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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

This Pronunciation textbook uses phonetic symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA). The huge advantage of the IPA is that it has a symbol for every sound of the (English) language. This is important because there are many more sounds in the language than there are letters in the alphabet.

 

An example

The eight words below all contain the letter o. The pronunciation of these o’s, however, is different in each word:

  • bone
  • done
  • gone
  • cord
  • word
  • womb
  • woman
  • women

If we want to know how these letters are actually pronounced, we need a system that has “letters” for each of these sounds. This system is the IPA. Here’s the same list of words, with the ones in IPA next to it, which clearly shows that all vowels are pronounced differently:

  • bone → /boʊn/
  • done → /dʌn /
  • gone → /gɑːn/
  • cord → /kɔrd/
  • word → /wɜrd/
  • womb → /wuːm/
  • woman → /ˈwʊmən/
  • women → /ˈwɪmən/

 

It is useful to know what sounds the IPA symbols represent, especially if you wish to do the phoneme discrimination exercises.

Some IPA symbols are the same as regular orthographic letters that represent consonants or vowels, e.g. /f/, /s/, /u/, or /i/. However, most of the IPA symbols are quite different.

Here are the symbols that are different from regular letters with examples:

Vowel symbol Example
ʊ pull, foot
ɪ tin, kitten
ʌ* cup, funny
æ* laugh, fan
ɔ** horse, more
ɛ bed, letter, head
ɜ** burn, bird
ɑː hot, father
ə about, ago, panda, fever
high, find
cow, meow
ɔɪ boy, toy
name, stain
home, moan

* never occurs before /r/ in General American

** only occurs before /r/ in General American

 

Consonant symbol Example
θ thing, author
ð the, these, other
ʃ ship, pressure, nation
ʒ measure, beige, vision
t͡ʃ watch, choose, picture
d͡ʒ judge, junk, adjourn
ŋ song, running
j young, yes

 

Fig. 1 The consonants of General American (GA)

/p,b/ pit, bit /f,v/ fan, van /t͡ʃ,d͡ʒ/ check /m/ meal /l/ lip
/t,d/ tan, Dan /θ, ð/ think, this judge /n/ Neil /r/ rip
/k,g/ cold, gold /s,z/ Sue, zoo /ŋ/ sing /j/ yes
/ʃ,ʒ/ shoot, beige /w/ why
/h/ hall

 

Fig. 2 The vowels of General American (GA)
Strong vowels of GA
Lax monophthongs Tense monophthongs Tense diphthongs
ʊ − foot iː − bean aɪ − fine
ɪ − tin uː − spoon aʊ − town
ɛ − fell ɑː − Pa ɔɪ − toy
æ − cat eɪ − pain
ʌ − run oʊ − home

 

Weak vowels of GA
ə − about, panda
ɪ − roses, setting
i − happy, radio
u − unite
oʊ − window

 

R-colored vowels
ɪr − beer ɛr − air
ɜr − bird ɑr − car
ɔr − oar ʊr − tour
ər − murder, color

 

Lax vowels (also known as checked vowels) can only occur in closed syllables (ending in a consonant); tense vowels can occur in both open and closed syllables. Weak vowels only occur in unstressed syllables. A limited set of vowels occurs before /r/: the /r/-colored vowels.