to the IPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensions_to_the_International_Phonetic_Alphabet) or extIPA, with symbols for the transcription of disorderd speech, like the speech of people with lisps and cleft palates.
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### Author:  [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2019, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/3 "2019-09-11T17:19:16Z")
Right, but I am asking specifically about the white boxes, the sounds linguists have decided we can make but do not have a symbol for because they aren’t in any language.
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### Author:  [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2019, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/4 "2019-09-11T18:49:03Z")
Some of them you can figure out how to make by comparison.
The upper-left most white box on the top row, Plosive Labio-dental isn’t hard to make. Just make your mouth like you’re saying “f” but do a burst of air like you do for p or b. It makes a sort of (unvoiced) f-ish or (voiced) v-ish sound that kind of trails off. It makes me think of the sort of noise you’d make if you wanted to make the sound-effect of a dart flying through the air with your mouth.
Similarly, you can make a Labio-dental trill. It sounds… hard to describe but it’s not hard to do.
I bet you could give the chart to Michael Winslow and he could make all the noises in a few minutes.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2019, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/5 "2019-09-11T19:11:22Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#):
>
> Some of them you can figure out how to make by comparison.
Right, this is what I was going to say.
And the white boxes don’t necessarily mean that linguists haven’t found any language that uses those sounds.
For example, Indian languages like Bengali, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), and Sanskrit have dental plosives [t̪] [d̪], which would go in the white box just to the left of [t] [d]. Sanskrit also has a dental nasal [n̪], which go just to the left of [n].
This chart isn’t exhaustive. There are plenty of phonemes in a lot of languages that aren’t accounted for.
For example, it doesn’t distinguish between the aspirated and non-aspirated plosives of Indian languages.
It doesn’t distinguish between the palatalized and velarized consonants of Irish.
It doesn’t include the palatalized consonants of Russian.
It doesn’t have all the “breathy” consonants of Old English (hn, hw, hl, hr) and Welsh.
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### Author:  [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)
#### Post date: [September 11, 2019, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/6 "2019-09-11T19:22:09Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#):
>
> Similarly, you can make a Labio-dental trill. It sounds… hard to describe but it’s not hard to do.
Actually, on second thought, I’m not sure I’m doing this right. I was trilling my tongue like you would for an r-trill while keeping my mouth in the f-shape. But for B, it’s not a vibrating tongue, it’s vibrating lips. So I think to do a Labio-dental trill, you’d have to vibrate your lower lip against your teeth (or, possibly, the other way around, which probably requires being 8-years-old or a hockey player), which I haven’t figured out how to do yet, and I am becoming slightly concerned that my coworkers might be wondering what’s up with all the v-b-f-trilling coming from my office so further experimentation will have to wait.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2019, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/7 "2019-09-13T10:13:41Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> For example, Indian languages like Bengali, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), and Sanskrit have dental plosives [t̪] [d̪], which would go in the white box just to the left of [t] [d]. Sanskrit also has a dental nasal [n̪], which go just to the left of [n].
>
> This chart isn’t exhaustive. There are plenty of phonemes in a lot of languages that aren’t accounted for.
>
> For example, it doesn’t distinguish between the aspirated and non-aspirated plosives of Indian languages.
>
> It doesn’t distinguish between the palatalized and velarized consonants of Irish.
>
> It doesn’t include the palatalized consonants of Russian.
>
> It doesn’t have all the “breathy” consonants of Old English (hn, hw, hl, hr) and Welsh.
Those sounds are covered by the list of diacritics further down the chart.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2019, 10:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/8 "2019-09-13T10:55:44Z")
Sure, but the point is that the OP’s notion that the chart is exhaustive and that white boxes indicate theoretical sounds that haven’t been identified in any actual human language is erroneous.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2019, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/9 "2019-09-14T10:48:40Z")
No, the consonant chart is meant to show the _places_ of articulation. The diacritics are to show the _mode_ of articulation, as well as small tweaks to the positioning. All of the phonemes you mentioned are covered by the chart + diacritics.
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### Author:  [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2019, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/10 "2019-09-14T11:59:03Z")
> [@Johanna](#):
>
> No, the consonant chart is meant to show the _places_ of articulation. The diacritics are to show the _mode_ of articulation, as well as small tweaks to the positioning. All of the phonemes you mentioned are covered by the chart + diacritics.
The dental plosives are defined by the place of articulation. There’s a whole column for them already.
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### Author:  [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2019, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/11 "2019-09-14T12:48:22Z")
> [@Acsenray](#):
>
> Right, this is what I was going to say.
>
> And the white boxes don’t necessarily mean that linguists haven’t found any language that uses those sounds.
>
> For example, Indian languages like Bengali, Hindustani (Hindi-Urdu), and Sanskrit have dental plosives [t̪] [d̪], which would go in the white box just to the left of [t] [d]. Sanskrit also has a dental nasal [n̪], which go just to the left of [n].
>
> This chart isn’t exhaustive. There are plenty of phonemes in a lot of languages that aren’t accounted for.
>
> For example, it doesn’t distinguish between the aspirated and non-aspirated plosives of Indian languages.
>
> It doesn’t distinguish between the palatalized and velarized consonants of Irish.
>
> It doesn’t include the palatalized consonants of Russian.
>
> It doesn’t have all the “breathy” consonants of Old English (hn, hw, hl, hr) and Welsh.
And, IIRC, the IPA doesn’t account for the tensed consonants in Korean, which is represented in 한글 with doubled consonants.
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### Author:  [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2019, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-missing-sounds-in-the-international-phonetic-alphabet/840046/12 "2019-09-14T13:34:54Z")
> [@Monty](#):
>
> And, IIRC, the IPA doesn’t account for the tensed consonants in Korean, which is represented in 한글 with doubled consonants.
They’re [still working on that](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_phonology).
> [@](#):
>
> The “tense” segments, also referred to as “fortis,” “hard,” or “glottalized,” have eluded precise description and have been the subject of considerable phonetic investigation.
Meanwhile, there’s an IPA diacritic that can handle the job. Maybe once the phoneticians have figured out just what’s going on in those sounds, this diacritic will be promoted from the Extensions to the main chart.
> [@](#):
>
> The IPA diacritic ⟨◌͈⟩, resembling a subscript double straight quotation mark, shown here with a placeholder circle, is used to denote the tensed consonants /p͈/, /t͈/, /k͈/, /t͈ɕ/, /s͈/. Its official use in the Extensions to the IPA is for strong articulation, but is used in literature for faucalized voice. The Korean consonants also have elements of stiff voice, but it is not yet known how typical that is of faucalized consonants. They are produced with a partially constricted glottis and additional subglottal pressure in addition to tense vocal tract walls, laryngeal lowering, or other expansion of the larynx.
> An alternative analysis proposes that the “tensed” series of sounds are (fundamentally) regular voiceless, unaspirated consonants: the “lax” sounds are voiced consonants that become devoiced initially, and the primary distinguishing feature between word-initial “lax” and “tensed” consonants is that initial lax sounds cause the following vowel to assume a low-to-high pitch contour, a feature reportedly associated with voiced consonants in many Asian languages, whereas tensed (and also aspirated) consonants are associated with a uniformly high pitch.
The [Extensions to the IPA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ExtIPA_chart_(2015).pdf) cover a lot more possibilities that aren’t in the main chart.