How to Read IPA - Learn How Using IPA Can Improve Your Pronunciation

Hi, I’m Gina. Welcome to Oxford Online English!  In this lesson, you can learn about using IPA.  

You’ll see how using IPA can  improve your English pronunciation  

and help you to avoid pronunciation mistakes.

To see more free English lessons, visit our  website: Oxford Online English dot com. You  

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help you with your English speaking, writing,  IELTS preparation, or whatever else you need.

So, this lesson is about  IPA. What does IPA stand for? 

IPA stands for ‘international phonetic alphabet’.  Maybe you know something about IPA already.  

For example… Why do you need IPA? Well,  

you don’t *have* to learn it, but it can  help you with English learning. Here’s why.

English spelling and pronunciation are horribly  irregular. Take these words as examples:  

thorough, Wednesday, consciousness, or champagne. 

There’s not much relation between what you write  and what you say. That makes things difficult.  

To make it clear why this is,  let’s do a different test.  

We’re going to show you some colours. Say the  colour of the square out loud as you see it. 

Did you say ‘red’, ‘blue’, ‘yellow’?  

Did the words in a different colour slow you down? 

Maybe that was easy, maybe not. Either  way, your brain has to work harder,  

because in this test, you have to read a word,  and then ignore it and say something different.

That’s what reading English is like. You have  to see one thing, and say something else.  

Often, your instinct is to read the letters you  see phonetically. This is tiring to fight against,  

and it leads to pronunciation mistakes,  which can easily become bad habits over time.

Using IPA when you study vocabulary  solves this problem for you. With IPA,  

you don’t have to see one thing and say  another. IPA is one hundred per cent phonetic.  

That means the pronunciation and the  ‘spelling’ match exactly, every time.

If you’ve never used IPA before,  it might look complicated.

It’s not. You can learn to use IPA from  zero with one or two hours of practice.

In the rest of this lesson, you’ll get a basic  introduction to reading and writing in IPA,  

and you’ll see how you can use it to make your  English learning easier and more effective.

One note before we continue: we’re using IPA  based on southern British English pronunciation.  

Other varieties of English, like US English,  are written slightly differently in IPA.  

However, the differences are not large.

So now, let’s look at how to read IPA. 

First, some good news! Many IPA symbols are easy,  

because they look like regular letters,  and have the same pronunciation.

This is true for many consonant  sounds, like /b/, /m/ or /l/.

Let’s try it. Even if you’ve  never used IPA before,  

I think you could guess what these words are. 

Can you say the words? They  are: street, traffic, darkness. 

Remember that in IPA, the same sound is always  written the same way. In English, a /k/ sound  

can be written with the letters ‘k’ ‘c’, or maybe  ‘q’, but in IPA, you always write it with ‘k’.

Consonant sounds which are often  written with two letters in English,  

like /ð/, /ʃ/ or /dʒ/, have symbols in IPA  which look different from regular letters.  

However, there aren’t so  many of them. Take a look. 

Pause the video if you want  more time to study these. 

Ready? Let’s do some practice.  Can you read these words in IPA?

Can you read the words? They are:  fridge, think, teacher, shopping.

By the way, do you see the little mark  which looks like an apostrophe in the  

last two words? Do you know what it means? This mark shows you where the stress is  

in the word. The syllable after  this little mark is stressed.

Now, you can already read a lot  in IPA. What do you need next? 

Reading vowels in IPA is a little more  work. Why? Because the Roman alphabet  

has six vowel letters, but there are at least  22 phonetic vowels in English pronunciation.

Why ‘at least?’ It’s because there isn’t  one way to pronounce English, and so  

there’s more than one way to write English in IPA.

Also, sometimes people use different  systems for writing in IPA. For example,  

one book might use the same symbol for two vowel  sounds which are very similar to each other,  

but another book might use different symbols.

Don’t worry about this. It’s not a problem.  In this video, you’re seeing a common system  

for writing English in IPA. You might see  different patterns or symbols in other places.  

It doesn’t mean that one way is right or wrong.

Anyway, let’s see how to read vowels in IPA.

You might know already that there are  three kinds of vowel sounds in English:  

short sounds, long sounds and diphthongs.

For example, the /ɪ/ sound in ‘bit’ is  short. The /ɔː/ sound in ‘door’ is long.  

The /əʊ/ sound in ‘home’ is a diphthong.

It’s easy to see the difference between  these three types of sounds in IPA.  

Short sounds appear as a single symbol.

Remember to pause whenever you need if you  want to look at something in more detail.  

Long sounds have a mark after  them, which looks like a colon. 

Diphthongs appear as two symbols. Going through the pronunciations of  

all the vowel sounds would take a long time,  plus we already made a whole video about it!  

If you’re watching on YouTube, you can  find a link in the video description.

You can also check the full version  of this lesson on our website.  

There are notes on IPA symbols  and how to pronounce them.

Reading vowel sounds in IPA is more  difficult, because there are more  

possible spellings for each sound, so the  connection between the IPA and the spelling  

might be less obvious. But, with a little  practice, you’ll be able to do it easily.

Let’s try a few words now. 

Pause the video if you want  more time to think about it.

Ready? The words are: woman,  banana, brown, floor, information.

Let’s try five more. These  are a little more challenging. 

Can you work out what these words are?  Again, pause the video if you need to.

The words are: airport,  mango, anyone, early, zero.

Did you get them right?  

If so, great! If not, don’t worry. You just  need more time to get familiar with IPA.

How can you practise? Easy!  There’s a great website:  

tophonetics dot com. You can  paste text into the site,  

and it will change the text to IPA. You can  even choose between UK and US pronunciation.

Take a text, paste it in to the website, and  try reading the IPA. Spend a little time on  

this kind of practice – five or ten minutes a  day – and you’ll soon find it easy to read IPA.

What if you want to write in  IPA on a computer or phone?  

There are several options, but a good  free one is ipa dot typeit dot org.

Now, you should have all the resources you  need to practise reading and writing using IPA.  

But, how should you use them? Let’s look.

In this section, we’ll give  you some advice on using IPA  

to help you learn English more  efficiently and speak better.

Our first piece of advice might sound  strange: consider *not* using IPA! Why?  

Some people don’t benefit from it.

In our experience, using IPA is *really*  helpful for some learners, but not for everyone.

For example, some learners get better results  by listening and copying the pronunciation.  

Some people are good at this, but  there are others who can’t do it well.

This isn’t a problem. Different people learn  in different ways. If you find IPA confusing  

and you don’t feel that it’s helping you, don’t  feel that you have to use it. It’s just a tool.  

You can use it if it’s helpful, but  there are other ways to learn, too.

If you think IPA will be  helpful for you, then what?

First, whatever dictionary you use, find  where the IPA transcriptions are given.  

Some dictionaries hide the phonetic transcription  behind a button, or at the bottom of the page.

Our two recommended online dictionaries are  Lexico and Longman. Lexico puts the phonetic  

transcription at the bottom. Longman has it  next to the word, at the top of the page.

Second, get in the habit of writing down the  IPA next to the word when you write down new  

vocabulary. Don’t forget to mark the stress!  Word stress is essential for clear pronunciation.

When you’re reviewing vocabulary, you should read  the words out loud to practise the pronunciation.  

When you do this, look *only* at the IPA. Don’t  think about the spelling of the written word.  

Look at the IPA and say the word out loud.

This way, you can be sure that  you’re pronouncing words correctly  

from the first time you study them. That lets you  avoid training bad habits and making mistakes.

Learning IPA for the first time can take a  couple of hours, but it’s worth the time.  

Get into these habits, and your  pronunciation will be clearer  

and more accurate, and it doesn’t  need much effort from you.

Do you have any other tips for using IPA  to improve your English pronunciation?  

Please let us know in the comments!

Thanks for watching!

See you next time!