The beauty of this method is that it uses software built into Mac OS X, and that you can use IPA fonts in any application that supports Unicode (translation: lots of them), not just specific programs. In this post, I’m going to explain, as simply as possible, how to go about finding the files and setting this up, all without paying a dime for specialty software. However, to get the more cool/obscure characters and diacritics, or to stack diacritics (placing, for instance, a tone marking above a nasal marking), you need special fonts, layouts and setup.
Some of the characters are easy enough to use without any special work (ŋ, ə), as most fonts already include them.
See all postsĪs a linguist, you find yourself using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) incredibly frequently. At this point, it works for any version of Mac OS X up to 10.15 “Catalina”. This was originally posted on my blog, Notes from a Linguistic Mystic in 2007, but is kept updated here for the internet’s use. Every font is free to download!Will StylerĪssistant Teaching Professor - UC San Diego Looking for Mac fonts? Click to find the best 66 free fonts in the Mac style.
To download the font, select it and choose Edit Download. Fonts that appear dimmed in Font Book are either disabled ('Off'), or are additional fonts available for download from Apple.
