Asterisks (*) next to symbols mark reported sounds that do not (yet) have official IPA symbols. See the respective articles for ad hoc symbols found in the literature.
Daggers (†) mark IPA symbols that have recently been added to Unicode. As of Unicode 5.1.0, this is the case of the labiodental flap, symbolized by a right-hook v: . These will display properly with a recent version of Charis SIL, Doulos SIL or DejaVu Sans fonts installed.
In rows where some symbols appear in pairs (the obstruents), the symbol to the right represents a voiced consonant (except breathy-voiced[ɦ]). However, [ʔ] cannot be voiced, and the voicing of [ʡ] is ambiguous.[1] In the other rows (the sonorants), the single symbol represents a voiced consonant.
Although there is a single symbol for the coronal places of articulation for all consonants but fricatives, when dealing with a particular language, the symbols may be treated as specifically dental, alveolar, or post-alveolar, as appropriate for that language, without diacritics.
Shaded areas indicate articulations judged to be impossible.
The symbols [ʁ,ʕ,ʢ] represent either voiced fricatives or approximants.
In many languages, such as English, [h] and [ɦ] are not actually glottal, fricatives, or approximants. Rather, they are bare phonation.[2]
It is primarily the shape of the tongue rather than its position that distinguishes the fricatives [ʃʒ], [ɕʑ], and [ʂʐ].
^Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, Sounds of the World's Languages, §2.1.
^Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, Sounds of the World's Languages, §9.3.