Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet

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The International Phonetic Alphabet
History
Nonstandard symbols
Extended IPA
Naming conventions
IPA for English

The International Phonetic Alphabet inherited alternate symbols from various traditions, but eventually settled on one for each sound. The other variations are now regarded as obsolete symbols. An example is ɷ for standard ʊ. Several symbols indicating secondary articulation have been dropped altogether, with the idea that such things should be indicated with diacritics: ʮ for z̩ʷ is one. In addition, the rare voiceless implosive series ƥ ƭ ƈ ƙ ʠ has been dropped.

There are also unsupported symbols from local traditions that find their way into publications that otherwise use the standard IPA. This is especially common with affricates such as ƛ.

While the IPA does not itself have a set of capital letters (the ones that look like capitals are actually small capitals), many languages have adopted symbols from the IPA as part of their orthographies, and in such cases they have invented capital variants of these. This is especially common in Africa. An example is Kabye of northern Togo, which has Ɔ Ɛ Ŋ Ɣ Ʃ (capital ʃ). Other pseudo-IPA capitals supported by unicode are Ɓ/Ƃ Ƈ Ɗ/Ƌ Ə/Ǝ Ɠ Ħ Ɯ Ɲ Ɵ Ʈ Ʊ Ʋ Ʒ.

ɩ	Iota, rejected 1989 in favor of [ɪ]
ɷ	Closed omega, rejected 1989 in favor of [ʊ]
ʚ	Closed epsilon, a mistake for [ɞ]
ɼ	Long-leg R, voiced strident apico-alveolar trill (Czech ř), withdrawn 1989, = [r̝]
ɿ	Reversed fishhook R / turned iota, apical dental unrounded vowel used by Sinologists, = [z̩]
ʅ	Squat reversed esh (actually ɿ with retroflex tail), apical retroflex unrounded vowel used by Sinologists, = [ʐ̩]
ʮ	turned h with fishhook, apical dental rounded vowel used by Sinologists, = [z̩ʷ]
ʯ	turned h with fishhook and tail, apical retroflex rounded vowel used by Sinologists, = [ʐ̩ʷ]
ȶ	t with curl, voiceless palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) plosive, used by Sinologists
ȡ	d with curl, voiced palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) plosive, used by Sinologists
ȵ	n with curl, voiced palatalized postalveolar (alveolo-palatal) nasal, used by Sinologists
A	small capital A, open central vowel used by Sinologists, between [a] and [ɑ], = [a] used unoffically as an open central vowel
E	small capital E, mid front unrounded vowel used by Sinologists, between [e] and [ɛ]
ʆ	Curly-tail esh, withdrawn 1989, = [ʃʲ] or [ɕ]
ʓ	Curly-tail ezh, withdrawn 1989, = [ʒʲ] or [ʑ]
ƫ	Left-hook T, withdrawn 1989, = [tʲ]
d̡ etc.	Subscript left hook, superseded 1989 by [dʲ] etc.
σ	= [θʷ, sʷ]
ƍ	= [ðʷ, zʷ]
ƪ	= [ʃʷ]
ƺ	= [ʒʷ]
k̫ etc.	Subscript w, superseded 1989 by [kʷ] etc.
ɑ̢ etc.	= [ɑ˞] etc. ("retroflex" or r-colored vowels)
ʇ	Turned T, superseded 1989 by [ǀ]
ʖ	Inverted glottal stop, superseded 1989 by [ǁ]
ʗ	Stretched C, superseded 1989 by [ǃ]
ʞ	Proposed symbol for velar click, withdrawn 1970
ƥ ƭ ƈ ƙ ʠ	Hooktop P, T, C, K, Q, withdrawn 1993, = [ɓ̥ ɗ̥ ʄ̥ ɠ̥ ʛ̥]
ƞ	Right-leg N, withdrawn 1976, = [n̩]
š	Americanist usage, = [ʃ]
ž	Americanist usage, = [ʒ]
č	Americanist usage, = [t͡ʃ]
ǰ, ǧ, ǯ	Americanist, Slavicist etc. usage, = [d͡ʒ]
ƛ	Americanist usage, = [t͡ɬ]
λ	Americanist usage, = [d͡ɮ]
ƾ	Withdrawn 1976, = [t͡s]
ƻ	Barred two, withdrawn 1976, = [d͡z]