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Phonetic transcription (or phonetic notation) is the visual system of symbolization of the sounds occurring in spoken human language. The most common type of phonetic transcription uses a phonetic alphabet (such as the International Phonetic Alphabet). The actual pronunciation of words in many languages, versus their written form (orthography), has undergone significant change over time. Pronunciation can also vary greatly between dialects of a language. Traditional orthography in some languages, particularly French and English, often does not coincide with pronunciation. For example, the words "bough" and "trough" are pronounced very differently in English, even though they are spelled the same way. In French, for example, the 's' at the end of words is usually silent ("militaire" is pronounced the same as "militaires") unless followed by a word beginning in a vowel. In the orthography of most European languages, the fact that many letters are pronounced or silent depending on contexts causes difficulties in finding out the appropriate pronunciation, especially in the cases of English and French. However, in other languages such as Spanish and Italian, there is a consistent relationship between orthography and pronunciation. Therefore, phonetic transcription can provide a service that orthography cannot. It displays a one-to-one relationship between symbols and sounds, unlike the traditional Roman alphabet. Phonetic transcription allows us to step outside of orthography and examine differences in pronunciation between dialects within a given language, as well as to identify changes in pronunciation that may take place over time. Phonetic transcription may aim to transcribe the phonology of a language, or it may wish to go further and specify the precise phonetic realisation. In all systems of transcription we may therefore distinguish between broad transcription and narrow transcription. Broad transcription indicates only the more noticeable phonetic features of an utterance, whereas narrow transcription encodes more information about the phonetic variations of the specific allophones in the utterance. The difference between broad and narrow is a continuum. One particular form of a broad transcription is a phonemic transcription, which disregards all allophonic difference.
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