Clicks and Ejectives

This is a listing and cross reference of the click and ejective phones that are used by the three phonetic alphabets that System.Speech supports. See Phonetic Alphabet Reference.

The table columns contain the following information:

• UPS. The phone label specified in Microsoft’s Universal Phone Set (UPS).

• IPA. The phone label specified in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) phone set.

• Unicode. The Unicode value from the IPA phone set.

• SAPI ID. The Speech API (SAPI) phone ID, which in most cases is the Unicode value.

• IPA Description. This column describes the features of the phone, such as place of articulation, manner of articulation, phonation type, and airstream mechanism. See the Glossary of Phonetic Terms for more information about the features of phones.

• X-SAMPA. The equivalent phone in X-SAMPA for reference.

Click and Ejective Phones

IPA uses a diacritic to describe ejectives, but has specific phones for clicks and implosives. Even though this seems a little inconsistent, the UPS follows IPA directly here in order to maintain consistency between SAPI phone Ids and the IPA Unicode values.

Clicks and ejectives are voiceless consonants, although implosives may be partially voiced.