'Phonetic' shares its PIE root with 'fame,' 'fable,' and 'infant' — all from *bheh2- (to speak).
Relating to the sounds of speech; representing the sounds of speech with a set of distinct symbols, each denoting a single sound.
From Modern Latin 'phōnēticus,' from Greek 'phōnētikós' (pertaining to the voice), from 'phōnētos' (to be spoken, spoken), from 'phōneîn' (to speak, to utter sounds), from 'phōnē' (voice, sound). The Greek 'phōnē' derives from PIE *bʰeh₂- (to speak, to say), the same root that produced Latin 'fāma' (reputation), 'fārī' (to speak), and English 'fame,' 'fable,' 'fate,' and 'infant.' The word was coined in the early nineteenth century as the scientific study of speech sounds emerged as a formal discipline
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), created in 1888, aims to provide exactly one symbol for every sound in every human language. It currently contains 107 base letters, 31 diacritics, and 19 additional symbols. The IPA was originally designed by French and British linguists, which is why it uses a largely Latin-based character set — a European bias that IPA reformers