Learn All English Sounds & Pronounce Words Perfectly with the IPA!

Hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish.

This lesson will help you learn all English sounds

but more specifically, how to learn and remember

the IPA symbols

so that you can study and improve your pronunciation

more effectively.

The IPA is the International Phonetic Alphabet.

It's a set of symbols that represents

the different sounds in English

and I know that the thought of learning what must

seem like an entirely new alphabet

in order to know how to pronounce English words

must be really frustrating.

But in order to know what sounds to produce,

to pronounce a word correctly you need to be able to

see and to recognise which sound you need to make.

And this is where the IPA can help you.

Instead of looking at the letters in this word

and trying to pronounce them, maybe saying busi-ness,

you'll see the actual sounds that combine to produce the word

and pronounce it correctly,

business.

Now I want you to tell me down in the comments right now

what English word is most difficult for you to pronounce.

If you add it down below I'm going to try and make

some short videos helping to explain the pronunciation for you

but right now in this lesson

I'm not only gonna teach you all of the English sounds

but I'm also going to train you to associate the sounds

with their symbols so that you can start using the IPA as a tool

to pronounce any English word that you learn correctly.

Now because this lesson is a big one, there's a lot to take in,

there's a lot to learn,

I've created you a free pdf workbook that you can download

using the link in the description below.

If you follow the link, you add your email address, I'll send

that PDF to you straight away.

It's going to have all of the sounds that we'll practise in this

lesson today and all of the example words as well

so it's a really useful resource. Go grab it after the lesson

to review what we practise right now.

This is just a friendly reminder that my accent is an Australian

English accent so everything I'm teaching in this lesson

relates to Australian English pronunciation.

So by now you probably have already noticed

that English is not a phonetic language.

There are twenty-six letters in the English alphabet

but there are forty-four or forty-five different English sounds

depending on who you ask.

Vowel sounds in particular are a challenge because there's only

five vowel letters in English

but there are nineteen different vowel sounds.

This is why you need the IPA.

So let's take a look.

These are the forty-four sounds of English.

You'll notice that some of these sounds look like

English letters so that makes it easy right?

You can see the letter B for the /b/ sound.

The letter K for the /k/ sound.

But there are some different symbols here for other sounds.

For example, this one represents the /ʃ/ sound.

We use this symbol to represent the sound because

it can be written with different English letters in English words

like

show,

relation,

passion

and chef.

Notice how the IPA is divided into different sections?

The top half shows all of the English vowel sounds.

On this left side you'll find all the monophthong vowel sounds.

It's a complicated name for a very simple thing.

These are just the pure vowel sounds. Let's go through them.

Ship.

Sheep.

Book.

Move.

Egg.

Her.

Teacher.

This is our relaxed lazy schwa sound.

We really need to relax our jaw.

Door.

I like to remember this one by imagining the shape of my lips,

the same shape as that symbol.

And again I like to remember the shape of my mouth

with this symbol.

It's big, it's open.

Cup.

On.

Car.

So here's a quick tip.

The sounds with the two dots are long vowel sounds.

This right side has the diphthong sounds.

They are also vowel sounds but they are different

because each individual sound is made up of a combination

of sounds.

Compare that monophthong sound

which is just one sound with the diphthong sound

which is two sounds combined to make one sound.

So the diphthong sound is actually made up of the /ɔ:/

and /ɪ/ vowel sounds.

Let's go through all of them now.

/eɪ/ as in day.

/ɔɪ/ as in boy.

/aɪ/ as in like.

/eə/ as in hair.

/ɪə/ as in here.

/ʊə/ as in tour.

/əʊ/ as in show.

/aʊ/ as in mouth.

The bottom half of the IPA table shows all of the English

consonant sounds and you'll see that some of these symbols

are the same as English letters. That makes things simple.

There are two main types of English consonant sounds,

unvoiced and voiced.

Unvoiced consonant sounds are made by pushing

air through your mouth and it's the air that creates

the sound so actually when you make unvoiced

consonant sounds, you should be able to hold your hand

in front of your mouth and you should feel the air coming out.

So let's practise and keep your hand there if you need to.

Pea.

Far.

Think.

Top.

Say.

She.

Chip.

That sound /ʧ/ is a combination of the t and ʃ.

Remember that when you're looking for this symbol.

Key.

Voiced consonant sounds are made using your vocal chords.

So when you're using your vocal chords you can

feel them vibrating or moving.

You shouldn't have a lot of air coming out of your mouth

when you're making voiced sounds. The sound is made here.

Beat.

Van.

This.

Dog.

Zip.

Vision.

Jam.

This is a combination of the /d/ and /ʒ/ sounds.

Gap.

Man.

Next.

Young.

Hope.

Win.

Love.

Run.

You.

The thing is, if you can learn to recognise and to produce

these English sounds, you'll be able to pronounce

any new English word that you learn perfectly

just by breaking it down into the correct sounds

but it's also going to help you to use the correct

syllable stress, sentence stress,

rhythm and help you to speak much more clearly and naturally.

So the question is

how do you memorise all of these symbols and sounds?

We practise!

Okay so we are not going to focus on the sounds that look

exactly like the letters. They're the easy ones.

We're going to focus our energy on these vowel and

consonant sounds that we need to learn how to recognise.

So you'll see them come up on screen just here

and when they do, don't just think about the sound,

I want you to make the sound as you see it so

what we're trying to do is associate the sound

with the movement of your muscles. This is really important

okay. This is why we're practising together.

So just try and pronounce the sound.

The word is going to be there just to prompt you

okay but I want you to focus on memorising the sound.

Let's start with...

Now we'll go through all of these same sounds again

in a different order and without my voice this time

so you need to guess. You need to make the sound out loud.

After one second I'll give you a little clue,

I'll add that word up on screen and then

you'll hear me make the sound so you can check if you're right.

We're working with your memory here, we're trying to make

these sounds and symbols stick.

Edge.

Flute.

Hide.

Tissue.

Apart.

Bother.

Angry.

Bath.

Breeze.

Cook.

Happen.

Cap.

Hair.

Sip.

Know.

Culture.

Cure.

Measure.

Boy.

Hurt.

Cup.

How.

Pay.

Yes.

Beer.

Poor.

Soft.

Show.

Okay you've made it to the last part!

This is where we get to have some fun all right.

You're gonna see some sounds come up on screen

and you need to guess the word.

Remember to do this out loud.

It's important that you're training your

ears, your eyes, your mouth

all together. They're working as a team here.

Yacht.

Young.

Brochure.

Greet.

Breathe.

Groceries.

Jungle.

Mission.

Mechanic.

Moustache.

Nationality.

Nurse.

Pouch.

Qualify.

Reservation.

Single.

Special.

Technique.

Toenail.

Urgent.

So I really hope that you enjoyed that practice today.

I designed it so you can continue to come back and test

yourself, maybe skip over the sounds

and come straight to the practice

because it's going to take you some time to practise

and to remember all of these different sounds.

I know when I was learning them I found it really helpful

to associate the different

shapes and the different sounds or combinations of sounds

that came together to produce these words.

It really helped me to remember them.

Watch it again, test yourself,

remind yourself about all of these different sounds,

keep practising, make it stick in your mind.

And if you want me to make another practice lesson

just like this one,

let me know down in the comments below.

Practice makes perfect, doesn't it?

I'll see you in the next lesson.