Specialist keyboarding software

15-day free Trial period now available for both these programs

IPAuto: an add-in for Microsoft® Word—easy input of IPA phonetic symbols. No need to use complicated codes: just lift your finger when the right symbol appears!

SAMPAType: an add-in for typing IPA in MS Word using SAMPA codes

• Leopold Bloom's cat in the opening scene of Part II of James Joyce's Ulysses mews with increasing insistence as she demands her bowl of milk: Mkgnao ... Mrkgnao ... Mrkrgnao. In IPA one might transcibe these sounds as mkɲaʊ ... mʴkɲaʊ ... mʴkʴɲaʊ. Judging by the spelling the cat seems to have spent some time in Italy.

• Hogo à gogo: Raymond Queneau's 1959 novel Zazie dans le métro (film version by Louis Malle) opens with the remarkable word Doukipudonktan. This is in fact the phonemic transcription of the sentence D'où qu'ils puent donc tant? (What makes them stink so much? ~ What a stench!). Queneau's version (note the unFrench ks) is very close to the IPA, which would be dukipydɔ̃ktɑ̃.

  Queneau's spelling has been referred to as a precursor of today's SMS text-messages.

IPA in Unicode by Prof John Wells: gives full details, including information on how to download the necessary fonts.

Last revised March 2025