Hi Sarah, There isn't a really good way to work with IPA (phonetic) symbols with VoiceOver, because most of these characters don't get pronounced. There's a web site for entering characters called "Type IPA phonetic symbols": http://ipa.typeit.org/full/ If you navigate through the character buttons, you get full descriptions that VO reads, and if you VO+space on the characters they'll be typed into a text box on the web page. However, these descriptions are very long, and include extraneous information on typing the characters with keyboard shortcuts that don't work for me. For example, here are the first two characters: "open back unrounded vowel (Ctrl+A) button" "near-open front unrounded vowel (Ctrl+AA) button"
Now, that second description is for a keyboard symbol that VoiceOver does announce, as "æ" (or on my iOS devices in some phonetics apps this is described as "A E ligature". "Near-open front unrounded vowel (Ctrl+AA)" is a very long description for the vowel sound in "cat" or the beginning of "apple". This combination can be typed with an Option key shortcut (Option+apostrophe -- the key to left of the return key on an English language keyboard). Your schwa sound is described here as: "mid-central vowel (Ctrl+E) button" Can you just define a set of the extra characters you want to use and set up shortcut definitions to type these? I think that's your best bet. The IPA character symbols aren't loaded by default onto any of the current Mac OS X operating systems. In older versions of the operating system (back in 2009) you could pull up the character palette in TextEdit, set the pop up menu to view "all characters", then go to the table and select "Symbols", and then select "Phonetic Symbols". The problem even then is that the full IPA character set is huge, and you'd have to navigate through the entire table to find and copy the symbols you needed, and several of these wouldn't be pronounced by VoiceOver. The "Type IPA phonetic symbols" web site is actually easier to use than the old Character Palette installations. While there are custom IPA keyboards for the Mac, I haven't tried loading these, because I don't think they would be accessible. One way you can type the characters on your Mac with existing keyboards is if you know the Unicode decimal Hex values for the character symbols you want. To do this, add the "Unicode Hex Input" keyboard to your input sources. Go to System Preferences > Languages & Text > Input Sources. In the "Input Source" table on the Input Sources tab, check the box for "Unicode Hex Input". You may also want to check the box for "Show input menu in menu bar" before closing the "Languages & Text" window with Command-W. (I use several input language keyboards, so I like to be able to review my "Text Input" list by navigating to the status menu bar (Control-F8) instead of just using a keyboard shortcut to switch to the next keyboard). A list of the Unicode Hex codes for IPA symbols may be found at the "IPA Transcription in Unicode" web page at: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm Navigate to the heading for "Unicode decimal and hex numbers for IPA symbols". The table lists the symbol, its unicode decimal value, its unicode hex value, and its description, in alphabetical order. (The schwa is grouped with the "e" characters, with a unicode hex value of "0259".) So, to type a schwa symbol, I would switch to the Unicode Hex keyboard, which behaves like a normal US English keyboard until I type Option-key shortcuts, and then hold down the Option key while I press the four hex characters in succession: "0" "2" "5" and "9". I'll type the schwa symbol by itself on the next line so you can copy and paste it: ə Remember that hexadecimal numbers may require you to press not just keys on the top row of numbers, but may also include the first 6 letters of the alphabet. A common phonetic consonant for the "n g" letter combination in words like "song" or "singing" has a unicode hex value of "014B". So you would hold down the Option key and press "0" "1" "4" "b" in succession to type this character, which I again enter on the next line. ŋ I would just make up a list of the characters you want and associate keyboard shortcuts you can remember to the descriptions. A label like "n+g" id likely to be more memorable than "velar nasal (Ctrl+N) button". You could use an inexpensive text expansion app like "aText" ($4.99 in the Mac App Store) to set up these shortcuts: https://itunes.apple.com/app/atext/id488566438?mt=12 I think I mentioned this app in a post last April answering Catherine's questions about entering unicode characters. I already have TextExpander from a few years ago, which is a more powerful (and more expensive) alternative, but aText should be easier to configure than simple text substitution under Mac OS X, can provide working shortcuts systemwide (not just in TextEdit, mail, and a few others), and is also supposed to work under VMWare Fusion's unity mode (you should read the details). If you're using the standard set of phonetic symbols for basic pronunciation, then the best app I've found is one on iOS called "Sounds: The Pronunciation App" by MacMillan Education, which is available in both a free and paid versions. This uses three groups of phonetic symbols: vowel sounds, diphthongs, and consonants. They've done a good job on improving accessibility since the first version I tried. When you first open the app, you can select between "British English" and "American English". Focus is on "British English", so if you just double tap instead of flicking, that's what will be selected. The app will use British English pronunciation and phonetic symbols, which gives a slightly different group of symbols in the chart for pronunciation in the case of vowels and diphthongs. However, you can change this in the settings, if on the main screen you flick from "Chart" past "Practice Taster" and "Quiz Taster" to "More", and double tap. On the screen that comes up, flick past "Instructions" to "Settings" and double tap. There are buttons for "British English" and "American English". The app does announce which one is selected in VO, but if you double tap your selection it will take effect. The instructions and descriptions of "More about Sounds" are quite accessible, but the linked instruction video requires flash to be played. The vowels are grouped in three rows at the upper left of the chart, while the diphthongs are grouped in three rows at the upper right of the chart. Below these are the three rows with 24 consonants common to both dialects of English. When you touch or flick to a symbol, VO will announce it, if it uses letters or symbols that VO recognizes. Otherwise it's reported as "unpronounceable", but you can relabel the symbol. (Update: this is no longer needed under iOS 7). Double tap the symbol to hear the associated sound. Do a double tap and hold if you also want to hear an example of a word that uses that sound in its pronunciation. For example, the first phonetic symbol will be identified as "i". Double tapping gives an audio clip of the sound as "ee", and doing double tap and hold ads the example word "see" to the audio announcement. I notice that under iOS 7 all the phonetic symbols are identified with VoiceOver. The next symbol is announced as "small capital i" and the next is "upsilon". Both of these were "unpronounceable" under iOS 6, and I had relabeled these to "short i" and "short"u". The "schwa" symbol is announced as "turned e". You can try out this app on your iPhone. The practice taster has sections where you can read the phonetic transcription and try typing in the word. If you double tap the "check" button and you've entered the correct word in the text box, the word will be read out. Otherwise, double tap the "Show" button and listen to the answer before double tapping "next" to go to the next question. You can also try writing out the phonetic version of a word that is written out, or you can use the listen test to enter the symbols for a word that is pronounced in the app. You can copy phonetic symbols that you type into the text fields, but you should check whether VO will read these if you transfer them to your computer. This app is universal. I seem to have trouble entering the symbol text from the buttons in the practice test sections on the iPad updated to iOS 7. (The double tap and hold gesture doesn't seem to be inputting the characters.) There's still room for accessibility improvements, but this is a neat app. Don't know whether it will work for you, since you're asking for a Mac OS X solution. Here's the App Store link to this pronunciation app, and you can also search under "MacMillan Education": • Sounds: The Pronunciation App FREE by Macmillan Education https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sounds-pronunciation-app-free/id428243918?mt=8 The paid version has more test questions, plus word list, typing, and customizable study sections: • Sounds: The Pronunciation App ($5.99) by Macmillan Education https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sounds-the-pronunciation-app/id442713833?mt=8 HTH. Cheers, Esther On Sep 21, 2013, at 2:22 PM, Sarah k Alawami wrote: > Hello all. I'm in a diction class and we are doing IPA. is there a way I can > enter these in osx? I'm taking a test tuesday and the last time I tried to > do this the results were a mess. I can't really explain what the IPa simple > is but I will need to enter things that are called shwah or a backward 3 or > what not. > > Thanks for any advice. <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to [email protected] You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml> As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security strategy. We assume neither liability nor responsibility should something unpredictable happen. 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