You can obtain the phonetic transcription of English words automatically with the English phonetic translator.
On this page, you will find charts with all American English consonant and vowel sounds.
You can choose one of the two phonetic transcription systems - both use the symbols of International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA):
To understand the difference, read the footnotes and learn what allophones and phonemes are and how they will help you improve your pronunciation in English.
Click on any word in the chart to watch a video with a native speaker pronouncing this word!Transcription
narrow broad (phonemic) both
| Allophone | Phoneme | At the beginning of a word | In the middle of a word | At the end of a word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [p] | /p/ | place |
Transcription
narrow broad (phonemic) both
| Allophone | Phoneme | At the beginning of a word | In the middle of a word | At the end of a word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [i] | /i/ | even |
Transcription
narrow broad (phonemic) both
| Allophone | Phoneme | At the beginning of a word | In the middle of a word | At the end of a word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [ɚ] | /ɚ/ | around |
Transcription
narrow broad (phonemic) both
| Allophone | Phoneme | At the beginning of a word | In the middle of a word | At the end of a word |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [aɪ] | /aɪ/ | eyes |
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A phoneme is a speech sound that is capable of changing the meaning of a word. For example, substituting the last sound in the word kiss with the sound /l/ creates another word – kill. Therefore, /s/ and /l/ are phonemes.
Phonemic transcription uses phonemes to show the pronunciation of words. It is written between slashes, as in the examples below:
This type of transcription is sometimes called broad since it doesn't show small differences between similar sounds. To show the exact pronunciation of a word, narrow transcription is needed. For the same two words, for example, we would write:
Note that in narrow transcription, square brackets are used instead of slashes. In our example, narrow transcription also uses slightly different symbols. Why? Because each phoneme in a language may have several different pronunciations. These variant pronunciations of the same phoneme are called allophones.
Let's take the phoneme /k/, for example. In English there are two allophones of /k/:
Now you may wonder – why do I need to know all this? It looks complicated! Well, at first sight, it is. But if you really want to improve your pronunciation and sound like a native speaker, we highly recommend familiarizing yourself with all the allophones (different variants) of each phoneme in English language.
Let's take the phoneme /t/, for example, in the following English words: today, two, water, certain. If you look up their pronunciation in a dictionary, most likely you will find something like this:
All four words have the "same" phoneme /t/. But does it sound the same? No! In narrow transcription (which shows the exact pronunciation, remember?) the same words would be transcribed like this:
That means that the phoneme /t/ has at least four allophones:
When you use English phonetic translator on this site and want to obtain narrow transcription, make sure to select the following options (the second option is only available for American English):
Conversely, if you want to obtain broad transcription, unselect these two options.
The phonetic symbols used in this IPA chart may be slightly different from what you will find in other sources, including in this comprehensive IPA chart for English dialects in Wikipedia.
It was difficult to decide which set of IPA symbols to use for English phonetic translator and the IPA chart on this page. We eventually decided to follow the recommendations from the book by Larry H. Small Fundamentals of Phonetics, 4th Edition. The book provides a very good summary of all the content from other sources.
In the following table, you will find the features of the phonetic transcription used in this book.
| Feature | Transcription in Fundamentals of Phonetics | Transcription in most American English dictionaries |
|---|---|---|
| Syllabic consonants , and are displayed with a little vertical line below. Example words: little, student | /ˈlɪtl̩/ /ˈstudn̩t/ | /ˈlɪt(ə)l/ /ˈstud(ə)nt/ |
| Stressed is written as , unstressed – as . Example words: first, other | /ˈfɝst/ /ˈʌðɚ/ | /ˈfərst/ /ˈʌðər/ |
| Unstressed is written as , unstressed – as . In the final position they remain diphthongs and even if unstressed. Example words: vacation, photos | /veˈkeɪʃən/ /ˈfoʊtoz/ /ˈfoʊtoʊ/ | /veɪˈkeɪʃən/ /ˈfoʊtoʊz/ /ˈfoʊtoʊ/ |
| No elongation symbol [ː] is used for the phonemes and . Example words: eat, group | /ˈit/ /ˈɡɹup/ | /ˈiːt/ /ˈɡɹuːp/ |
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