SAMPA is an acronym that stands for Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet. It is a phonetic notation system devised to represent the sounds of various languages using a combination of ASCII characters. SAMPA is commonly used in linguistics and phonetics, particularly in research related to speech synthesis, speech recognition, and phonological studies.
The SAMPA system assigns a specific code to each sound, representing the phonetic characteristics of consonants, vowels, and other speech sounds. The codes are a combination of basic Latin characters, diacritics, and other symbols that aid in accurately representing the phonetic details of a particular sound. Unlike traditional phonetic notation systems, SAMPA is designed to be easily readable and transcribable on computers, making it suitable for both manual and electronic applications.
The SAMPA system includes codes for a wide range of speech sounds, encompassing consonants, vowels, diphthongs, and other phonetic features. By using SAMPA, researchers and linguists can accurately represent the pronunciation of different linguistic features, facilitating cross-linguistic comparisons and detailed phonetic analyses.
SAMPA has been widely adopted and used in numerous academic disciplines, including linguistics, computational linguistics, and speech technology. Its simplicity and versatility have made it an essential tool for phoneticians and researchers interested in phonetic transcriptions and phonological analysis.
