Phonetics deals with the production of speech sounds by humans, often without

prior knowledge of the language being spoken. Phonology is about patterns of

sounds, is the study of the particular sound units of a language. Those sound
units are called phonemes.
In English, we have two standard pronunciation systems of the language which
are called Received Pronunciation and General American. The first one is the
pronunciation form of British English and the traditionally considered accent of
English in England. The second is the one spoken throughout USA. From the
previous classes we can recall that English has an extensive variety of accents in
the world and that there is no perfect accent, instead every country has its own
accent and there are even more regional accents within the same country, so
there is no reason to think about copying the way people pronounce English
words in an specific country because someday you will come across with
different models of speeches outside the classroom.
Now I am going to introduce you to the IPA. What’s the IPA? This acronym
stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. This is a standardized system of
pronunciation symbols used by many dictionaries. The following is a standard
chart for sounds in any language. Each symbol represents a precise sound.
The sounds of English can be organized by consonants and vowels. Consonants
depend on the place of articulation (where the sound is made in the vocal tract),
the manner of articulation (how close the parts of the mouth get to change
airflow to make a sound) and voicing (whether vocal chords produce sound or
not, i.e. if the sounds are voiceless or voiced). With different combinations of
these 3 factors, English speakers produce stop/plosive sounds, fricatives,
affricates, approximant sounds. Vowels are all voiced and rely on the placement
of the tongue in the oral cavity.
Now, when it comes to analyze the consonant chart we can see that is arranged
in rows that designate the manner of articulation, and columns that designate
the place of articulation. Also, where symbols appear in pairs in a cell, the one
to the right represents a voiced consonant and to the left a voiceless consonant.
Another fact is that the shaded or grey areas denote sounds that are impossible
to articulate and therefore impossible to pronounce.
While the particular sound of a language (phonemes) are represented in slashes //, the phonetic
transcription of words is represented in square brackets [] or also in slashes depending on what
dictionary are you using. For example the Cambridge Dictionary uses slashes to show how to
pronounce words. As I told you before, with phonetic transcriptions, dictionaries tell you about the
pronunciation of words. In English dictionaries, phonetic transcriptions are necessary, because the
spelling of a word does not tell you how you should pronounce it. (Spelling ≠ Sound).

For example, the phonetic transcription of the word HOME is [hoʊm] and the transcription
of COME is [kʌm]. Note that in spelling, these words are similar because they both end in OME.
But their phonetic transcriptions are different, because they are pronounced differently.

Going back to the IPA, I want you to be aware that every language needs an adaptation of the
chart for its own phonemes. So, the chart for the consonant phonemes in English does not differ
from one standardized pronunciation system to another, i.e. they do not differ from the Received
Pronunciation to the General American, they are exactly the same. The only chart that do this is
the one with the vowel phonemes.

On one hand, in the IPA for English phonemes we can find 24 consonant sounds. On the other
hand, we can find 20 vowel sounds in Received Pronunciation and 16 vowel sounds in General
American. Why General American pronunciation system has less vowel sounds? It is just because
of a matter of uniformity and economy of language. In the case of the vowels the colons after
them means that the sound is longer, if they do not have colons it means the sound is shorter.

Another important aspect is that the consonant and vowel sounds can appear with different
spelling at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of a word. If you click in any symbol you can
notice this aspect. For example the theta sound /θ/.

In the chart of consonants phonemes, there are less common sounds that can be easily recognized
by the way they are spelled. For example words that have a spelling “th” can be either the theta
sound or its counterpart. Spelling “sh” goes with this sound. “Ch” with this. And so on…

If you want to listen to the pronunciation of the phonemes itself and included in words, you can
look for videos in YouTube, there are a bunch of them explaining how to do it. And if you want to
see a narrow explanation with examples of the consonants and vowels phonemes you can look for
them in the British Council Website. Also if you want to know how to pronounce a single word, a
phrase or paragraph you can use this website to write them and then see the phonetic
transcription so that you try to pronounce them.

This IPA is a good tool for you to improve your pronunciation and to sound more intelligible or
understandable when you speak. Do you know what “learn by heart” means? Learn by heart
means to study, to practice, but mostly memorize something so that it can be written or spoken
without any effort. So, you will need to learn by heart how to pronounce these phonemes
correctly so you can achieve your goal of boosting your oral skills. But in order to succeed in doing
that, of course, you need to practice every day, have determination and discipline. Guys, I really
hope this tool can help you a lot, so have a great time learning by heart the IPA for English
phonemes and I wish you enjoy it!