In order to type IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcriptions into a linguistic databases or into a program such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, we need to install fonts that have the IPA character set in them, and also a keyboard to easily type the symbols.
These are installed already on CanIL lab machines.
A number of fonts have most of the IPA character set in them including Arial, Times New Roman, etc. For linguistic studies though, you will need the entire IPA character set.
There are three freely available SIL font families that have the entire IPA character set. The first is preferred.
Charis Release 7 - https://software.sil.org/charis/
Doulos Release 7 - https://software.sil.org/doulos/
Gentium Release 7 - https://software.sil.org/gentium/
You should be using Times New Roman or Charis for work at CanIL unless specifically instructed otherwise.
There are instructions here on how to install fonts from a zip file: https://software.sil.org/fonts/installation/
https://scripts.sil.org/ is a site dedicated to script, font, encoding, and keyboarding issues.
Note: We recommend using the IPA keyboards above instead of Keyman unless you need a keyboard for Android or iOS.
Visit the following website: https://keyman.com/keyboards/sil_ipa The primary advantage of Keyman is that it can be installed on a wide-variety of platforms including Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Android and iOS. There is not yet a plugin for Chromebooks (although apparently some recent Chromebooks allow installation of Android apps).
If you are looking for keyboards for indigenous languages, there may be a Keyman keyboard available for it already. You can see the list of the Keyman keyboards here: https://keyman.com/keyboards.
To install Keyman, refer to the instructions here (also posted in the file listing below).
The above fonts contain all the symbols for IPA but you will also need keyboarding software to make it easy to access the wide variety of symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet. There are a number of different software solutions listed below.
This is what we use in the CanIL lab.
Download the installer here: Link
You will need to unzip the file and then run the installer, then install the keyboard.
Keyboarding reference charts
One page double-sided reference: Link
Color-coded reference: Link
Full 4 page reference ALL keystrokes: Link
Wikipedia article with Unicode values for all charted IPA characters
For more information refer to: https://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=UniIPAKeyboard#b47f8dfb