International Phonetic Alphabet

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the standardised system of phonetic symbols maintained by the International Phonetic Association (also, confusingly, IPA) and used by linguists worldwide to transcribe the speech sounds from all known spoken languages, including English, which can be transcribed using a limited subset of these.

Symbols and chart

The symbols used are based on those from the Latin and Greek alphabets. Generally consonant letters (except /y/) and derived symbols represent consonant sounds, whereas vowel letters (plus /y/) represent vowel sounds. Each symbol represents a unique sound such that the alphabetic principle is strictly followed.

Each sound is allocated an IPA number.

The following is a standard chart for sounds in any language. Each symbol represents a precise sound.

IPA for English phonemes

Every language needs an adaptation of the chart in the previous section for its phonemes. For example intervocalic English phoneme /t/ is represented in the table by the symbols [t], [ʔ] and [ɾ], which describe the "t" sound used in different dialects. /t/ on the other hand, is any sound perceived by English speakers as being the same as in better [ˈbɛtəɹ, ˈbɛʔə, ˈbɛɾəɹ] which in broad or phonemic notation is /ˈbetər/.

IPA vowel phonemes for Received Pronunciation

iː	ɪ	ʊ	uː	ɪə	eɪ
fleece - happy	kit	foot	goose	near	face
e	ə	ɜː	ɔː	ʊə	ɔɪ	əʊ
dress	comma - letter	nurse	thought north - force	cure	choice	goat
æ	ʌ	ɑː	ɒ	eə	aɪ	aʊ
trap	strut	bath - start palm	lot - cloth	square	price	mouth

IPA vowel phonemes for General American

In this table we use /oʊ/ instead of /əʊ/ and /ɛ/ instead of /e/, as is customary in American dictionaries. However, in Teflpedia we use /əʊ/ and /e/ for uniformity. Most American Dictionaries prefer /ɑ, ɜ, i, ɔ, u/ instead of /ɑː, ɜː, iː, ɔː, uː/.

iː	ɪ	ʊ	uː	eɪ
fleece - happy	kit - near	foot - cure	goose	face
ɛ	ə	ɜː	ɔː	ɔɪ	oʊ
dress - square	comma - letter	nurse	thought - cloth north - force	choice	goat
æ	ʌ	ɑː		aɪ	aʊ
trap - bath	strut	start - palm - lot		price	mouth

IPA consonant phonemes

p	t	k	f	θ	s	ʃ	tʃ
pet	tea	kiss	fit	thin	sit	shoe	chat
b	d	g	v	ð	z	ʒ	dʒ
boat	do	go	vote	this	zoo	pleasure	job
h	m	n	ŋ	r	l	w	j
hot	me	no	sing	red	like	wet	yes

Pedagogy

Knowledge of all the symbols is generally unnecessary for either EFL teachers or EFL learners. However, knowledge of the English-specific symbols is probably a good idea.

External links

• Full IPA Chart