Munji (aka Munjani or Munjiwar; ISO 639-3: [mnj]) is spoken in the Kuran wa Munjan district of Badakhshan province in Afghanistan. Munji is classified as an Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Iranian, Eastern, Southeastern, Pamir language (Lewis 2009). There are about 5,300 Munji speakers (Beyer & Beck 2011). There are two main dialects, which divide into the northern and southern halves of the valley (see Figure 1). These dialects exhibit some regular sound changes and a small percentage of lexical differences. Munji speakers are aware of the differences, but there is no trouble in mutual understanding.

Murcian Spanish (MuSp) is a regional variety of Spanish spoken in the Comunidad Autónoma de Murcia in south-eastern Spain. It is commonly heard in the capital city, Murcia, with 450,000 inhabitants, situated in the Segura River plain (Central Zone), and in a number of towns like Cartagena (Coastal Zone), Yecla and Jumilla (Altiplano or High Plateau Zone), Lorca and Águilas (Guadalentín River Zone), and Caravaca and Calasparra (North-western Zone). The overall population of the region amounts to well over 1,100,000 inhabitants (Hernández-Campoy 2003: 621).

Nara is a Nilo-Saharan language spoken by some 41,000 people to the north-west of Barentu in northern Eritrea. It is now regarded as constituting a one-language branch of the East Sudanic family (Bender 1989: 20; though see Ehret 1989: 49) but formerly it had been treated as an isolate within the phylum. The fullest description of the language in existence is that of Reinisch (1874) though in that work, the language name is given as ‘Barea’, which is an unfortunate choice since it is the word for ‘slave’ in a number of Ethiopian Semitic languages; Nara is the term used by the speech community for referring to their language as well as to themselves. Four distinct dialects need to be recognized within Nara, namely: Higir, Mogorayeb, Koyta and Saantoorta.

Nen (ISO 639–3 code: nqn) is the easternmost language of the Yam (Morehead-Maro) family of Southern New Guinea. This family is one of over forty maximal genetic groupings in New Guinea, and is currently not relatable to any other language family in New Guinea or elsewhere. As with other aspects of their grammar, the phonology of the Morehead-Maro languages differs significantly from those of other Papuan languages. The phonology of Nen is broadly similar to that of other members of the family, except that (like most other members of the Nambu branch, of which it is a member) it lacks the velar nasal phoneme found in more westerly languages, and it has a smaller fricative inventory: other languages of the family include /ɸ ɣ θ/, all absent from Nen.

Nepali, a language of the Indo-Aryan family, is the official language of Nepal. According to the 2001 population census of Nepal, more than 11 million Nepalese (48.61% of the total population) claim this language as their mother tongue. It is also spoken in other countries of South Asia, such as India and Bhutan, as well as by members of the Nepalese Diaspora around the world. The population census of India of 1991 reported that more than two million Indians use Nepali as their mother tongue. Within Nepal, Nepali shows some dialectal variation mainly linked to geographical and socio-cultural factors. Nevertheless, the dialect called the ‘eastern’ dialect spoken by a majority of Nepali speakers shows rather little variation (Bandhu et al. 1971).

In this illustration, we present a transcription and discussion of the variety of English spoken by people of European descent in New Zealand. Locally, such people are referred to as being Pākehā, using the Māori word. Pākehā speech is illustrated here in the speech of three educated women. Thus some of the features which might be expected from New Zealanders do not occur in these recordings, although the speakers are all clearly New Zealanders.

Niuean (ISO 639-3 code niu) is a Polynesian language spoken on the island of Niue, with an additional population of speakers living in New Zealand. Figure 1 indicates where Niue is located with respect to other neighboring islands in the South Pacific. The 2011 Niue Census of Populations and Households cited the number of individuals who had either basic or fluent spoken abilities at 1121 (with 101 non-speakers) (Statistics Niue 2012). English is the second most widely used language on the island. The 2013 New Zealand census cited 4548 individuals living in New Zealand who listed Niuean as one of their languages (Statistics New Zealand 2013). Niuean is classified as ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO (Moseley 2010). There are historically two distinct dialects: the older Motu dialect from the northern area, and the more recent Tafiti from the southern area. These dialect differences were once reflected in slight phonological differences in vocabulary items, but the differences have since eroded in the modern language (see McEwen 1970: ix). Previous research on Niuean phonetics and phonology includes a brief outline in Seiter (1980: x), two dictionaries (McEwen 1970, Sperlich 1997), and an article on vowel length (Rolle & Starks 2014). While these works provide an overview of some of the phenomena to be addressed below, this sketch attempts a more thorough documentation of the phonetic structures of Niuean, and provides novel acoustic and articulatory data from the language. Recordings accompanying this paper are of a male speaker (Mr. Krypton Okesene) and a female speaker (the second author).

Nivaĉle [niβaˈe] (ISO 639-3: cag) is a Mataguayan language spoken in the Argentinean and Paraguayan Chaco by approximately 16,350 speakers in Paraguay (DGEEC 2012) and 553 in Argentina (INDEC 2004–2005).

Sahaptin is a Sahaptian language spoken in Washington and Oregon, U.S.A. Rigsby & Rude (1996) divide Sahaptin into three broad dialect areas: Northwest, Northeast, and Columbia River. This Illustration of the IPA reflects the Yakama (also spelled Yakima) subdialect (ykm) of Northwest Sahaptin. Sahaptin has fifty or fewer native speakers (Beavert & Jansen 2012). The second author is a native speaker of this dialect. Her voice is on the accompanying recordings.

The Nuosu (Nosu) Yi language, or Northern Yi (北部彝语), is spoken by approximately two million people in southern Sichuan Province and northern Yunnan Province, China, the majority of whom are monolingual. Yi is a member of the Yi Branch of the Lolo-Burmese subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman family (Benedict 1972/2009, Bradley 1979), which includes some 50 languages, also called the Nisoic languages (Lama 2012) or Ngwi Group. The large (5 million) ethnic Yi nationality groups of Yunnan Province are distantly related. The third author, Lama Ziwo, who was 31 at the time of recording, produced, translated and transcribed the recorded audio data phonemically and participated in the laryngoscopic filming of the video data. He is a native speaker of the Suondip/Suondi dialect, and a fluent speaker of the Shypnra/Shengza dialect. It is the Shypnra/Shengza standard dialect that is being represented in this paper. The most distinguishing phonetic feature of Northern Yi is its systematic vocal register contrast (Matisoff 1972, Dai 1990) between two settings of the laryngeal constrictor mechanism, which are referred to as a lax (unconstricted) series and a tense (constricted) series (Edmondson et al. 2000, 2001). The contrast is realized as a distinction in resonance (spectral quality) rather than as contrasting phonation types as in some other forms of Yi or in other Tibeto-Burman languages (e.g. Bai). The consonantal inventory is large, with complex vocalic interactions, including interactions with two pairs of fricativized vowels. Northern Yi has 43 initial consonants, five pairs of vowels (or syllable rhymes), and three tones: 55, 33, and 21. Relevant reports on voice quality in related languages can be found in Maddieson & Ladefoged (1985) and Sun & Liu (1986).

Nuuchahnulth (PHONETICS), often referred to in the literature as Nootka, is a Wakashan language spoken by people living on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Each of thirteen Nuuchahnulth bands represents a different dialect group. Nitinaht (Diitiidath) is usually included in the Nuuchahnulth group, but it is divergent enough to be considered a separate language. The data in this illustration represent the Ahousaht (PHONETICS) dialect.

Palula is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by approximately 10,000 people in the southern part of Chitral District in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. It belongs to a group of speech varieties subsumed under the heading Shina (Morgenstierne 1941; Strand 2000–2001). The speech described here is that of Ashret Valley, one of two main dialects of Palula. The transcription is based on a recording of the speech of the second author, Naseem Haider, himself a native speaker of Palula, born in 1978; his speech is typical of Ashreti, or southern, Palula.

English is an official language in the Philippines, along with Filipino, a standardized register originally based on Tagalog (Gonzalez 1998). The Philippines were a Spanish colony for over three centuries, but when the Americans took control in 1898, they immediately implemented English instruction in schools (Gonzalez 2004). It became much more widespread among Filipinos than Spanish ever was, and by the late 1960s, Philippine English was recognized as a distinct, nativized variety (Llamzon 1969). It is widely spoken throughout the country as a second language, alongside Filipino and approximately 180 other languages (Lewis, Simmons & Fennig 2016). It is also spoken in the home by a small number of Filipinos, especially among the upper class in Metro Manila (Gonzalez 1983, 1989) and other urban areas. There is a large body of literature on Philippine English. However, relatively few studies have focused on its sound system. The most detailed phonological descriptions of this variety have been by Tayao (2004, 2008), although there have also been previous sketches (Llamzon 1969, 1997; Gonzalez 1984). There has been very little phonetic research on Philippine English, apart from some work describing the vowel system (Pillai, Manueli & Dumanig 2010, Cruz 2015).

Pitjantjatjara is a dialect of the Western Desert Language (WDL) of central Australia (Douglas 1958). The Western Desert Language is a member of the south-west Pama-Nyungan group. Together with Warnman, it forms the Wati sub-group. It is spoken by 4000–5000 people, and covers the widest geographical area of any language in Australia, stretching from Woomera in central northern South Australia, as far west as Kalgoorlie and Meekatharra and north to Balgo Hills, in Western Australia. The main dialects, which differ most in regards the lexicon but also to some extent in grammar and phonology, include Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, Ngaatjatjarra, Southern Luritja, Pintupi-Luritja, Kukatja, Gugarda, Ngalia, Wangkatja, Wangkatha, Manyjilyjarra, Kartutjarra and Yurlparija. It is perhaps more accurately conceived of as a dialect chain, whereby a dialect such as Pitjantjatjara is mutually intelligible with its neighbours Ngaanyatjatjarra and Yankunytjatjara, but not with dialects more distant than these, such as Kukatja and Manyjilyjarra.

Polish is a West Slavonic language with about 41 million speakers in Poland and approximately 10 million in diasporas. It can be described as a ‘consonantal’ language, in two respects: (a) it has a rich system of consonant phonemes, as shown in the table, and (b) it allows heavy consonant clusters, especially word-initially.

Punjabi (Western, ISO-639-3 pnb) is an Indo-Aryan language (Indo-European, Indo-Iranian) spoken in Pakistan and India, and in immigrant communities in the UK, Canada, USA, and elsewhere. In terms of number of native speakers, it is ranked 10th among the world’s languages, with more than 100 million speakers (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2016). Aspects of the phonology of different varieties of Punjabi have been described in Jain (1934), Arun (1961), Gill & Gleason (1962), Singh (1971), Dulai & Koul (1980), Bhatia (1993), Malik (1995), Shackle (2003), and Dhillon (2010). Much of this literature is focused on Eastern varieties, and the phonology of Western Punjabi dialects has received relatively less attention (e.g. Bahri 1962, Baart 2003, 2014).

From 18 to 21 August 1989 approximately 120 members of the Association (and a few guests) met in Kiel, West Germany, to work on revisions of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). There had been a great deal of preparation for this convention, involving the soliciting of opinion by mail on a wide range of topics, and considerable research on the present status of the IPA. A previous issue of this journal, JIPA 18(2), collected a number of these preparatory opinions. At the convention itself there were five major working groups which met almost continuously for the first two days. Three groups considered consonants, vowels and suprasegmentals; the other two considered computational aspects of the IPA, and the needs of speech pathologists and others for extensions of the IPA. In addition there were groups concerned with the principles on which the IPA should be based, the form of presentation of the IPA, past successes and failures, and methods of illustration of the IPA. The groups reported back to the whole at intervals, and on the last day the convention met in a series of plenary sessions to consider and vote on the final working reports. The following is a compilation of six of the group reports reflecting the results of the discussions and votes of the plenary sessions. The Association is very grateful to the co-ordinators and co-chairs of the groups. Most of the wording below is taken directly from their reports; in accordance with the traditions of the Association, this report is presented without attribution to particular authors.

Russian (ISO 639-3 rus) is an Indo-European East Slavic language spoken by about 162 million people as their first language and about another 110 million as their second language (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2013), mainly in the Russian Federation (where it is the native language of about 80% of the population, see Berger 1998, Federal’naja služba gosudarstvennoj statistiki (Federal State Statistics Service) 2012: 228–232) and in the other former republics of the USSR (among which it is co-official in Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan). Large groups of Russian speakers (so-called heritage speakers) also live in Europe (especially Germany: almost 3 million or 3.5% of the population, Brehmer 2007: 166–167), Israel (about 1 million or 20%, Glöckner 2008) and the United States (850,000 or 0.3%, Shin & Kominski 2010: 6).