The
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be used to represent sound correspondences among various accents and dialects of the
English language
English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
.
These charts give a
diaphoneme
A diaphoneme is an abstract phonology, phonological unit that identifies a correspondence between related sounds of two or more variety (linguistics), varieties of a language or language cluster. For example, some English varieties contrast the ...
for each sound, followed by its
realization in different dialects. The symbols for the diaphonemes are given in bold, followed by their most common phonetic values.
Abbreviations list
The following abbreviations are used in this article for regional varieties of English:
See
Pronunciation respelling for English
A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography (i.e. the spelling does not reliably indicate pronunciation).
There are two ba ...
for phonetic transcriptions used in different dictionaries.
Consonants
Vowels
In the
vowels
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
chart, a separate phonetic value is given for each major dialect, alongside the words used to name their corresponding
lexical set
A lexical set is a group of words that share a particular vowel or consonant sound.
A phoneme is a basic unit of sound in a language that can distinguish one word from another. Most commonly, following the work of phonetician John C. Wells, a lex ...
s. The diaphonemes for the lexical sets given here are based on RP and General American; they are not sufficient to express all of the distinctions found in other dialects, such as Australian English.
See also
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English phonology
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of Eng ...
*
List of dialects of the English language
Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling, and other aspects of grammar. For the classification of varieties of English in pronunciation only, see regional accents of English.
Overview
Dialect ...
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Phonetic alphabets
Phonetic alphabet can mean:
* Phonetic transcription system: a system for transcribing the precise sounds of human speech into writing
** International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): the most widespread such system
** (See :Phonetic alphabets for other ...
*
Pronunciation respelling for English
A pronunciation respelling for English is a notation used to convey the pronunciation of words in the English language, which do not have a phonemic orthography (i.e. the spelling does not reliably indicate pronunciation).
There are two ba ...
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SAMPA chart for English
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Help:IPA/English
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Help:IPA/Conventions for English
References
Further reading
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{{IPA navigation
Chart for English dialects
English phonology
Comparison of forms of English