I subscribe to a newsgroup where we regularly discuss pronunciation, mainly of English but also of other languages. It seems my Mac can reproduce other people's IPA symbols, but I can't find any way to input them. What's the secret, please? I am using OS 10.11.1.
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), May only relate to Preview
Indian pale ale ?
You go to Edit > Emoji and Symbols, the click on the gear wheel and select Customize, then check the box for Phonetic Alphabet.
You can normally input via double-click or drag drop.
I used to drink IPA in England, but after 43 years in Australia, I no longer like it. Unfortunately, all the boutique breweries seem to revel in highly hopped, fruit tasting pale ales. Ugh!
I presume you meant from Finder. I don't seem to have a customise option available.
Some IPA is good, but the last I had was just too much IPA. Staying away from it for now.
Checkout http://ipa.typeit.org/
That's the truncated Viewer. You need to click on the little icon in the top right calendar to get the real, full one. That has a gear wheel you can click on to select Customize.
I looked at that but still didn't see it.
I have been to TypIt too, but I hope I don't have to go down that path. It would a crazy way to go. Makes Windows seem sane. Why IPA can't be among the list of foreign languages in System Preferences, I don't know - there're languages there I've never heard of.
How about this...
Thank you very much. I won't say it's solved my question, but it has shown me that Mac has incorporated a very unintuitive way of implementing something that should be simple. I suppose now, that with either what used to be Character Viewer, but is now Emoji & Symbols and perhaps with the help of TypIt, I will be able to find my around. I still think the International Phonetic Alphabet should have appeared in the languages option.
Robert Bannister wrote:
I still think the International Phonetic Alphabet should have appeared in the languages option.
You can ask Apple to do this via
but it's not going to happen, because IPA is not a language.
If you need IPA a lot, you could make a custom keyboard layout using Ukelele or Karabiner. There is a ready-made one you could try at
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ipa-sil_keyboar d
Also possibly useful is the IPA Palette
Thanks once again. In fact, what Apple calls "languages" are nothing more than sets of symbols and keyboard layouts. Still, it's almost impossible to make Apple budge. The IPA Palette you suggested looks useful. I have installed it (after much messing about with System Preferences), although I haven't tried it out yet. Thank you.
Robert Bannister wrote:
what Apple calls "languages" are nothing more than sets of symbols and keyboard layouts.
That's not correct. When you switch the Preferred Language on OS X (at least to the one of the 34 currently supported), all the menus and dialogues of the system and apps change accordingly. To have IPA on this list would make no sense.
IPA is a specialized notation system that can be used by linguists to represent the sounds of any language, and if anywhere it belongs in the Input Source settings. Apple could in theory provide one of these for IPA, but it's not very practical, as every linguist probably wants a layout that reflects their native keyboard and the needs of the language they are currently transcribing.
How to insert IPA in emails
