Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet

The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script using 7-bit printable ASCII characters, based on the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

It was originally developed in the late 1980s for six European languages by the EEC ESPRIT information technology research and development program. As many symbols as possible have been taken over from the IPA; where this is not possible, other signs that are available are used, e.g. for schwa (IPA ), for the vowel sound found in French deux (IPA ), and for the vowel sound found in French neuf (IPA ).

Today, officially, SAMPA has been developed for all the sounds of the following languages:

  • Arabic
  • Bosnian
  • Bulgarian
  • Cantonese
  • Croatian
  • Czech
  • Danish
  • Dutch
  • English
  • Estonian
  • French
  • German
  • Greek
  • Hebrew
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese
  • Romanian
  • Russian
  • Scots
  • Serbian
  • Slovak
  • Slovenian
  • Spanish
  • Swedish
  • Thai
  • Turkish

The characters represent the pronunciation of the name SAMPA in English. Like IPA, SAMPA is usually enclosed in square brackets or slashes, which are not part of the alphabet proper and merely signify that it is phonetic as opposed to regular text.

Read more about Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet:  Features

Famous quotes containing the words speech, assessment, methods, phonetic and/or alphabet:

    “Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.”
    —Bible: New Testament St. Paul, in Colossians, 4:6.

    “The first year was critical to my assessment of myself as a person. It forced me to realize that, like being married, having children is not an end in itself. You don’t at last arrive at being a parent and suddenly feel satisfied and joyful. It is a constantly reopening adventure.”
    —Anonymous Mother. From the Boston Women’s Health Book Collection. Quoted in The Joys of Having a Child, by Bill and Gloria Adler (1993)

    “How can you tell if you discipline effectively? Ask yourself if your disciplinary methods generally produce lasting results in a manner you find acceptable. Whether your philosophy is democratic or autocratic, whatever techniques you use—reasoning, a “star” chart, time-outs, or spanking—if it doesn’t work, it’s not effective.”
    —Stanley Turecki (20th century)

    “The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.”
    —Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    “I wonder, Mr. Bone man, what you’re thinking
    of your fury now, gone sour as a sinking whale,
    crawling up the alphabet on her own bones.”
    —Anne Sexton (1928–1974)