Americanist phonetic notation in the context of "Mid back rounded vowel"

A voiced palatal approximant is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨j⟩; the equivalent symbol in the Americanist phonetic notation is ⟨y⟩. In order to not imply that the approximant is spread as the vowel [i] is, it may instead be transcribed ⟨ʝ̞⟩. When this sound occurs in the form of a palatal glide it is frequently, but not exclusively, denoted as a superscript j ⟨ʲ⟩ in IPA.

This sound is traditionally called a yod, after its name in Hebrew. This is reflected in the names of certain phonological changes, such as yod-dropping and yod-coalescence.

In phonetics, nasalisation (or nasalization in American English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is [n].

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, nasalisation is indicated by printing a tilde diacritic U+0303 ◌̃ COMBINING TILDE above the symbol for the sound to be nasalised: [ã] is the nasalised equivalent of [a], and [ṽ] is the nasalised equivalent of [v]. Although not IPA, a subscript diacritic [ą], called an ogonek, is sometimes seen, especially when the vowel bears tone marks that would stack with the superscript tilde. For example, ⟨ą̄ ą́ ą̀ ą̂ ą̌⟩ are more legible than stacked ⟨ã̄ ã́ ã̀ ã̂ ã̌⟩. The subscript ogonek is also the preferred diacritic for nasalisation by Americanists.

A voiceless alveolar lateral affricate is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is ⟨t͡ɬ⟩ (often simplified to ⟨tɬ⟩), and in Americanist phonetic notation it is ⟨ƛ⟩ (barred lambda).

A voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨tʃ⟩, ⟨t͡ʃ⟩, ⟨t͜ʃ⟩, or, in broad transcription, ⟨c⟩. This affricate has a dedicated symbol U+02A7 ʧ LATIN SMALL LETTER TESH DIGRAPH, which was retired by the International Phonetic Association but is still used. The alternative commonly used in American tradition is ⟨č⟩. It is familiar to English speakers as the "ch" sound in "chip".

Historically, [tʃ] often derives from a former voiceless velar stop /k/ (as in English church; also in Gulf Arabic, Slavic languages, Indo-Iranian languages and Romance languages), or a voiceless dental stop /t/ by way of palatalization, especially next to a front vowel (as in English nature; also in Amharic, Portuguese, some accents of Egyptian, etc.).

Eng, agma, or engma (capital: Ŋ, lowercase: ŋ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, used to represent a voiced velar nasal (as in English singing) in the written form of some languages and in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

In Washo, lower-case ⟨ŋ⟩ represents a typical [ŋ] sound, while upper-case ⟨Ŋ⟩ represents a voiceless [ŋ̊] sound. This convention comes from Americanist phonetic notation.