International Phonetic Alphabet for English

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Symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet as used for English.

The various regional accents of English speakers are distinguished from each other far more by vowels than by consonants. For this reason, the consonants of English will be discussed together, while the discussion of vowels will be divided into three parts: Received Pronunciation, General American, and General Australian.

The slashes around IPA symbols are not part of the IPA itself, but just serve to indicate that the contents of the slashes are not normal text, but a phonemic transcription. The distinction is important, as some IPA transcriptions can look like other words. For example, an IPA transcription for bean could be /bin/.

Consonants

1. redirect

The symbols used for consonants are shown in the following table. Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the left is voiceless, the one to the right voiced.

	Bi­labial	Labio- dental	Labio- velar	Den­tal	Alveo­lar	Post- alveo­lar	Pala­tal	Velar	Glot­tal
Stop
Affricate
Nasal
Fricative
Approximant
Lateral approximant

/p/: pit /b/: bit /t/: tin /d/: din /k/: cut /ɡ/: gut /tʃ/: cheap /dʒ/: jeep /m/: map /n/: nap /ŋ/: bang /f/: fat /v/: vat

/θ/: thin /ð/: then /s/: sap /z/: zap /ʃ/: she /ʒ/: measure /x/: loch, Chanukah (often replaced by /h-/ and /-k/) /h/: ham /ʍ/: whine (also written /hw/) /w/: we /ɹ/: run (often written /r/ in broad transcription) /j/: yes /l/: left

Vowels

This section discusses the symbols used for the vowel phonemes in three major English accents.

Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation is the prestige British accent, sometimes referred to as BBC English.

Full vowels

Full vowels are those that appear in stressed syllables.

Monophthongs	Short			Long
	Front	Back		Front	Central	Back
Close
Mid
Open					ɑː

/ɪ/: bid /ʊ/: good /ɛ/: bed (sometimes transcribed /e/) /ʌ/: bud /æ/: bat (sometimes transcribed /a/) /ɒ/: pot

/iː/: bead /uː/: booed /ɜː/: bird (sometimes transcribed /əː/) /ɔː/: bought, board /ɑː/: father, bard

Diphthongs	Closing			Centring
Starting close
Starting mid
Starting open

/eɪ/: bay /ɔɪ/: boy /əʊ/: toe /aɪ/: buy (sometimes transcribed /ʌɪ/) /aʊ/: cow

/ɪə/: beer /ʊə/: boor (falling out of use in British English; often replaced by Reduced vowels /ə/: roses, Rosa’s, runner /l̩/: bottle /n̩/: button /m̩/: rhythm Suprasegmentals The suprasegmental symbols are called that because they apply to more than one segment (vowel or consonant). In English, the relevant suprasegmentals are the markings for primary and secondary stress. Primary stress: ˈ Secondary stress: ˌ Primary stress is indicated by the symbol ˈ before the stressed syllable; secondary stress by the symbol ˌ before the syllable, for example battleship /ˈbætl̩ˌʃɪp/. See also English phonology IPA chart for English SAMPA, X-SAMPA, and Kirshenbaum are methods of mapping IPA designations into ASCII. List of phonetics topics Pronunciation respelling for English External links [LONGMAN Dictionary of Contemporary English ONLINE] uses IPA. [Online IPA editor for English] [Roman Phonetic Transcription of English] [IPA transcription systems for English] — discussion by John C. Wells of RP transcriptions   From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details. Search Titles 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z ? E-mail this article to: Personal Message: