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
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| Bilabial | Labio- dental | Labio- velar | Dental | Alveolar | Post- alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stop | |||||||||
| Affricate | |||||||||
| Nasal | |||||||||
| Fricative | |||||||||
| Approximant | |||||||||
| Lateral approximant |
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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 | |||||
|
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| Diphthongs | Closing | Centring | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting close | ||||
| Starting mid | ||||
| Starting open | ||||
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