English spelling is a poor guide to how a word sounds: though, through, tough and cough all end in the same four letters and none of them rhyme. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) fixes that with one symbol for each sound. Learn about forty of its symbols and you can read the pronunciation of any word in an English dictionary.
Looking for Alfa, Bravo, Charlie? That’s a different thing: a spelling alphabet, often called the NATO phonetic alphabet. It’s at the bottom of this page.
How to read a pronunciation
A dictionary entry looks something like this: banana /bəˈnanə/. Four things are going on.
- The slashes say “what’s between these is sounds, not spelling”.
- Each symbol is one sound. Many are the letters you’d expect: b, n. Others are new: ə is the short, weak “uh” at the start of about, the most common vowel sound in English.
- The mark ˈ is stress. It sits just before the syllable you say most strongly: ba-NA-na.
- Nothing is silent. If a letter isn’t pronounced, it isn’t there. Thought has seven letters and three sounds: /θɔt/.
You’ll also see square brackets, as in [pʰɪn]. Slashes give a broad transcription, with only the sounds that the language treats as different. Square brackets give a narrower one, with extra detail about exactly how it was said. Here the small ʰ shows the puff of air after the p in pin, which isn’t there in spin.
The sounds of Australian English
Australian English has 24 consonant sounds and about 20 vowel sounds. These are the symbols you’ll meet in an Australian dictionary.
Consonants
Sixteen of the 24 are ordinary letters with the sound you’d expect: p b t d k ɡ f v s z h m n l r w. The other eight are the ones to learn.
| Symbol | Sound | As in |
|---|---|---|
| θ | the soft th | thin, bath |
| ð | the buzzing th | this, mother |
| ʃ | sh | ship, nation |
| ʒ | the buzzing sh | measure, vision |
| tʃ | ch | chin, match |
| dʒ | j | jam, badge |
| ŋ | ng | sing, think |
| j | y (not the English j) | yes, unit |
Two things to watch. j is the y sound, as it is in German ja. And the letter r in a dictionary stands for the ordinary English r, though on the full chart that sound is strictly ɹ; plain r there means a rolled r.
Vowels
This is where it gets interesting, because there are two sets of symbols in use for Australian vowels. The dictionary column is the long-standing system used by the Macquarie Dictionary (linguists call it Mitchell–Delbridge). The newer column is the one many Australian linguists now use (Harrington, Cox and Evans, 1997), which picks symbols closer to how Australians really say each vowel.
| As in | Dictionary | Newer | As in | Dictionary | Newer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bit | ɪ | ɪ | beat | i | iː |
| bet | ɛ | e | part | a | ɐː |
| bat | æ | æ | port | ɔ | oː |
| but | ʌ | ɐ | boot | u | ʉː |
| pot | ɒ | ɔ | bird | ɜ | ɜː |
| put | ʊ | ʊ | hair | ɛə | eː |
| about | ə | ə | here | ɪə | ɪə |
| bay | eɪ | æɪ | how | aʊ | æɔ |
| buy | aɪ | ɑe | hoe | oʊ | əʉ |
| boy | ɔɪ | oɪ | tour | ʊə | ʊə |
Take care with ɔ: in the dictionary system it’s the vowel in port, and in the newer system it’s the vowel in pot. Check which system a book is using before you trust it. The last one, the vowel in tour, is fading: many Australians now say tour as two sounds, and say sure and poor with the vowel of port.
A vowel written with two symbols, like aɪ, is a glide from one position to another in a single syllable. Say buy slowly and you can feel your tongue move.
Some words to try
In the dictionary system:
| Word | In IPA | What to notice |
|---|---|---|
| Melbourne | /ˈmɛlbən/ | The second syllable is a weak ə, not “born”. |
| Brisbane | /ˈbrɪzbən/ | The same weak ending, and the s is a z. |
| kangaroo | /kæŋɡəˈru/ | The stress is on the last syllable. |
| water | /ˈwɔtə/ | No r sound at the end: Australians don’t say an r unless a vowel follows it. |
| singing | /ˈsɪŋɪŋ/ | Two ŋ sounds and no g sound at all. |
| judge | /dʒʌdʒ/ | It starts and ends with the same sound, spelt two ways. |
| measure | /ˈmɛʒə/ | The ʒ sound has no letter of its own in English. |
| computer | /kəmˈpjutə/ | The j is the hidden y sound before the u. |
The marks around the letters
| Mark | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ˈ | Main stress, placed before the stressed syllable | /əˈbaʊt/ about |
| ˌ | Lighter, secondary stress | /ˌɪnfəˈmeɪʃən/ information |
| ː | The sound before it is long | [biːt] beat |
| . | A break between syllables | /ri.ækt/ react |
| ʰ | A puff of air after the sound | [pʰɪn] pin |
| ◌̃ | Said through the nose | [bɔ̃] French bon |
| ◌̩ | A consonant that makes a syllable by itself | [ˈbʌtn̩] button |
| ◌͡◌ | Two symbols said as one sound | [t͡ʃ] the ch in chin |
The dotted circle only shows where the mark goes. The full chart has 31 of these small marks (diacritics), plus a set of marks for stress, length, tone and intonation.
The full chart
The complete alphabet has 107 letters, enough to write every sound that any known language uses to tell words apart. Tap or click a symbol to copy it.
Consonants made with air from the lungs
Across the top is where in the mouth the sound is made, from the lips at the left to the throat at the right. Down the side is how it’s made. Where a cell has two symbols, the left one is voiceless (a whisper, like s) and the right one is voiced (a buzz, like z). Hatched cells are sounds no mouth can make.
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Dental | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Retroflex | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Pharyngeal | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plosive | p b | t d | ʈ ɖ | c ɟ | k ɡ | q ɢ | ʔ | ||||
| Nasal | m | ɱ | n | ɳ | ɲ | ŋ | ɴ | ||||
| Trill | ʙ | r | ʀ | ||||||||
| Tap or flap | ⱱ | ɾ | ɽ | ||||||||
| Fricative | ɸ β | f v | θ ð | s z | ʃ ʒ | ʂ ʐ | ç ʝ | x ɣ | χ ʁ | ħ ʕ | h ɦ |
| Lateral fricative | ɬ ɮ | ||||||||||
| Approximant | ʋ | ɹ | ɻ | j | ɰ | ||||||
| Lateral approximant | l | ɭ | ʎ | ʟ | |||||||
The columns, in plain words: bilabial is both lips; labiodental, lip and teeth; dental, the teeth; alveolar, the gum ridge behind them; postalveolar, just behind the ridge; retroflex, the tongue tip curled back; palatal, the hard palate; velar, the soft palate; uvular, the uvula at the very back; pharyngeal, the throat; glottal, the voice box.
The rows, in plain words. A plosive stops the air and lets it go with a pop. A nasal sends it through the nose. A trill is a roll, a tap a single quick flick. A fricative squeezes the air through a narrow gap to make a hiss or a buzz. An approximant narrows the gap only a little. Lateral means the air goes round the sides of the tongue, as in l.
Other consonants
| Clicks | ʘ | ǀ | ǃ | ǂ | ǁ | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Implosives (air drawn in) | ɓ | ɗ | ʄ | ɠ | ʛ | |||||
| Ejectives (marked with ʼ) | pʼ | tʼ | kʼ | sʼ | ||||||
| Other symbols | ʍ | w | ɥ | ʜ | ʢ | ʡ | ɕ | ʑ | ɺ | ɧ |
Vowels
Vowels are sorted by where the tongue is. Down the side: how high it is, from nearly touching the roof of the mouth (close) to as low as it goes (open). Across the top: whether the highest part is at the front or the back. In each pair, the left vowel has spread lips and the right one has rounded lips.
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i y | ɨ ʉ | ɯ u |
| Near-close | ɪ ʏ | ʊ | |
| Close-mid | e ø | ɘ ɵ | ɤ o |
| Mid | ə | ||
| Open-mid | ɛ œ | ɜ ɞ | ʌ ɔ |
| Near-open | æ | ɐ | |
| Open | a ɶ | ɑ ɒ |
Sounds from other languages
Most of the chart is for sounds English doesn’t use, or uses without noticing. You already know some of them.
| Symbol | Where you’ve heard it |
|---|---|
| ʔ | The catch in the middle of uh-oh. In English it’s there but never spelt. |
| ɾ | The r in Spanish pero. Many Australians use it for the t in butter when they speak quickly. |
| r | The rolled rr in Spanish perro, and the Scottish r. |
| ʁ | The French r in rouge, made at the back of the mouth. |
| x | The ch in Scottish loch and German Bach. |
| ç | The ch in German ich. |
| ɲ | The ñ in Spanish señor and the gn in Italian gnocchi. |
| ʎ | The gl in Italian figlio. |
| ɬ | The ll in Welsh Llanelli. |
| y | The u in French tu and the ü in German über. |
| ø | The eu in French peu and the ö in German schön. |
| ʈ ɳ ɭ | Sounds made with the tongue tip curled back. Common in the languages of India (Tamil has all three) and in many Aboriginal languages; Warlpiri spells them rt, rn and rl. |
| ŋ | English has it, but only after a vowel (sing). Many Aboriginal languages start words with it, spelt ng, and so does the Vietnamese name Nguyễn. |
| ǀ | The tsk-tsk click of disapproval. In Zulu and Xhosa, clicks are ordinary consonants. |
Where it came from
The alphabet was drawn up in the 1880s by a group of French and British language teachers led by Paul Passy, who wanted a reliable way to teach pronunciation. The first version was published in 1888. The group became the International Phonetic Association, which still looks after the alphabet. The last new letter, ⱱ, was added in 2005, and the current chart is dated 2020.
The founding idea still holds: one symbol for each distinct sound, and the same symbol for that sound in every language.
Alfa, Bravo, Charlie: the other “phonetic alphabet”
When someone spells a name over the phone as “S for Sierra, M for Mike”, they’re using a spelling alphabet. It’s widely called the NATO phonetic alphabet; its formal name is the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. Each letter gets a word chosen to be hard to mistake for any other on a noisy radio. This version has been the international standard for aviation since 1956.
| A Alfa | H Hotel | O Oscar | V Victor |
| B Bravo | I India | P Papa | W Whiskey |
| C Charlie | J Juliett | Q Quebec | X X-ray |
| D Delta | K Kilo | R Romeo | Y Yankee |
| E Echo | L Lima | S Sierra | Z Zulu |
| F Foxtrot | M Mike | T Tango | |
| G Golf | N November | U Uniform |
Alfa and Juliett are spelt that way on purpose, so that speakers of other languages don’t read ph as a p or leave the final t silent. If you’d rather send letters as dots and dashes, our Morse code translator does that.
Common questions
What is the International Phonetic Alphabet?
Is the IPA the same as Alfa, Bravo, Charlie?
What do the slashes and square brackets mean?
What does the mark ˈ mean in a pronunciation?
How many symbols are in the IPA?
Sources
- International Phonetic Association, The International Phonetic Alphabet (chart revised to 2020), and its interactive chart with recordings. internationalphoneticassociation.org
- Wikipedia, Australian English phonology, which sets the two systems of vowel symbols side by side (Mitchell and Delbridge; Harrington, Cox and Evans, 1997), and International Phonetic Alphabet for the history and the counts. en.wikipedia.org
- The spelling alphabet is published by the International Civil Aviation Organization in Annex 10, Volume II.