Americanist phonetic notation (variously called the [North] American[ist] Phonetic Alphabet, or APA) is a system of
phonetic notation originally developed by European and American
anthropologists and language scientists (students of
Neo-grammarians) for the
phonetic and
phonemic transcription of
Native American and
European languages. It is still commonly used by linguists working on, among others,
Slavic,
Indic,
Uralic,
Semitic and
Caucasian languages (however, Uralists commonly use a variant known as
Uralic Phonetic Alphabet). The term "Americanist phonetic alphabet" is misleading because it has always been widely used outside the Americas. For example, a version of it is the standard for the transcription of Arabic in articles published in the
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, the journal of the
German Oriental Society.