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The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be used to represent sound correspondences among various accents and dialects of the English language. These charts give a diaphoneme 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.
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 English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system.
For help converting spelling to pronunciation, see English orthography § Spelling-to-sound correspondences. The words given as examples for two different symbols may sound the same to you. For example, you may pronounce cot and caught , do and dew , or marry and merry the same.
The original IPA alphabet was based on the Romic alphabet, an English spelling reform created by Henry Sweet that in turn was based on the Palaeotype alphabet of Alexander John Ellis, but to make it usable for other languages the values of the symbols were allowed to vary from language to language. [note 2] For example, the sound (the sh in ...
Respelling non-English pronunciations into English is inadequate and misleading. If an English respelling is given for a Welsh or Māori name, not only would it be bad Welsh or Māori but the implication would be that it's the English pronunciation. Nonetheless, an ad hoc description of a non-English language word in that language is permitted.
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 basic types of pronunciation respelling:
Pronunciation can change over time. Dictionaries may list the most commonly used forms of words, but as language changes, dictionaries change as well. At best, any guide to suggested pronunciation can reflect the preponderance of usage. A word like immediately, for example, is variously pronounced by Americans as: ihMEEdeeuhtlee; uhMEEdeeuhtlee
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association.