Reading about the IPA invariably brings to mind what we have in Sanskrit, the language, and Devanagari, the script. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Devanagari

Reading about the IPA invariably brings to mind what we have in Sanskrit, the language, and Devanagari, the script. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Devanagari https://www.britannica.com/topic/Devanagari https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Consonants https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari#Consonants The consonants are neatly divided into five categories, depending upon where the tongue touches the roof of the mouth/teeth/lips (back to front) - guttural (k as in kite, g as in go), palatal (ch as in chair, j as in jug), retroflex (t as in tap, d as in dog), dental (th as in thin, dh as in them), and labial (p as in pet, b as in bear). Each of these also have an aspirated version, and there's a nasal at the end - so 5 in each category times 5 categories = 25 main consonants. Then there are the vowels, semi-vowels, and spirants as different categories by themselves, each of which can be systematically tacked on to each of the consonants. This systematic categorization of sounds and writing forms is amazing for a language that was developed a few thousand years ago. There are of course some sounds that are not part of the system, like x, z and f. Some vowels too - like the a in bad, but all in all, the amount of thought put into the system is amazing.