Help:IPA/Introduction: Difference between revisions

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IPA's most daunting feature is that it has discrete [[letter (alphabet)|letters]] for almost all of the distinctive sounds found in the world's languages. (See [[International Phonetic Alphabet#Letters]].) Fortunately, using the IPA for English requires learning only the following small subset of them:

* '''Vowels''': English [[orthography]] uses 6 vowel ''letters'' (''a, e, i, o, u, y'') to represent some 15 vowel ''sounds''. While the English system is compact, it is also ambiguous. The IPA is unambiguous, representing each vowel sound with a unique letter or sequence. (See the [[IPA vowels chart with audio|vowel audio chart]]). Note that most of what in English are called "[[long vowels]]", ''A, E, I, O, U'', are in fact combinations of two sounds (diphthongs), which is why they are transcribed in the IPA with two letters apiece: {{IPA|/eɪ/}}, {{IPA|/iː/}}, {{IPA|/aɪ/}}, {{IPA|/oʊ/}}, and {{IPA|/juː/}}, respectively.<ref>The English digraphs ''ee, oo, au, ei, ai, ou, ie, eu,'' etc. are not used at all in the IPA, or similar combinations of two letters are used to logically represent two sounds, for example {{IPA|/eɪ/}} for the two vowel sounds in "may", not the single vowel sound at the end of "receive ".</ref>

* '''Consonants''': IPA consonants are mostly intuitive to an English speaker, with the same letter used for the same sound. Thus you already know {{IPA|/b, d, f, ɡ, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w, z/}}, as long as you remember that these each have a single sound. For example, {{IPA|/ɡ/}} always represents the sound of ''get,'' never of ''gem,'' and {{IPA|/s/}} always the sound of ''so,'' never of ''rose''. The letter which most confuses people is {{IPA|/j/}}, which has its Central-European values, a ''y'' sound as in the ''j'' in English ''[[wiktionary:hallelujah|hallelujah]]''. Two English consonant sounds, ''ch'' in ''chair'' and ''j'' in ''jump'', are transcribed with two IPA letters apiece, {{IPA|/tʃ/}} and {{IPA|/dʒ/}}. The English digraphs ''ch, ng, qu, sh, th'' are not used. See and hear also [[IPA pulmonic consonant chart with audio|consonant audio chart]].