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Help:IPA for English

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This page is about the pronunciation of words in English. For sounds not found in English, see Help:IPA. For a basic introduction to the IPA, see Help:IPA/Introduction. For a guide to adding IPA characters to Wikipedia articles, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters.

Throughout Wikipedia, the pronunciation of words is indicated by means of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The following tables list the IPA symbols used for English words and pronunciations. Please note that several of these symbols are used in ways that are specific to Wikipedia and differ from those used by dictionaries.

If the IPA symbols are not displayed properly by your browser, see the links below.

If you are adding a pronunciation using this key, such pronunciations should generally be formatted using the template {{IPAc-en}}. The template provides tooltips for each symbol in the pronunciation. See the template page for instructions.

Key

If the words given as examples for two different symbols sound the same to you (for example, if you pronounce cot and caught the same, or do and dew, or marry and merry), you can pronounce those symbols the same in explanations of all words. The footnotes explain some of these mergers. (See also Dialect variation below.)

If there is an IPA symbol you are looking for that you do not see here, see Help:IPA, which is a more complete list. For a table listing all spellings of the sounds on this page, see English orthography § Sound-to-spelling correspondences. For help converting spelling to pronunciation, see English orthography § Spelling-to-sound correspondences.

Consonants
IPA Examples
b buy, cab
d dye, cad, do
ð thy, breathe, father
dʒ giant, badge, jam
f fan, caff, phi
ɡ (ɡ)[1] guy, bag
h high, ahead
hw why[2]
j[3] yes, hallelujah
k sky, crack
l lie, sly, gal
m my, smile, cam
n nigh, snide, can
ŋ sang, sink, singer
θ thigh, math
p pie, spy, cap
r[4] rye, try, very
s sigh, mass
ʃ shy, cash, emotion
t tie, sty, cat, atom
tʃ china, catch
v vie, have
w wye, swine
z zoo, has
ʒ equation, pleasure, vision, beige[5]
Marginal consonants
x ugh, loch, Chanukah[6]
ʔ uh-oh /ˈʔʌʔoʊ/
˜ bon vivant /ˌbɒ̃ viːˈvɒ̃/[7]
Vowels
IPA Full vowels IPA ... followed by R[8]
ɑː PALM, father, bra ɑːr START, bard, barn, snarl, star
ɒ LOT, pod, John[9] ɒr moral, forage
æ TRAP, pad, ban[10][11] ær barrow, marry[12]
aɪ PRICE, ride, file, fine, pie[13] aɪər Ireland, hire (= /aɪr/)
aɪ.ər higher, buyer[14]
aʊ MOUTH, loud, foul, down, how aʊər flour (= /aʊr/)
aʊ.ər flower[14]
ɛ DRESS, bet, fell, men[15] ɛr error, merry[15]
eɪ FACE, made, fail, vein, pay ɛər SQUARE, mare, scarce, cairn, Mary (= /eɪr/)[16]
eɪ.ər layer (one who lays)[14]
ɪ KIT, lid, fill, bin ɪr mirror, Sirius
iː FLEECE, seed, feel, mean, sea ɪər NEAR, beard, fierce, serious (= /iːr/)[17]
iː.ər freer
ɔː THOUGHT, Maud, dawn, fall, straw[18] ɔːr NORTH, born, war, Laura[19][20]
ɔː.ər sawer
ɔɪ CHOICE, void, foil, coin, boy ɔɪər coir (= /ɔɪr/)
ɔɪ.ər employer[14]
oʊ GOAT, code, foal, bone, go[21] ɔər FORCE, more, boar, oral (= /oʊr/)[19][20]
oʊ.ər mower
ʊ FOOT, good, full, woman ʊr courier
uː GOOSE, food, fool, soon, do ʊər boor, moor, tourist (= /uːr/)[19][20]
uː.ər truer
juː cute, mule, puny, beauty, huge, tune[22] jʊər cure (= /juːr/)
juː.ər fewer
ʌ STRUT, bud, dull, gun[23] ɜːr NURSE, word, girl, fern, furry
ʌr hurry, nourish (in the UK)
Reduced vowels
ə COMMA, Rosa's, ago, quiet, focus ər LETTER, perceive
əl bottle (either [əl] or [l̩])
ən button (either [ən] or [n̩])
əm rhythm (either [əm] or [m̩])
i HAPPY, serious[24] (either /ɪ/ or /iː/) u situation (either /ʊ/ or /uː/)
ᵻ[25] roses, enough[26] (either /ɪ/ or /ə/) ᵿ[25] beautiful, curriculum ([jᵿ])[27] (either /ʊ/ or /ə/)
 
Stress Syllabification
IPA Examples IPA Examples
ˈ intonation /ˌɪntəˈneɪʃən/,[28]
battleship /ˈbætəlʃɪp/[29]		 . /haɪər/ hire, /haɪ.ər/ higher[30]
ˌ

Notes

Dialect variation

Main article: International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects

This key represents diaphonemes, abstractions of speech sounds that accommodate General American (GenAm), Received Pronunciation (RP), Canadian English, South African, Australian, and New Zealand pronunciations. 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 /ˈkɑːrt/.
  • In other dialects, /j/ (yes) cannot occur after /t, d, n/, etc., 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 ˈjɔːrk/. For most people from England and for some New Yorkers, the /r/ in /ˈjɔːrk/ is not pronounced; 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, maintained in Scottish and Irish English but lost elsewhere.
  • The difference between the vowels of pain and pane found in some English, Welsh, and Newfoundland dialects.
  • The vowels of bad and had, distinguished in many parts of Australia and the Eastern United States.[citation needed]
  • The vowels of spider and spied her, distinguished in Scotland and some parts of North America.

Other words may have different vowels depending on the speaker.

The pronunciation of the /æ/ vowel in most dialects of Scotland, Northern Ireland, northern England and Wales has always been closer to [a]. BBC English has moved away from the traditional near-open front realization [æ] towards almost fully open front realization [a], and both the Oxford English Dictionary and the 2014 edition of Gimson's Pronunciation of English transcribe the vowel in lad, bad, cat, trap with /a/.[31]

For more extensive information on dialect variations, you may wish to see the IPA chart for English dialects.

Note that place names are not generally exempted from being transcribed in this abstracted system, so rules such as the above must be applied in order to recover the local pronunciation. Examples include place names in much of England ending ‑ford, which although locally pronounced [‑fəd] are transcribed /‑fərd/. This is best practice for editors. However, readers should be aware that not all editors may have followed this consistently, so for example if /‑fəd/ is encountered for such a place name, it should not be interpreted as a claim that the /r/ would be absent even in a rhotic dialect.

Other transcriptions

If you feel it is necessary to add a pronunciation respelling using another convention, then please use the conventions of Wikipedia's pronunciation respelling key.

  • To compare the following IPA symbols with non-IPA American dictionary conventions that may be more familiar, see pronunciation respelling for English, which lists the pronunciation guides of fourteen English dictionaries published in the United States.
  • To compare the following IPA symbols with other IPA conventions that may be more familiar, see Help:IPA conventions for English, which lists the conventions of eight English dictionaries published in Britain, Australia, and the United States.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ If the two characters ⟨ɡ⟩ and ⟨Opentail g.svg⟩ do not match and if the first looks like a ⟨γ⟩, then you have an issue with your default font. See Rendering issues.
  2. ^ The phoneme /hw/ is not distinguished from /w/ in the many dialects with the wine–whine merger, such as RP and most varieties of GenAm. For more information on this sound, see voiceless labio-velar approximant.
  3. ^ The IPA value of the letter ⟨j⟩ is counter-intuitive to many English speakers. However, it does occur with this sound in a few English words: Besides hallelujah, there's Jägermeister and jarlsberg cheese.
  4. ^ In most varieties of English, /r/ is pronounced as an approximant [ɹ]. Although the IPA symbol [r] represents a trill, /r/ is widely used instead of /ɹ/ in broad transcriptions of English.
  5. ^ A number of English words, such as genre and garage, are pronounced with either /ʒ/ or /dʒ/.
  6. ^ In most dialects, /x/ is replaced by /k/ in most words, including loch. Where the sound begins a word, such as Chanukah, it is sometimes replaced with /h/. In ugh, it is often replaced by /ɡ/ (a spelling pronunciation).
  7. ^ Only found in French loanwords and often replaced by /n/ or /m/: bon vivant /ˌbɒn viːˈvɒn/.
  8. ^ In non-rhotic accents like RP, /r/ is not pronounced unless followed by a vowel. In some Wikipedia articles, /ɪər/ etc. may not be distinguished from /ɪr/ etc. These should be fixed to correspond with the chart here.
  9. ^ /ɒ/ is not distinguished from /ɑː/ in dialects with the father–bother merger such as GenAm.
  10. ^ Some regions, such as New York City and Philadelphia, separate this into two phonemes, /æ/ and /eǝ/, so that the vowel in crash may be closer to that in mail than that in cat. In other dialects, such as General American, the two sounds are allophones. See /æ/ tensing.
  11. ^ In some regions, what would normally be [æŋ] or [æɡ] is pronounced as [eŋ] or [eɪŋ], [eɡ] or [eɪɡ], so that the a in rang and rag is closer to the ai in rain than the a in rat.
  12. ^ /ær/ is pronounced the same as /ɛr/ in accents with the Mary–marry–merry merger.
  13. ^ Many speakers, for example in most of Canada and much of the United States, have a different vowel in price and ride. Generally, an [aɪ] is used at the ends of words and before voiced sounds, as in ride, file, fine, pie, while an [ʌɪ] is used before voiceless sounds, as in price and write. Because /t/ and /d/ are often conflated in the middle of words in these dialects, derivatives of these words, such as rider and writer, may be distinguished only by their vowel: [ˈɹʷaɪɾəɹ], [ˈɹʷʌɪɾəɹ]. However, even though the value of /aɪ/ is not predictable in some words, such as spider [ˈspʌɪɾəɹ],[citation needed] dictionaries do not generally record it, so it has not been allocated a separate transcription here.
  14. ^ a b c d Some speakers pronounce higher, flower, layer (stratum) and mayor with two syllables, and hire, flour, lair and mare with one. Others pronounce them the same.
  15. ^ a b /ɛ/ is transcribed as /e/ by many dictionaries.[ref 1]
  16. ^ /ɛər/ is pronounced the same as /ɛr/ in accents with the Mary–marry–merry merger. It is often transcribed as /eə/ by British dictionaries and as /er/ by American ones. The OED uses /ɛː/ for BrE and /ɛ(ə)r/ for AmE,[ref 2] but the Oxford Online Dictionaries apparently always use /er/ for AmE despite having /e(ə)r/ in their key to US pronunciations.[ref 3][ref 4]
  17. ^ /ɪər/ is pronounced the same as /ɪr/ in accents with the mirror–nearer merger.
  18. ^ /ɔː/ is not distinguished from /ɒ/ (except before /r/) in dialects with the cot–caught merger such as some varieties of GenAm.
  19. ^ a b c /ɔər/ is not distinguished from /ɔːr/ in dialects with the horse–hoarse merger, which include most dialects of modern English.
  20. ^ a b c /ʊər/ is not distinguished from /ɔːr/ in dialects with the pour–poor merger, including many younger speakers.
  21. ^ /oʊ/ is commonly transcribed /əʊ/ or /oː/.
  22. ^ In dialects with yod dropping, /juː/ is pronounced the same as /uː/ after coronal consonants (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, /θ/, and /l/) in the same syllable, so that dew /djuː/ is pronounced the same as do /duː/. In dialects with yod coalescence, /tj/, /dj/, /sj/ and /zj/ are pronounced /tʃ/, /dʒ/, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/, so that the first syllable in Tuesday is pronounced the same as choose.
  23. ^ /ʌ/ is not used in the dialects of the northern half of England, some bordering parts of Wales, and some broad eastern Ireland accents. These words would take the ʊ vowel: there is no foot–strut split.
  24. ^ /i/ is pronounced [i] in dialects with the happy tensing, [ɪ] in other dialects. British convention used to transcribe it with ⟨ɪ⟩, but the OED and other influential dictionaries recently converted to ⟨i⟩.
  25. ^ a b The symbols ⟨ᵻ⟩ and ⟨ᵿ⟩ are not used according to the IPA. They are based on the OED use.
  26. ^ /ᵻ/ is pronounced [ə] in Australian and many US dialects, [ɪ] in Received Pronunciation. Many speakers freely alternate between a reduced [ɪ̈] and a reduced [ə].
  27. ^ /ᵿ/ is pronounced [ʊ] in many dialects, [ə] in others. Many speakers freely alternate between a reduced [ʊ̈] and a reduced [ə].
  28. ^ It is arguable that there is no phonemic distinction in English between primary and secondary stress,[ref 5] but it is conventional to notate them as here.
  29. ^ Full vowels following a stressed syllable, such as the ship in battleship, are marked with secondary stress in some dictionaries (Merriam-Webster), but not in others (the OED).
  30. ^ Syllable divisions are not usually marked, but the IPA dot '.' may be used when it is wished to make explicit where a division between syllables is (or may be) made.
  31. ^ Gimson, Alfred Charles (2014), Cruttenden, Alan, ed., Gimson's Pronunciation of English (8th ed.), Routledge, pp. 119–120, ISBN 9781444183092 

References

  1. ^ Wells, John (18 March 2009). "e and ɛ". John Wells's phonetic blog. Blogspot. Retrieved 13 March 2015. 
  2. ^ "Key to pronunciation". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 March 2015. 
  3. ^ "square" in Oxford Online Dictionaries
  4. ^ Key to US pronunciations in Oxford Online Dictionaries
  5. ^ Ladefoged, Peter (1993), A Course in Phonetics (3rd ed.), Orlando: Harcourt Brace, ISBN 0-15-507319-2 

External links

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