Therefore, not all of the distinctions shown here are relevant to a particular dialect:

• If, for example, you pronounce cot /ˈkɒt/ and caught /ˈkɔːt/ the same, then you may simply ignore the difference between the symbols /ɒ/ and /ɔː/, just as you ignore the distinction between the written vowels o and au when pronouncing them.

• 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, as in cart /ˈkɑrt/.

• In other dialects, /j/ (a y sound) cannot occur after /t/, /d/, /n/, etc., all within the same syllable; if you speak such a dialect, then ignore the /j/ in transcriptions such as new /njuː/. For example, New York is transcribed /njuː ˈjɔrk/. For most people from England, and for some New Yorkers, the /r/ in /ˈjɔrk/ is not pronounced and may be ignored; for most people from the United States, including some New Yorkers, the /j/ in /njuː/ is not pronounced and may be ignored.

On the other hand, there are some distinctions which you might make but which this key does not encode, as they are seldom reflected in the dictionaries used as sources for Wikipedia articles:

• The difference between the vowels of fir, fur and fern in Scottish and Irish English.

• The vowels of bad and had in many parts of Australia and the Eastern United States.

• The vowels of spider and spied her in some parts of Scotland and North America.

Other words may have different vowels depending on the speaker. Bath, for example, originally had the /æ/ vowel (as in cat), but for many speakers, it now has the /ɑː/ vowel (as in father). Such words are transcribed twice, once for each pronunciation: /ˈbæθ, ˈbɑːθ/.

The IPA stress mark (ˈ) comes before the syllable that has the stress, in contrast to stress marking in pronunciation keys of some dictionaries published in the United States.

Key[link]

See also[link]

• For differences among national dialects of English, see the IPA chart for English dialects, which compares the vowels of Received Pronunciation, General American, Australian English, New Zealand English, and Scottish English, among others.
• For use of the IPA in other languages, see Wikipedia:IPA for a quick overview, or the more detailed main International Phonetic Alphabet article.
• If your browser does not display IPA symbols, you probably need to install a font that includes the IPA. Good free IPA fonts include Gentium (prettier) and Charis SIL (more complete); download links can be found on those pages.
• For a guide to adding pronunciations to Wikipedia articles, see the documentation for the IPA template.
• Wikipedia:Pronunciation respelling key

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Getting JAWS 6.1 to recognize "exotic" Unicode symbols—For help on getting the screen reader JAWS to read IPA symbols
• IPA TTS (text-to-speech) bookmarklet