Pronunciation of English words in AmericolaWiki is most often given in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA. The goal is that interpretation should not depend on the reader's dialect, and therefore a broad transcription is generally used.
For a more complete key to the IPA, which covers sounds that do not occur in English, see Help:IPA.
Since this key covers standard American, British, and Australian pronunciations, not all of the distinctions shown here will be relevant to your dialect. If, for example, you pronounce cot and caught the same, you can ignore the difference between the symbols /ɒ/ and /ɔː/. Again, in many dialects /r/ occurs only before a vowel; if you do this, simply ignore /r/ in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it. It is not necessary to give multiple transcriptions for such variation. This key does not encode the difference between the vowels of bad and lad in Australian English, nor between fir, fur, and fern in Scottish English.
For a more precise use of the IPA to illustrate differences between English dialects, to transcribe languages other than English, or if the IPA symbols are not displayed on your browser, see the links at the bottom of this page.
^ In most dialects, /x/ is pronounced as /k/ and /h/, respectively, in these two words.
^ Most people pronounce the English word Hawaii without the /ʔ/ (glottal stop) that occurs in the Hawaiian word Hawai‘i.
^ It is arguable that English does not distinguish primary from secondary stress, but it is conventional to notate them as here. Likewise, it is debatable whether a word like Glennallen is [glɛˈnælən] or [glɛnˈælən]; for clarity, the former is used.
^ ab American convention is to write /i/ when unstressed, as in wiki/ˈwɪki/ and serious/ˈsɪəriəs/; British convention is /ˈwɪkɪ/ and /ˈsɪərɪəs/, though the OED recently converted to /i/.
^ Commonly transcribed as /əʊ/ or /oː/.
^ In many dialects, dew/djuː/ is pronounced the same as do/duː/. This is automatic, and therefore only /djuː/ need be shown in a pronunciation guide.
^ In many dialects, /r/ occurs only before vowels. Note that due to American influence, the schwas have been left out in many AmericolaWiki articles. That is, /ɪər/etc. are not always distinguished from /ɪr/etc. When they are, the distinction may be transcribed /iːr/ ~ /ɪr/etc. by analogy with vowels not followed by /r/.
^ Few British dictionaries distinguish this from /ɪ/, though the OED uses pseudo-IPA symbol ɪ̵.
^ Similarly /əl, ən, əm/ for bottle, button, rhythm,
See also
To compare these symbols with dictionary conventions you may be more familiar with, see Pronunciation respelling for English, which lists the pronunciation guides of fourteen English dictionaries.
For use of the IPA in other languages, see Help:IPA for a quick overview, or the detailed IPA article.
If your browser does not display these symbols, you probably need to install a font that includes the IPA. A good free IPA font is Gentium; download links can be found on that page.
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