Like the more common SAMPA, the system uses lower case letters to represent the directly correspending IPA character. However, the mapping used to represent other characters often differs. For example -
| Sound | SAMPA | Kirshenbaum |
|---|---|---|
| schwa | @ | @ |
| æ | { | & |
| script a | A | A |
| open e | E | E |
| theta | T | T |
| edh | D | D |
| esh | S | S |
| ezh | Z | Z |
| eng | N | N |
| turned open o | O | O |
| turned script a | Q | A. |
| turned open e | 3 | V" |
| primary stress | " | ' |
| secondary stress | % | , |