The Phonetic Alphabet

The tables below classify all the sounds of the English language (vowels and consonants). You can click on every symbol and on the example words to hear them pronounced. You can use these tables to become more familiar with the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). If you want to practise pronouncing individual sounds you can do so using the tables below (simply listen and repeat) but make sure you also take a look at the resources listed in the 'Going Further' section of Letters & Words (last tab).

Most dictionaries provide phonological transcriptions of words before their definition. For instance if you look up the word 'diphthong' in the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary you will see: ˈdɪfθɒŋ written before the definition. In order for you to read and understand those transcriptions you need to know some of the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

Note: As in the rest of this website the sounds and transcriptions used are those of Southern British English (also known as 'Standard English' or 'BBC English'). General American and other accents might have different ways of pronouncing some letters or words.

If you would like to practise mastering the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) in English, here are a couple of pages you can have a look at:

• This Coursebuilder website (called Linguistics for Speech Language Therapy), particularly the sections on vowels and consonant (thank you Elaine for sharing this).

• This Cambridge fun game page where you can 'shoot' a phonetic symbol and play a phonetic 'hangman' game. Note that you can also download those games onto a 'smartphone'.