aɪ

piː
ˈeɪ
TRANSCRIPTION PRACTICE
FOR THE INTERNATIONAL
PHONETIC ALPHABET
EXERCISES FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

BY
KONRAD SZCZEŚNIAK
ANDRZEJ PORZUCZEK
TRANSCRIPTION PRACTICE
FOR THE INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET
EXERCISES FOR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH

This book will serve to help learners transcribe the sounds of English by means
of the International Phonetic Alphabet and use phonetic transcriptions of words
in dictionaries. It will be of special interest to university students of linguistics
and phonetics, since transcription skills will give them a clearer, more
systematic picture of English pronunciation and spelling. Because the book
assumes no prior knowledge of phonetics, it can be used by anyone looking to
improve their pronunciation. In this regard, it will benefit especially those
readers who speak English as a foreign language. They will find a rich collection
of exercises focusing on a variety of pronunciation phenomena. These
exercises feature common fixed expressions such as spitting image; thus, in
addition to learning to use the transcription alphabet, learners can also enrich
their vocabularies. This handbook is designed for work in the classroom, but
thanks to its presentation of solutions and explanations of relevant problems, it
can also be used in individual study.

Konrad Szczesniak is Adjunct Professor at Palacky University, Czech Republic,

and Assistant Professor at the University of Silesia, Poland, where he teaches
courses in Linguistics, Phonetic Transcription, and Descriptive Grammar. His
research interests include the use of grammatical constructions in English,
Polish, Czech and Portuguese studied within the framework of construction
grammar. He also focuses on the development of lexical proficiency and intuition
in L1 and L2.
Andrzej Porzuczek is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Linguistics, University
of Silesia, Poland. His research areas comprise foreign language acquisition,
interlanguage phonology and practical phonetics pedagogy. His recent
publications include an English pronunciation coursebook for Polish learners, a
monograph on the temporal characteristics of the Polish learner's read English
speech, and several articles devoted to the prosodic aspects of Polish-accented
English pronunciation and teaching practical English phonetics to Polish learners.
He has also presented papers at numerous international conferences on
phonetics, phonology and foreign language acquisition.
 Contents
Preface .................................................................................................................. vi
Getting started........................................................................................................ 1
I Phonemic symbols ................................................. 6
II Vowels ............................................................ 13
2A. Vowels /iː/ and /ɪ/.......................................................................................... 14
2B. Vowels /e/ and /æ/......................................................................................... 17
2C. Vowels /ʌ/ and /æ/ ........................................................................................ 20
2D. Vowels /ɜː/ and /ʌ/ ........................................................................................ 22
2E. Vowels /ɑː/ and /æ/ ....................................................................................... 25
2F. Vowels /ɒ/ and /ɔː/ ....................................................................................... 28
2G. Vowels /ʊ/ and /uː/ ........................................................................................ 31
2H. Diphthongs .................................................................................................... 36
III Consonants ...................................................... 42
3A. Consonant /r/ and rhoticity ........................................................................... 42
3B. Consonants eth /ð/ and theta /θ/ ................................................................... 47
3C. Nasals ............................................................................................................ 50
3D. Postalveolar affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/; fricatives /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ .............................. 54
3E. Glide /j/ ......................................................................................................... 58
3F. Glide /w/ ........................................................................................................ 64
IV Stress ............................................................ 67
4A. Stress and schwa ........................................................................................... 67
4B. The schwa sound ........................................................................................... 70
4C. Compounds and phrases................................................................................ 77
4D. Stress in longer sequences ............................................................................ 80
4E. Weak Forms .................................................................................................. 81
V Patterns .......................................................... 88
5A. Inflectional suffixes ...................................................................................... 88
5B. Common suffixes (derivational).................................................................... 92
5C. Elision and silent letters ................................................................................ 99
5D. Allophonic Processes .................................................................................. 103
5E. Irregular spelling-pronunciation correspondences....................................... 107
5F. Technical terminology ................................................................................. 112
VI. Final exercises................................................ 115
Key ................................................................. 117
References ........................................................ 146

v
Preface
The purpose of this book is to help foreign learners master the
transcription of English speech sounds. While there are many
excellent transcription coursebooks on the market, we feel that they
may not necessarily be ideal for students anxious to get down to
learning the phonetic alphabet symbols. That is, all too often they put
theory before practice, and before the student can begin transcribing
the pronunciation of English, it is first necessary to go through a
good deal of technical terminology, discussion of fine points,
qualifications and provisos. This book takes a different tack. Here we
try to reduce the theory portion to an absolute minimum, confining it
to concise paragraphs.

The bulk of this book consists in They are presented in simple

brief presentations of important tables such as this one.
rules and patterns.

Exercise
…and followed by a variety of exercises.

Where we felt that it may be necessary or interesting to discuss finer points

or define technical terms, these are included in boxes like this. Important
technical terms like PHONEME or WEAK FORM are marked in bold capitals.

What we include in boxes is a matter of choice—choice that is obviously

subjective and sometimes inevitably controversial. An example of a term
whose knowledge is by all means welcome and advisable but not absolutely
necessary is the acronym IPA, which stands for the INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC
ALPHABET. Being unaware of the official name of a system one is learning
may appear philistine, but it will not make it impossible to use it.

Apart from learning to use the International Phonetic Alphabet to

transcribe the sounds of English, students will also benefit by

vi
improving their pronunciation. Wherever possible, we point out
important things to bear in mind, which are directly relevant to the
actual use of the English sound system. For example, by learning
that certain sounds do not occur in open syllables, one can predict
that words like view or glue may only contain long /uː/, and never
short /ʊ/ (to take an example of a pair that is particularly problematic
to foreign learners of English.) Thus, the idea is to help students
benefit doubly by learning to transcribe and making their
pronunciation more natural and native-like.

vii
Getting started
Important preliminary points
While there are some clear correspondences between the symbols used
in the phonetic alphabet and the letters of the Roman alphabet, there are
more mismatches and important differences. Sometimes the impression
might be that learning phonetic transcription is a matter of mastering
some correspondences and patterns, as the following sample may
suggest.
It’s a big tree.
/ɪts ə bɪg triː/
However, even a simple sample like this can serve to point out
important things to bear in mind:
First, there are no capital letters in phonetic transcription. The sound /ɪ/
in the word It does not become different as a result of its being spelled
with a capital letter in this sentence.
Second, the correspondences between letters and phonetic symbols are
not always one to one. In the word tree, there are two letters e spelling
the vowel sound which in phonetic transcription is represented by the
symbol /i/ accompanied by the DIACRITIC /ː/ to indicate length. The
one-to-one correspondences intended in phonetic transcription are
between symbols and sounds, so that each sound present in the actual
pronunciation is reflected by means of a single symbol (plus a possible
diacritic sign) in the transcription. Sometimes we will use what looks
like a combination of two symbols, as in the case of the first sound in
the word chat, transcribed by means of /ʧ/.
Third, there are no punctuation marks in phonetic transcription.
Although some dictionaries use dots that look like periods (full stops),
they serve to indicate boundaries between syllables, as in /ˈsɪl.ə.bəl/, but
not ends of sentences. These dots will not be used here, except when
boundaries between syllables need to be shown clearly. Now it is time
to get acquainted with the English vowels (Figure 1) and consonants
(Table 1) and their phonetic symbols.
 Figure 1. English vowels

The labels “Front”, “Central”, and “Back” refer to the part of the tongue. The
terms “High”, “Mid”, and “Low” describe the position the tongue assumes for a
given vowel. For example, the vowels in hip, heap and hippy are high-front
vowels: /hɪp/ /hiːp/ /hɪpi/.

Bilabial Labiodental Dental Alveolar Post- Palatal Velar Glottal

alveolar
-V -V +V -V -V -V -V -V
+V +V +V +V +V +V
Plosives p t k
b d g
Fricatives f v θ s ʃ h
ð z ʒ
Affricates ʧ
dʒ
Nasals m n ŋ
Liquids l r
Glides w j
Table 1. English consonants

The labels in the upper row (“Bilabial”, “Labiodental”, etc.) refer to the
articulator, or part of the mouth involved in the articulation of a consonant.
The terms in the column on the left (“Plosives”, “Fricatives”, etc.) describe the
manner of articulation for a given consonant. Consonants on the right side in
each column are voiced, and the ones to the left are voiceless. For example,
the consonant /p/ is a voiceless plosive bilabial.1.

2
IPA
Any student taking a course in phonetic transcription will come across the
abbreviation IPA, which can stand for one of two phrases, namely the
International Phonetic Alphabet (which is a set of symbols used to represent
the pronunciation of words and longer utterances) or the International Phonetic
Association, the organization whose aim is “to promote the scientific study of
phonetics and the various practical applications of that science”
(www.internationalphoneticassociation.org).

Primary stress and secondary stress

In words with at least two syllables, a syllable may receive a weaker secondary
stress, marked with the diacritic (ˌ). Secondary stress represents a level of
prominence lower than primary stress (ˈ), but clearly stronger than in
unstressed syllables. For example, in prepaid /ˌpriː ˈpeɪd/ the first syllable
receives secondary stress, while the main primary stress falls on the second
syllable. The word armadillo has four syllables with at least three different
stress levels: /ˌɑː mə ˈdɪl əʊ/. “The idea is that the syllables between the
stressed syllables are unstressed, and thus less prominent than the stressed
syllables, but that the syllable with primary stress is more prominent than the
syllable with secondary stress.” (Carr 2008: 135)
Secondary stress is found most frequently in multisyllable words, where it
breaks up what would otherwise be long sequences of unstressed syllables. In
academicism /ˌæk ə ˈdem ɪ ˌsɪz əm/, after the syllable with primary stress
(ˈdem), there are three syllables, and here secondary stress falls in the middle,
yielding a sequence of alternating stresses. Similarly, in capitalism, /ˈkæp ɪ tə
ˌlɪz əm/ the four-syllable sequence is broken up by a secondary stress on the
penultimate syllable.

The notion of stress is explained in more detail in Chapter IV.

Phoneme and allophone

We will sometimes use the technical term PHONEME, defined as the “minimal
unit in the sound system of a language” (Crystal 2008: 361). As a first
approximation, the term “phoneme” can be used interchangeably with the
general term “sound”.
One reason why we will prefer the more technical term is that it helps
distinguish between so called contrastive and non-contrastive sounds. To take
non-contrastive sounds first, note that the /l/ sounds in the phrase look cool
/lʊk kuːl/ do not really have the same pronunciation. The one in look is
pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the ridge behind the teeth (the
alveolar ridge). The second /l/ is velarized, i.e. pronounced with the back of the
tongue raised toward the velum, the soft part of the palate located behind the
hard palate.

3
 Figure 2 Clear ‘l’ [l] Figure 3 Dark ‘l’ [ɫ]

Although most speakers are not aware of the difference, it becomes instantly
evident if the two variants were to switch positions. If you pronounced the /l/ in
cool without raising your tongue, the effect would be a foreign sounding cool
reminiscent of the French accent. The /l/ in look is called a “clear l”, and the
other variant is a “dark l”.

Interestingly, most American speakers tend to use the “dark” variety in all
contexts. (Newman 2014: 83)

In some cases, exchanging a sound has stronger consequences, which is what

happens when two sounds are separate phonemes. Phonemes are said to “have
a contrastive function”, which means that exchanging one phoneme for another
will completely change the word itself. For example, if the sound /t/ in the word
bat /bæt/ is replaced with a /d/, the resulting word will be bad /bæd/. That is,
unlike with the two /l/ sounds in look and cool, the change from /t/ to /d/ will
not result in a strange sounding pronunciation, but a change of the word’s
meaning.

To use the technical terminology, the sounds /t/ and /d/ are two different
phonemes, which can be imagined as two independent sound entries in the
speaker’s inventory of English sounds. On the other hand, the two variants
“clear l” and “dark l” are allophones of the same phoneme /l/. The two
allophones are physically quite different and in transcriptions that capture such
details, they are indicated with dedicated symbols [l] and [ɫ] (clear and dark l
respectively). Still, allophones are non-contrastive and should be thought of as
sub-entries of their phoneme entry, as illustrated in the following abbreviated
representation of the inventory:

4
 phonemes /d/ /t/ /l/ /p/ …
allophones … … [t] [th] [l] [ɫ] …[p] [ph] …

In this course, we will mainly practice what is referred to as broad

transcription, which only represents phonemes. In this transcription, as you
may have noticed, phonemes are enclosed within slash lines //. A more detailed
narrow transcription is designed to identify allophones, which are shown in
square brackets []. This transcription will be used only sporadically here.

Sources used
CCE Collins COBUILD English Dictionary
CED Cambridge English Dictionary
LPD Longman Pronunciation Dictionary
OED Oxford English Dictionary
MWU Merriam-Webster Unabridged

To transcribe the pronunciation of all words in this book, we use SIL

International’s font Doulos SIL available at https://software.sil.org/doulos/

5
I Phonemic symbols
Consonant symbols
Table 1 in the previous section presents all consonant symbols used
in English. We have remarked that letter-to-sound correspondence is
not always obvious but it is fairly consistent in the case of
consonants. Table 2 below presents the most typical relations, but in
English we must always be ready for exceptions. Additionally, the
letters ‘r’, ‘w’ and ‘l’ often cooperate with vowel letters to indicate
long vowels and then there may be no /r/, /w/ or /l/ in pronunciation.
We will show how these combinations work while discussing the
vowels.

symbol letter example remarks

p p pit
b b bad
t t ten
d d do
k k, c keep, cat, act ‘c’ before ‘a’, ‘o’, ‘u’ and consonant
letters
g g go
f f, ph fine, photo
v v vote
s s, c soon, cent ‘c’ before ‘e’, ‘i’, and ‘y’
z z, s zone, busy ‘z’ is not used very often in English
spelling, so ‘s’ may stand for either
voiceless /s/ or voiced /z/
m m man
n n nine
r r red In BrE /r/ is only pronounced before
vowels.
l l long
j y yes before vowels (in so-called rising
diphthongs)
w w went before vowels (in so-called rising
diphthongs)
h h hide always before vowels
ŋ ng, nk sing, sink ‘nk’ indicates a /ŋk/ combination
ʃ sh show
ʒ -si-, ge vision, rouge usually in Latin or (esp. ‘ge’) French
borrowings, indicated by non-initial
‘si’ typically before /ə/
ʧ ch cheap
dʒ j, dg, g judge, gem ‘g’ never indicates /dʒ/ before ‘a, o,
u’
θ th think, breath more frequent in content words
ð th that, breathe more frequent in function words and
(unless word-initial) in verbs
Table 2. Consonant symbols with corresponding letters

It is easy to notice that there are few ambiguous relations between

letters and corresponding speech sounds represented by phonemic
symbols. For the most part, the letter-symbol correspondences are
fairly clear. Only the last seven symbols may not at first be clear to a
beginner, and they will be treated in some detail in Chapter III.

Single vowel symbols

The English language uses more or less twice as many vowels as
there are vowel letters in the Latin alphabet. That is why new
symbols and symbol combinations must be introduced to represent
them. Another difficulty is that in the course of a long and complex
process of language development, English pronunciation has
deviated from the spelling, even though it was obviously initially
intended to reflect the way people spoke. Some of those deviations
form predictable patterns while others are rather erratic, which
certainly makes learning English pronunciation a challenging task.

7
Table 4 shows the symbols representing English vowels with
examples of the most typical corresponding spellings.

iː tree feed seat field scene lowercase i

ɪ fish dish big small capital I
æ cat mat rat ash
ɑː car part far father script a
ɒ clock lock stop turned script a
ɔː horse law door brought fourth open o
ʊ book pull would upsilon
uː boot pool rude blew move lowercase u
ɜː bird turn person word reversed epsilon
e egg red head lowercase e
ʌ up sun son love turned v
ə computer soda arrive upon schwa, turned e
Table 3. English vowels with example words

Diphthong symbols
Vowels may also appear in combinations. In British English we
distinguish closing diphthongs, pronounced with the tongue raised
from a lower to a higher position (either /ɪ/ or /ʊ/) and centring
diphthongs, where the tongue moves from a more peripheral to the
neutral position represented by /ə/. Consequently, their first,
prominent element is represented by one vowel symbol which is
followed by another, representing one of the three possible tongue
destinations. Traditionally, eight such combinations are distinguished
in standard British English:

aɪ hide try sight

eɪ say wait lane
ɔɪ boy coin
aʊ cow loud
əʊ go show boat rode
ɪə beer fear here
eə air dare bear
ʊə poor sure tour
Table 4. English diphthongs with example words

8
 Notice that the symbol /a/ is only used in diphthong symbols: /aɪ/ (eye) and
/aʊ/ (now, out).

Regular differences between American and

British transcriptions
Pronunciation and hence transcription patterns differ across the
varieties of English, which is more visible in the vowel system. The
table below shows typical differences between standard American
(column 1) and British pronunciation (column 2). Then column 3
shows transcription conventions used in Merriam-Webster’s
Unabridged Dictionary of English (MWU).

1 2 3
iː iː ee feed
ɪ ɪ i sit
æ æ a rat
ɑː ɑː ah far
ɑ ɒ o stop (See note below)
ɔː ɔː aw door
ʊ ʊ oo book
uː uː ooh fool
ə ə euh alone
ɜː ɜː err turn
e e e very
ʌ ʌ u fun
Table 5. Vowel symbols. Differences between BrE and AmE transcription
conventions.

Although other sounds represented by the same symbols may also differ
between British and American varieties, the vowel in stop is traditionally
represented by /ɑ:/ to reflect its similarity to the one in far rather than the
British vowel in stop. You will notice the other regular difference in the
transcription of the diphthong in boat.

The following table shows differences between how diphthongs are

represented in American and British English. Note the symbol for
the sound heard in oh or grow is /oʊ/ in American English and /əʊ/ in
British English to reflect the noticeably different qualities of how

9
this sound is pronounced by most speakers of the two varieties. In
this book, we adopt the symbol /əʊ/ for consistency. The last three
items in the table also differ considerably between British and
American English. That is, sounds that are centering diphthongs
(tending toward /ə/) in British English are not diphthongs in
American English, where they are pure vowels followed by /r/.

1 2 3
aɪ aɪ uy sight
eɪ eɪ ay lane
ɔɪ ɔɪ oy boy
aʊ aʊ ow now
oʊ əʊ oh boat
ɪr ɪə ear here
er eə air bear
ʊr ʊə oor tour
Table 5. Diphthong symbols. Differences between BrE and AmE
transcription conventions.

What do vowel letters usually represent?

Although not always predictable, vowel letters tend to represent
more or less strictly specified vocalic sounds. Usually, depending on
the context, they either indicate what we may call “long” or “short”
pronunciation. The “long” pronunciation, typically indicated by the
letter followed by a single consonant letter and another vowel letter
(especially “mute” ‘e’), is just the “alphabet name” of the letter, a
diphthong in most cases. The “short” pronunciation version,
indicated by the vowel letter followed by a final consonant letter or a
medial double consonant letter, is a short vowel. Unfortunately, this
rule does not apply to all English words (so be careful while doing
the exercise below) but at least it may help us avoid a lot of mistakes
if we have to predict the pronunciation of a new word. The pattern is
illustrated below.

10
letter “long” example “short” example
pronunciation pronunciation
‘a’ eɪ hate æ hat
‘e’ iː Pete e pet
‘i’ aɪ ride ɪ rid
‘o’ əʊ note ɒ not
‘u’ juː cute ʌ cut
Table 6. Long and short pronunciations of spelling letters.

The letter ‘y’ indicates the same vowel or diphthong as ‘i’ does, but, unlike
the latter, it typically appears in the word-final position. Notice, that ‘y’
regularly stands for /aɪ/ in stressed syllables and /ɪ/ in unstressed ones.

Exercise 1.1
Transcribe the following words:
by, city, deny, simply, imply
forget, delete, lever, ever, even
manner, mane, manor, flavor
bitter, liver, diver, give, five
chop, hope, chopper, dove, choke
button, mute, stuck, duke, duck

Exercise 1.2
Write these words next to the right phonetic symbol in Table 3.
dork, steam, start, week, lurk, spat, food, foot, lark, cool, corn, far,
seat, stern, van, sport, scream, seem, harsh, lurk, rude, born, dull,
puke, psalm, rock

11
Exercise 1.3
In each row, eliminate the word whose vowel is different from those
in the other three. In words with more syllables, the vowel in
question is in bold type.
a. stick myth feet fit
b. blood muck tar pub
c. roll rot dot gosh
d. son run fun butcher
e. lock bottle shore stop
f. lard father parent jar
g. done gun fall stub
h. sat Nazi clap plaid
i. set dead heat bet
j. sieve leave meat Steve

Exercise 1.4
Transcribe the single vowels in the following sentences. (Ignore the
consonants, diphthongs and stresses.)
Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.
/l_v ðaɪ neɪb_r əz jəs_lf bət tʃ_z jə neɪb_h_d/
If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.
/_f ju ə n_t kr_təsaɪzd jə meɪ n_t bi duɪŋ m_tʃ/
Opportunity is missed by most people because it’s dressed in
overalls and looks like work.
/ɒpət_n_ti ɪz m_st baɪ məʊst p_pəl bikɒz ɪts dr_st ɪn əʊvər_lz ən ɪt l_ks
laɪk w_k/
I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after
they’re dead.
/aɪ dəʊnt θ_ŋk _nibʌdi ʃəd raɪt ðər əʊn baɪɒgr_fi ʌnt_l ðə d_d/

12
II Vowels
In this chapter we focus on vowels. We introduce them in pairs
which are frequently confused by learners. We often use MINIMAL
PAIRS in order to demonstrate the difference between the two
vowels. The term minimal pair refers to any two words which differ
in meaning when only one sound is changed, e.g. riff - reef (/rɪf/ -
/riːf/) or ten - tan (/ten/ - /tæn/). A group of words, each of which
differs from all others by only one sound, e.g. lick, lit, Lynn, lid, etc.
is called a MINIMAL SET.

13
2A. Vowels /iː/ and /ɪ/

iː ɪ
lowercase i small caapiital i
peat /piːt/ pit /pɪt/
feel /fiːl/ fill /fɪl/

bit, spin, zit, glib, etc.

/ɪ/ is usually spelled as the
letter ‘i’:

/iː/ is often pronounced

when spelled as…
bee, greet, meet, leek, reek, see, etc.;
‘ee’
employee, refugee, divorcee, etc.
bean, beat, heat, league, peace, sea,
‘ea’
weave, etc.
achieve, believe, field, piece, ceiling,
‘ie’ / ‘ei’
receive, conceive, etc.
athlete, complete, concrete, decent,
‘e’-CONSONANT-‘e’
Irene, obese, Pete, Portuguese, Steve,

But there are exceptions:

Looks like /iː/ but is really pronounced as /ɪ/: sieve, mischief, counterfeit,
foreign

14
 Looks like /ɪ/ but is really pronounced as /iː/: liter, kilo, police, machine,
and -ique words antique, physique, pique, technique
There are some tricky cases of Irish names: Sean BrE /ʃɔːn/, AmE /ʃɑːn/,
Sinead /ʃɪˈneɪd/, Deirdre BrE /dɪədri/, AmE /dɪrdri/

Exercise 2A.1
piece sea
Match and transcribe
see weak
homophones (words with
beat beet
different meanings and
beech beach
spellings, but pronounced
meat bit
the same). Not all the words
week meet
have a match!
heel suite
sweet hill
pick heal
mitt peace
pique peek
peak

Exercise 2A.2
What problem do the words sheet, beach, and piece pose? Which
words should they not be confused with?

Exercise 2A.3
Transcribe the following
King and Queen kith and kin speed limit
freaking dimwit spitting image feeling of bliss

15
Exercise 2A.4
Provide the spelling for these minimal pairs.
/fiːl/ /fɪl/ /stiːl/ /stɪl/ /biːn/ /bɪn/
/riːm/ /rɪm/ /diːm/ /dɪm/ /liːk/ /lɪk/

Weak i
There is a third /i/ sound, which is used in most dictionaries. Although its use
in broad transcription is debatable (because it cannot be considered a
phoneme), it does not have a good alternative in either /iː/ or /ɪ/. In the
unstressed syllables in the following words, what is heard is a sound realized
with the tongue raised to a position between that of /iː/ and /ɪ/.

Betsy /ˈbetsi/ missy /ˈmɪsi/

genius /ˈdʒiːniəs/ cheesy /ˈʧiːzi/

As the above examples show, the weak /i/ is realized if the syllable is both
unstressed and open, whose typical example is the final syllable in words
spelled with a ‘y’. In the middle of a word, a vowel can also be a weak /i/ if
it is not followed by a consonant. Such is the case of the word genius, where
the syllable with /i/ is followed by a vowel /ˈdʒiː ni əs/.

In most dialects of English, the most frequent pronunciation of Betsy

features the weak /i/. It is different from the /iː/ in the final (stressed)
syllable in examinee /ɪɡzæmɪˈniː/.

Exercise 2A.5
Insert the vowels /iː/, /ɪ/, or /i/ in the following examples.
Baily /ˈbeɪl__/ indeed /__nˈd__d/ screamingly /ˈskr__m__ŋl__/
bailee /beɪˈl__/ listee /l__sˈt__/ extremely /__kˈstr__ml__/
menial /ˈm__n__əl/ sixteen /ˌs__ksˈt__n/ Billy /ˈb__l__/
fifteen /ˌf__fˈt__n/ discrete /d__ˈskr__t/ pinwheel /ˈp__nw__l/
chickpeas /ˈtʃ__kp__z/ Frisbee /ˈfr__zb__/ midweekly /ˌm__dˈw__kl__/

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2B. Vowels /e/ and /æ/

eæ
lowerr
caasee e ash
pet /pet/ pat /pæt/
pen pan /pæn/
/pen/

/e/ In a great majority of cases, it Ben, bet, bell, beg, best, else,
is spelled as the letter ‘e’ before sell, well, went, etc.
a consonant:

In a lot of words with ‘ea’: already, bread, breakfast,

breath, deaf, death, head, health,
heaven, heavy, instead, leather,
measure, pleasure, ready,
spread, steady, stealth, thread,
threat, tread, wealth, well-read

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 Special-case spellings
The vowel /e/ has a number of unpredictable spellings:
With ‘a’: any /eni/, many /meni/, Thames /temz/
With ‘ai’ / ‘ay’: again /əˈgen/, said /sed/, says /sez/

Miscellaneous:
bury /ˈberi/, friend /frend/, Geoff /dʒef/, Leicester /ˈlestə/

/æ/ In a great majority of cases, it add, ban, cat, dab, hag, stack,
is spelled as the letter ‘a’ before a tab, etc.
consonant:

! But not in sequences a- bane /beɪn/ ache /eɪk/ (See Unit

CONSONANT-e: 2H)
! Not before ‘r’ art /ɑːt/ carb /kɑːb/ (See Unit
2E)

/æ/ possible before ‘rr’ carry /ˈkæri/ marry /ˈmæri/

Exercise 2B.1
Transcribe the following words and expressions.
anyone’s guess heavy-handed man
/ˈeniwʌnz _____________/ oven-ready /ˌʌvən ______________/

deadpan ready, steady, go! /______________ ˈgəʊ/

bury the hatchet /ˈberi ðə _____________/ treadmill

dead end street tread very gently /_____________ ˈdʒentli/

heaven-sent

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 /eə/ and /er/
In words like dare, bear or there, British English has the diphthong /eə/,
which will be treated in Unit 2H. This sound corresponds to /er/ in American
English:

BrE AmE
dare /deə/ /der/
there /ðeə/ /ðer/

Exercise 2B.2
Provide the spelling for the following transcriptions.
/ə ˌfrend ɪn ˈniːd ɪz ə ˌfrend ɪnˈdiːd/
/ˈθret əv ˌwepənz əv ˌmæs dɪˈstrʌkʃən/
/ðə ˈbest ˈθɪŋ sɪns ˌslaɪst ˈbred/
/ˌpʊt jə ˈbest ˈfʊt ˈfɔːwəd/

Exercise 2B.3
Transcribe the following expressions.
ready to wear /redi tə weə/ step ahead
threadbare defense bear witness to the facts
anywhere man’s best friend
dead and buried

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2C. Vowels /ʌ/ and /æ/

ʌæ
turned v ash
cut /kʌt/ cat /kæt/
pun /pʌn/ pan /pæn/

In a great majority of cases, /ʌ/ is bun /bʌn/, cut /kʌt/, dub /dʌb/,
spelled as the letter ‘u’ before a hug, stuck, tub, etc.
consonant:
The sound /ʌ/ is heard in a number one /wʌn/, done /dʌn/, none
of frequent words spelled with ‘o’: /nʌn/, come, cover, govern,
dove, love, glove, oven, other,
brother, mother, some,
something, nothing, money,
monkey, onion, comfort, color,
does, London
! But not in sequences u- fume /fjuːm/ mute /mjuːt/ (See
CONSONANT-e: Unit 2G)
! Not before in sequences r- urn /ɜːn/ lurk /lɜːk/ (See Unit
CONSONANT 2D)
! The letter ‘a’ never stands for /ʌ/ bad /bæd/, dab /dæb/, lack
/læk/, tap /tæp/, sand /sænd/,
but /æ/ is nearly always represented
van /væn/
by ‘a’

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 Special-case spellings
Some cases of /ʌ/ words to memorize are listed below. Make sure you know
how to pronounce these words with ‘o’: ton, son, won, front;
with ‘oo’: blood, flood;
with ‘ou’: touch, country, cousin, young, couple, double, trouble;
with ‘ough’: enough, rough, tough

Exercise 2C.1
Which words are being contrasted in the following minimal pairs?
/ˈædə/ /ˈʌdə/ /gæl/ /gʌl/ /stæk/ /stʌk/
/bæn/ /bʌn/ /hæl/ /hʌl/ /stæn/ /stʌn/
/dæd/ /dʌd/ /sæk/ /sʌk/ /tæb/ /tʌb/

Exercise 2C.2
What homophones do the words son, won, and none, have?

Homophone
If two words have different spellings and different meanings, but are
pronounced the same, they are technically referred to as HOMOPHONES.
Examples include lead (metal) and led (past form of the verb to lead); they
are both pronounced /led/.

Exercise 2C.3
Transcribe the following
an ugly cover-up son-of-a-gun happy-go-lucky
/___ɡəʊ___/
a ton of /əv/ money bloodbath country cousin
a stunning comeback an unloved son number one
black color front man bad blood
troubled young lad stuck in the /ðə/ mud funny monkey

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2D. Vowels /ɜː/ and /ʌ/

ɜː ʌ
reversed turned v
epsilon
burn /bɜːn/ bun /bʌn/
curt /kɜːt/ cut /kʌt/
firn /fɜːn/ fun /fʌn/

/ɜː/ Spelled as ‘ur’ at the end of a burn, curl, fur, hurt, nurse,
word, also before a consonant: purse, surge, Thursday, etc.
‘er’ perfect, serve, nerve, herb, herd,
nerd
‘ir’ bird, dirt, firm, first, girl, sir,
thirst
‘ear’ before a consonant earth, heard, hearse, learn,
pearl, search
‘wor’ word, work, world, worm, worse
(worsen, worst), wort, worth
/ʌ/ In a great majority of cases, bun, cut, dub, hug, stuck, tub,
spelled as the letter ‘u’ before a etc.
consonant:

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