A PRONUNCIATION COMPANION
A short guide to IPA.
The International Phonetic Alphabet represents speech sounds. On a word page, the symbols between slashes describe a broad pronunciation: /kæt/ is “cat.”
Read the stress marks
- ˈ appears before a syllable with primary stress.
- ˌ appears before a syllable with secondary stress.
- ə, called schwa, is the reduced vowel in the first syllable of “about.”
Sounds to recognize
/i/as in see
/ɪ/as in sit
/ɛ/as in bed
/æ/as in cat
/ɑ/as in father
/ɔ/as in thought
/ʊ/as in book
/u/as in food
/ʌ/as in cup
/ə/as in about
/ɝ/as in bird
/ɚ/as in teacher
/eɪ/as in day
/aɪ/as in my
/ɔɪ/as in boy
/aʊ/as in now
/oʊ/as in go
/θ/as in thin
/ð/as in this
/ʃ/as in ship
/ʒ/as in vision
/tʃ/as in chair
/dʒ/as in judge
/ŋ/as in sing
/ɹ/as in red
/j/as in yes
Listen as well as read
IPA is a useful map, but American English includes many accents. For example, some speakers use the same vowel in “cot” and “caught”; others distinguish /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. These pages show broad North American dictionary pronunciations and preserve listed variants when available.
The IPA on this site comes from Wiktionary where available, with CMUdict conversions as a fallback. It is not transcribed from each video. Read about the sources and conversion.
For the official alphabet, see the International Phonetic Association’s IPA chart.