Superlinguo — IPA/Phonetics Apps For Phones

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When I studied phonetics in undergrad I spent hours making IPA flash cards to learn all of those symbols and their associated values. These days a smart phone makes learning the IPA a lot easier! I thought I’d see what’s out there if you wanted to learn the IPA. I’ve only reviewed free apps, or free versions of apps that also have a premium option.

TLDT: Quizlet is good for old-school flashcards, Android is uninspired and if you have an iPhone get IPA Phonetics.

If you’re after an old-fashioned flash-card substitute I find Quizlet does the job quite well. They already have quite a few IPA set you can choose from (here’s a good one), or make your own. Unfortunately none of the sets come with the sounds, but the fonts all worked ok on my Android mobile, so that’s good.

In terms of specific apps, if you’re on an Android it’s slim pickings. There’s Pronunroid, if you’re willing to be limited to sounds found in English. It has a mini-game as well where you have to pick the correct symbol for a sound that’s highlighted in 3 written English words. IPA Phonetic Keyboard LITE is a free version of an app. There is an IPA table layout for consonants and vowels, once typed out they will play back - you can type a string of characters (and save it for later if you wish, I’m not sure why). You can add diacritics for things like tone and length but they don’t appear to have any effect on the vowel quality. You navigate between voiced/voiceless with an on-screen set of navigation buttons. The free version restriction is that you cannot select voiced consonants. It’s clunky enough that you’re probably better of just trying to navigate a full website instead.

With those uninspired options behind me, I borrowed a friend’s iPhone (thanks Kent!) and tried the IPA Phonetics app, available from Apple’s app store. It is pretty much the perfect app. There are three main screens, a full consonant chart, a full vowel chart and a midsagittal view with different modalities and places of articulation all up to IPA 2005 spec. Every symbol you click on in vowels and consonants has audio and a video of someone making the sound - for hard-to-see articulations there are even laryngoscope views and ultrasound. Click on the modality terms (like creaky or falsetto) and someone will read those terms in that voice. There’s also a listen-to-the-sound and choose the right symbol mini-game. It’s, slick, comprehensive and a very useful tool. It would be great if they made an Android version, although I won’t hold my breath.