Help:IPA for English

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The pronunciation of English words in Wikipedia is most often given in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The goal is that interpretation should not depend on the reader's dialect, and therefore a broad transcription is generally used.

For a more complete key to the IPA, which covers sounds that do not occur in English, see Help:IPA.

Since this key accommodates standard American, British, and Australian pronunciations, not all of the distinctions shown here will be relevant to your dialect. If, for example, you pronounce cot and caught the same, you can ignore the difference between the symbols /ɒ/ and /ɔː/. In many dialects /r/ occurs only before a vowel; if you speak such a dialect, simply ignore /r/ in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it.

On the other hand, this key does not encode the difference between the vowels of bad and lad in Australian English, nor between fir, fur, and fern in Scottish English, as those distinctions are seldom made in Wikipedia articles.

For a more precise use of the IPA to illustrate differences between English dialects, to transcribe languages other than English, or if the IPA symbols are not displayed on your browser, see the links at the bottom of this page.

Key

IPA Examples
Consonants
/b/ but, web
/d/ do, odd
/ð/ this, breathe, father
/dʒ/ gin, joy, edge
/f/ fool, enough, leaf
/ɡ/ go, get, beg
/h/ ham, ahead
/j/ yes, hallelujah
/k/ cat, kill, skin, queen, thick
/l/ left, bell
/m/ man, ham
/n/ no, tin
/ŋ/ ringer, sing, sink
/ŋɡ/ finger
/p/ pen, spin, tip
/r/ run, very[1]
/s/ see, city, pass
/ʃ/ she, sure, emotion, leash
/t/ two, sting, bet
/tʃ/ chair, nature, teach
/v/ voice, have
/w/ we
/ʍ/ what[2]
/z/ zoo, rose
/ʒ/ pleasure, vision, beige[3]
/θ/ thing, teeth
Marginal consonants
/x/ ugh, loch, Chanukah[4]
/ʔ/ uh-oh (/ˈʌʔoʊ/), Hawaii (/həˈwaɪʔiː/)[5]
Stress
/ˈ/ intonation
(/ˌɪntəˈneɪʃən/)[6]
/ˌ /
IPA Examples
Vowels
/ɪ/ bid, pit[7]
/iː/ bead, peat[7]
/i/ happy, city[7]
/ɛ/ bed, pet
/æ/ bad, pat
/ɑː/ balm, father, pa
/ɒ/ bod, pot, cot
/ɔː/ bawd, paw, caught
/ʊ/ good, foot, put
/uː/ booed, food
/ʌ/ bud, butt
Diphthongs
/eɪ/ bay, hey, fate
/аɪ/ buy, high, ride, write
/aʊ/ bough, how, pout
/ɔɪ/ boy, hoy
/oʊ/ beau, hoe, poke[8]
/juː/ beauty, hue, pew, dew[9]
R-colored vowels[10]
/ɪr/ mirror
/ɪər/ beer, mere
/ɛr/ berry, merry
/ɛər/ bear, mare, Mary
/ær/ barrow, marry
/ɑr/ bar, mar
/ɒr/ moral, forage
/ɔr/ born, for
/ɔər/ boar, four, more
/ʌr/ hurry, Murray
/ʊər/ boor, moor
/ɜr/ bird, myrrh, furry
(alternatively /ɝː/ [11])
Reduced vowels
/ɨ/ roses, business [12]
/ə/ Rosa’s, above
/ər/ runner, mercer
(alternatively /ɚ/ [11])
/əl/ bottle
/ən/ button
/əm/ rhythm

Notes

  1. ^ Although the IPA symbol [r] represents a trill, /r/ is widely used instead of /ɹ/ in broad transcriptions of English.
  2. ^ /ʍ/ is found in some dialects, such as Scottish and Southern American English; elsewhere people use /w/.
  3. ^ A number of English words, such as genre and garage, are pronounced with either /ʒ/ or /dʒ/.
  4. ^ In most dialects, /x/ is replaced by /k/ in loch and by /h/ in Chanukah.
  5. ^ Most people pronounce the English word Hawaii without the /ʔ/ (glottal stop) that occurs in the Hawaiian word Hawai‘i.
  6. ^ It is arguable that English does not distinguish primary from secondary stress, but it is conventional to notate them as here. Likewise, it is debatable whether a word like Glennallen is [glɛˈnælən] or [glɛnˈælən]; for clarity, the former is used.
  7. ^ a b c American convention is to write /i/ when unstressed and preceding a vowel or word boundary, as in wiki /ˈwɪki/ and serious /ˈsɪriəs/; British convention used to be /ˈwɪkɪ/ and /ˈsɪərɪəs/, but the OED and other influential dictionaries recently converted to /i/.
  8. ^ Commonly transcribed /əʊ/ or /oː/.
  9. ^ In many dialects, /juː/ is pronounced the same as /uː/ after "tongue sounds" (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /θ/, and /l/), so that dew /djuː/ is pronounced the same as do /duː/.
  10. ^ In many dialects, /r/ occurs only before vowels. Note that due to American influence, the schwas have been left out in many Wikipedia articles. That is, /ɪər/ etc. are not always distinguished from /ɪr/ etc. When they are, the long vowels may be transcribed /iːr/ etc. by analogy with vowels not followed by /r/.
  11. ^ a b In some articles these are transcribed /ɝː/ and /ɚ/ when not followed by a vowel.
  12. ^ Few British dictionaries distinguish this from /ɪ/, though the OED now uses the pseudo-IPA symbol ɪ̵.

See also