implies, it is not really a phonetic transcription at all (though at times it may coincide with one), but a representation of phonemic structure. A transcription which includes some allophonic detail but is closely linked to the phonemic structure of an utterance is called an allophonic transcription. The advantage of the narrow transcription is that it can help learners to produce exactly the right sound and allows linguists to make detailed analyses of language variation. The disadvantage is that a narrow transcription is rarely representative of all speakers of a language. While most Americans, Canadians, and Australians would pronounce the of little as a tap , many speakers in southern England would pronounce /t/ as (a glottal stop; t-glottalization) and/or the second as a vowel resembling (L-vocalization), possibly yielding . A further disadvantage of narrow transcription is that it involves a larger number of symbols and diacritics that may be unfamiliar to non-specialists. The advantage of broad transcription is that it usually allows statements to be made which apply across a more diverse language community. It is thus more appropriate for the pronunciation data in foreign language dictionaries, which may discuss phonetic details in the preface but rarely give them for each entry. A rule of thumb in many linguistics contexts is therefore to use a narrow transcription when it is necessary for the point being made, but a broad transcription whenever possible. Types of notational systems Most phonetic transcription is based on the assumption that linguistic sounds are segmentable into discrete units that can be represented by symbols. Many different types of transcription, or "notation", have been tried out: these may be divided into Alphabetic (which are based on the same principle as that which governs ordinary alphabetic writing, namely that of using one single simple symbol to represent each sound) and Analphabetic (notations which are not alphabetic) which represent each sound by a composite symbol made up of a number of signs put together. Alphabetic The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the most widely used and well-known of present-day phonetic alphabets and has a long history. It was created in the nineteenth century by European language teachers and linguists. It soon developed beyond its original purpose as a tool of foreign language pedagogy and is now also used extensively as a practical alphabet of phoneticians and linguists. It is found in many dictionaries, where it is used to