The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet

This chart contains all the sounds (phonemes) used in the English language. For each sound, it gives:

The symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as used in phonetic transcriptions in modern dictionaries for English learners — that is, in A. C. Gimson's phonemic system with a few additional symbols.
The chart represents British and American phonemes with one symbol. One symbol can mean two different phonemes in American and British English. See the footnotes for British-only and American-only symbols.
Two English words which use the sound. The underline shows where the sound is heard.
The links labeled Amer and Brit play sound recordings (you need Flash 9 or higher) where the words are pronounced in American and British English. The British version is given only where it is very different from the American version.

To print the chart, use the printable PDF version.

vowels
words	listen
cup, luck	Amer
arm, father	Amer / Brit
cat, black	Amer
met, bed	Amer	1
away, cinema	Amer	2
turn, learn	Amer / Brit	2
hit, sitting	Amer
see, heat	Amer
hot, rock	Amer / Brit	3
call, four	Amer / Brit	4 5
put, could	Amer
blue, food	Amer
five, eye	Amer
now, out	Amer
say, eight	Amer
go, home	Amer	6
boy, join	Amer
where, air	Amer / Brit	1 7
near, here	Amer / Brit	7
pure, tourist	Amer / Brit	7

consonants
words	listen
bad, lab	Amer
did, lady	Amer
find, if	Amer
give, flag	Amer
how, hello	Amer
yes, yellow	Amer
cat, back	Amer
leg, little	Amer
man, lemon	Amer
no, ten	Amer
sing, finger	Amer
pet, map	Amer
red, try	Amer
sun, miss	Amer
she, crash	Amer
tea, getting	Amer	8
check, church	Amer
think, both	Amer
this, mother	Amer
voice, five	Amer
wet, window	Amer
zoo, lazy	Amer
pleasure, vision	Amer
just, large	Amer

1	In some (not many) dictionaries, the phoneme is written as (do not confuse with ), which is actually more appropriate, because in the IPA does not correspond to the sound in met and bed. The same goes for , but not .
2	In and , the is not pronounced in BrE, unless the sound comes before a vowel (as in answering, answer it). In AmE, the is always pronounced, and the sounds are sometimes written as and .
3	In AmE, and are one vowel, so calm and cot have the same vowel. In American transcriptions, hot is written as .
4	About 40% of Americans pronounce the same way as , so that caught and cot have the same vowel. See cot-caught merger.
5	In American transcriptions, is often written as (e.g. law = ), unless it is followed by , in which case it remains an .
6	Most British dictionaries represent as . For some BrE speakers, is more appropriate (they use a rounded vowel) — for others, the proper symbol is . For American speakers, is usually more accurate.
7	In , the is not pronounced in BrE, unless the sound comes before a vowel (as in dearest, dear Ann). In AmE, the is always pronounced, and the sounds are often written as .
8	In American English, is often pronounced as a "flap t", which sounds like or (more accurately) like the quick, hard r heard e.g. in the Spanish word pero. For example: letter.

special symbols
IPA	what it means
	The apostrophe symbol () is used to show word stress. Usually, it is placed before the stressed syllable in a word. For example, // is pronounced like this, and // like that. Word stress is explained in our article about phonetic transcription.
	is not a sound — it is a short way of saying that an is pronounced only in American English. For example, if you write that the pronunciation of bar is //, you mean that it is // in American English, and // in British English. However, in BrE, will be heard if is followed by a vowel. For example, far gone is pronounced / / in BrE, but far out is pronounced / /.
	is usually pronounced like a shorter version of , but sometimes (especially in an old-fashioned British accent) it can sound like . Examples: very //, create //, previous //, ability //.
	means that the consonant is pronounced as a separate syllable (the syllabic l, which sounds like a vowel), or that there is a short sound before it. Examples: little //, uncle //. Instead of the symbol, some dictionaries use the syllabic l symbol , as in //, or simply , as in //.
	means that the consonant is pronounced as a separate syllable (the syllabic n, which sounds like a vowel), or that there is a short sound before it. Examples: written //, listen //. Instead of the symbol, some dictionaries use the syllabic n symbol , as in //, or simply .

Does this chart list all the sounds that you can hear in British and American English?

No. This page contains symbols used in phonetic transcriptions in modern dictionaries for English learners. It does not list all the possible sounds in American or British English.

For example, this page does not list the "regular t" (heard in this pronunciation of letter) and the "flap t" (heard in this one) with separate symbols. It groups them under a single symbol: . (In other words, it groups a number of similar sounds under a single phoneme, for simplicity. To understand how sounds are grouped into phonemes, read the article on phonemic transcription.)

So this page actually lists phonemes (groups of sounds), not individual sounds. Each symbol in the chart can correspond to many different (but similar) sounds, depending on the word and the speaker's accent.

Take the phoneme in the above chart. It occurs in the phonemic transcriptions of pin // and spin //. In pin, this phoneme is pronounced with aspiration (breathing). This "aspirated p" sound has its own special symbol in the IPA: . In spin, the phoneme is pronounced "normally"; the "normal p" sound is represented by in the IPA. So the phoneme represents two sounds: and . (This can be confusing, because can mean both the phoneme and the sound.)

Typing the phonetic symbols

You won't find phonetic symbols on your computer's keyboard. How do you type them in a Word document, e-mail message, or SuperMemo collection? There are two solutions:

You can go to the IPA phonetic keyboard at ipa.typeit.org, type your transcriptions, and copy & paste them to your document.
You can use the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet, which replaces IPA symbols with characters that you can type on your keyboard.

Learning to pronounce the sounds

We offer English pronunciation software called PerfectPronunciation which teaches learners to pronounce the most frequently used English words. It lets you listen to examples of English sounds, practice your pronunciation, and review your knowledge. PerfectPronunciation uses the ASCII Phonetic Alphabet.