In particular, the need to record personal names and foreign words encouraged the development of phonetic elements in writing. But while these true writing systems all used phonetic devices for the ...

A few decades ago, researchers discovered four small clay cylinders marked with strange symbols at an ancient tomb in Syria. They’ve now concluded that those symbols are letters—and they may be the ...

This page allows you to type phonetic transcripts using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Simply click on a phonetic symbol, and it will appear in the text box below. You can edit your ...