The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a representation of the phonetic sounds of language. The IPA was created in 1888 by the International Phonetic Association. It is standardized to all languages and provides linguists, students, speech therapists and actors with the correct pronunciation of words in any language. Microsoft Word provides some IPA-compatible fonts out-of-the-box, but you can also download IPA-compatible fonts from websites, such as the website for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, also known as SIL International.
