Help:IPA/English: Difference between revisions

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{{IPA key|H:IPA-EN|H:IPAE|H:IPAEN}}

ThroughoutOn Wikipedia, the pronunciation of words is indicatedshown using the '''[[International Phonetic Alphabet]]''' ('''IPA'''). The following tables listbelow provide a key to the IPA symbols used for English words and pronunciations. Please note that severalsome of these symbols are used in ways that are specific to Wikipedia, and may differ from thosetheir usedusage byin dictionaries.

If the IPA symbols aredo not displayeddisplay properlycorrectly byin your browser, see the [[Help:IPA/English#See also|troubleshooting links below]].

Editors should use [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation#IPA templates on Wikipedia|IPA templates]] such as {{tl|IPAc-en}} when adding IPA to Wikipedia articles, see [[MOS:PRON#Entering IPA characters|Manual of Style/Pronunciation § Entering IPA characters]] for guidance. These templates ensure accessibility and tooltip functionality, see [[Template:IPAc-en|the documentation page]] for usage instructions.

If you are adding a pronunciation using this key, such pronunciations should generally be formatted using the template {{t|IPAc-en}}. The template provides tooltips for each symbol in the pronunciation. See the template page for instructions.

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==Key==

If thereyou isare looking for an IPA symbol youthat aredoes lookingnot forappear thatin youthe dopronunciation not seekey herebelow, see [[Help:IPA]], which isprovides a more completecomprehensive list. For a table listingshowing all spellings ofhow the sounds on this page correspond to English spellings, see {{section link|English orthography|Sound-to-spelling correspondences}}. For helpassistance in converting spellingspellings to pronunciationpronunciations, seerefer to {{section link|English orthography|Spelling-to-sound correspondences}}.

TheIn some cases, words given as examples for two different symbols may sound the same to you. For exampleinstance, you maymight pronounce [[Cot–caught merger|''cot'' and ''caught'']], [[Do-dew merger|''do'' and ''dew'']], or [[Marry merry mary|''marry'' and ''merry'']] the same. This oftentypically happensresults because offrom dialect variation (see our articles [[English phonology]] and [[International Phonetic Alphabet chart for English dialects]]). If this is the caseso, you will likely pronounce those symbols the same forin other words as well.{{refn|name=localterms|This rule is generally employed in the pronunciation guide of our articles, even for local terms such as place names. However, be aware that not all editors may have followed this consistently, so for example if a pronunciation of an English town ending in ‑ford reads /‑fəd/, it doesn't mean that the /r/ would be absent in a rhotic dialect.}} Whether this isapplies true forto all words, or just when the sounds occuronly in thecertain same context,contexts depends on the specific [[sound merger]].<ref>For example, if you have the ''marry–merry'' merger, you probably only merge {{IPA|/æ/}} and {{IPA|/ɛ/}} before {{IPA|/r/}}. You would still distinguish ''man'' and ''men''.</ref> The footnotes explainprovide somefurther explanation of these cases.

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