IPA for English learners
IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet, gives every speech sound exactly one symbol, so a word is written the way it is said rather than the way it is spelled. English spelling is unreliable — the letters ough are pronounced at least six different ways — so dictionaries use IPA to show pronunciation unambiguously. Learners only need about forty symbols to read English transcriptions.
Why English needs it
English spelling does not tell you how a word sounds. The letters ough alone are said at least six ways:
IPA fixes this by giving each sound exactly one symbol. Read the symbols and you know the pronunciation, whatever the spelling is doing.
The schwa — the most common sound in English
/ə/ is a short, weak, neutral vowel, and it appears in almost every unstressed syllable in the language. Learning it is the fastest single improvement most learners can make, because pronouncing unstressed vowels fully is what makes speech sound laboured.
Vowel pairs learners confuse
Length is not the whole story — these pairs differ in tongue position too, which is why simply holding the vowel longer does not fix them.
Consonants English learners rarely have at home
/θ/ and /ð/ — the two th sounds — are missing from most languages. The tongue tip touches the top teeth; the first is voiceless, the second voiced.
Reading the marks
Keep going
Every word above is a button. Set the accent and voice you want on the main screen, then come back — the guides use whatever you chose. To hear two accents against each other, use Compare; to test whether you can actually hear a contrast, use the listening quiz.
Last reviewed 2026-08-15 · Learn Pronounce