Help:IPA for English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Redirected from Wikipedia:IPA for English) Jump to: navigation, search [show]Help:IPA Throughout Wikipedia, the pronunciations of English words are conveyed by means of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA); for a basic introduction to IPA, see Wikipedia:IPA/Introduction. In particular, the following tables list the relevant transcription for various English diaphonemes; for a more complete key, see Wikipedia:IPA, which includes sounds that do not occur in English. (If the IPA symbols are not displayed properly by your browser, then see the links at the bottom of this page.) 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.

Understanding the key This key accommodates standard General American, Received Pronunciation, Canadian English, South African English, Australian English, and New Zealand English pronunciations. Therefore, not all of the distinctions shown here are relevant to a particular dialect:

If, for example, you pronounce cot /kt/ and caught /kt/ the same, then you may simply ignore the difference between the symbols // and //, 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 /krt/. 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 /nju/. For example, New York is transcribed /nju jrk/. For most people from England, and for some New Yorkers, the /r/ in /jrk/ is not pronounced and may be ignored; for most people from the United States, including some New Yorkers, the /j/ in /nju/ 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 // vowel (as in cat), but for many speakers, it now has the // vowel (as in father). Such words are transcribed twice, once for each pronunciation: /b, b/. The IPA stress mark () comes before the syllable that has the stress, in contrast to stress marking in pronunciation keys of some dictionaries published in the United States.

Contents

1 Key 2 See also 3 Notes 4 External links

Key
(Words in SMALL CAPITALS are the standard lexical sets. Words in the lexical sets BATH and CLOTH are given two transcriptions, respectively one with // and one with //, and with // and //). Consonants IPA Examples b buy, cab Vowels IPA Full vowels ... followed by R[7][8] START, bard, barn, snarl, r star (also /r./)

PALM, father, bra LOT, pod, John[9] TRAP, pad, shall, ban a pie[11]
PRICE, ride, file, fine,

d d f

dye, cad, do thy, breathe, father giant, badge, jam phi, caff, fan

r moral, forage r barrow, marry[10] ar Ireland, sapphire (/ar./)[8]

 ()[1] guy, bag h high, ahead j[2] yes, yacht k sky, crack l lie, sly, gal m my, smile, cam n p r s t t v w hw z
nigh, snide, can sang, sink, singer finger, anger thigh, math pie, spy, cap rye, try, very[3] sigh, mass shy, cash, emotion tie, sty, cat, atom China, catch vie, have wye, swine why[4]

a down, how ar hour (/ar./)[8] DRESS, bed, fell, men[12] r error, merry[12] e pay KIT, lid, fill, bin i mean, sea
FACE, made, fail, vein,

MOUTH, loud, foul,

r cairn, Mary (/er./)[13][8] r mirror, Sirius r serious (/ir./) r (/r./)

SQUARE, scared, scarce,

FLEECE, seed, feel, THOUGHT, Maud, CHOICE, void, foil, coin, GOAT, code, foal, bone,

dawn, fall, straw[14] boy

NORTH, born, war, Laura

r loir, coir (/r./)[8]

o go[15]

r (/or./)[16] FOOT, good, full, woman r courier

u chew, do

r (/ur./)[17] jr cure

boor, moor, tourist

ju queue, you[18]

STRUT, mud, dull, gun[19]

r borough, hurry r furry (//)[20]

zoo, has equation, pleasure, vision, beige[5] Marginal consonants ugh, loch, x Chanukah[6]

Reduced vowels LETTER, perceive (also Rosas, a mission, comma r //)[20] roses, emission[21] (either button
or )

omission[22] (either o or ) ([j])[23] (either or ) i

m rhythm l bottle , dropped: nasturtium)

beautiful, curriculum HAPPY, serious[24] (either

uh-oh /o/

Stress IPA Examples intonation /ntnen/,[25] battleship /btlp/[26]

Vancouveria /vn.kuvri/ Mikey /maki/, Myki /ma.ki/[27]

See also

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
1. ^ If the two characters and do not match and if the first looks like a , then you have an issue with your default font. See Rendering issues. 2. ^ 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, such as hallelujah and Jgermeister. 3. ^ Although the IPA symbol [r] represents a trill, /r/ is widely used instead of // in broad transcriptions of English. 4. ^ /hw/ is not distinguished from /w/ in dialects with the winewhine merger, such as RP and most varieties of GenAm. 5. ^ A number of English words, such as genre and garage, are pronounced with either // or /d/. 6. ^ In most dialects, /x/ is replaced by /k/ in most words, including loch. In ugh, however, it is often replaced by // (a spelling pronunciation), and in Chanukah by /h/ 7. ^ In non-rhotic accents like RP, /r/ is not pronounced unless followed by a vowel. In some Wikipedia articles, /r/ etc. may not be distinguished from /r/ etc. When they are distinguished, the long vowels are sometimes transcribed /ir/ etc. by analogy with vowels not followed by /r/. These should be fixed to correspond with the chart here. 8. ^ a b c d e Note that many speakers distinguish monosyllabic triphthongs with R and disyllabic realizations: hour /ar/ from plougher /pla.r/, hire /har/ from higher /ha.r/, loir /lr/ from employer /mpl.r/, mare /mr/ from player /ple.r/. 9. ^ // is not distinguished from // in dialects with the fatherbother merger such as GenAm. 10. ^ Pronounced the same as /r/ in accents with the Marymarrymerry merger.

11. ^ Many speakers, for example in most of Canada and much of the United States, have a different vowel in price and ride. Generally, an [a] is used at the ends of words and before voiced sounds, as in ride, file, fine, pie, while an [] 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: [a], []. However, even though the value of /a/ is not predictable in some words, such as spider [sp],[citation needed] dictionaries do not generally record it, so it has not been allocated a separate transcription here. 12. ^ a b Transcribed as /e/ by many dictionaries.[1] 13. ^ Pronounced the same as /r/ in accents with the Marymarrymerry merger. Often transcribed as /e/ by British dictionaries and as /er/ by American ones. The OED uses // for BrE and /()r/ for AmE.[2] 14. ^ // is not distinguished from // (except before /r/) in dialects with the cotcaught merger such as some varieties of GenAm. 15. ^ Commonly transcribed // or /o/. 16. ^ /r/ is not distinguished from /r/ in dialects with the horsehoarse merger, which include most dialects of modern English. 17. ^ /r/ is not distinguished from /r/ in dialects with the pourpoor merger, including many younger speakers. 18. ^ In dialects with yod dropping, /ju/ is pronounced the same as /u/ after coronal consonants (/t/, /d/, /s/, /z/, /n/, //, and /l/) in the same syllable, so that dew /dju/ is pronounced the same as do /du/. In dialects with yod coalescence, /tj/, /dj/, /sj/ and /zj/ are pronounced /t/, /d/, // and //, so that the first syllable in Tuesday is pronounced the same as choose. 19. ^ This phoneme is not used in the northern half of England, some bordering parts of Wales, and some broad eastern Ireland accents. These words would take the vowel: there is no footstrut split. 20. ^ a b In some articles /r/ is transcribed as //, and /r/ as //, when not followed by a vowel. 21. ^ Pronounced [] in Australian and many US dialects, and [] in Received Pronunciation. Many speakers freely alternate between a reduced [] and a reduced []. Many phoneticians (vd. Olive & Greenwood 1993:322) and the OED use the pseudo-IPA symbol [3], and MerriamWebster uses . 22. ^ Pronounced [] in many dialects, and [w] or [w] before another vowel, as in cooperate. Sometimes pronounced as a full /o/, especially in careful speech. (Bolinger 1989) Usually transcribed as /()/ (or similar ways of showing variation between // and //) in British dictionaries. 23. ^ Pronounced [] in many dialects, [] in others. Many speakers freely alternate between a reduced [] and a reduced []. The OED uses the pseudo-IPA symbol [4]. 24. ^ Pronounced /i/ in dialects with the happy tensing, // in other dialects. British convention used to transcribe it with //, but the OED and other influential dictionaries recently converted to /i/.

25. ^ It is arguable that there is no phonemic distinction in English between primary and secondary stress (vd. Ladefoged 1993), but it is conventional to notate them as here. 26. ^ 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). Such syllables are not actually stressed. 27. ^ Syllables are indicated sparingly, where necessary to avoid confusion, for example to break up sequences of vowels (moai) or consonant clusters which an English speaker might misread as a digraph (Vancouveria, Windhoek).