How to write ipa characters in Latex?

Question

I need a document in which I can write the international phonetic alphabet (ipa) characters without interfering with italics.

Answer 1

Ok, so I managed to workout an answer while researching to write my question here, so I'll share in case it's not elsewhere:

One can set the font for the entire document using \setmainfont{Doulos SIL}, but I believe this uses the ipa font set for the whole document, and where that font set lacks italics. But it looks like {\setmainfont{Doulos SIL} /kɪndərɡɑrdn/} seems to localizes the scope of \setmainfont{}.

Note that the following code requires the XeLaTex compiler, which is accessible on Overleaf:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{indentfirst} % Indents first line after section start
\usepackage{fontspec} % For IPA characters (REQUIRES changing compiler to XeLaTex) 

\begin{document}
\section*{}
``kipwa" (ipa: {\setmainfont{Doulos SIL} /kɪpwa/}) \&
``kindergarden" (ipa: {\setmainfont{Doulos SIL} /kɪndərɡɑrdn/}).
Doesn't break italics: {\it Yo mom breaks italics}
\end{document}

This is just a quick fix. If you have a better answer, I would love to know. Thanks!

Useful reference: [1]: LaTeX: Font style