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What is IPA?
International Phonetic Alphabet.
First Tips
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) has many symbols, and you don’t need to learn all of them at once. It’s likely that you’ll forget most of them before you actually need to use them.
To save time, it’s better to focus only on the symbols that appear in the language you are studying.
For me, using the IPA to learn Russian pronunciation is my current goal. Therefore, it makes more sense for me to focus on the symbols specific to Russian rather than learning all the other IPA symbols.
When I eventually decide to learn other language, I’ll dedicate time to learning the sounds specific to that language. For now, I’m only going to focus on the sounds of the Russian language. I suggest you take a similar approach with your target language.
Before diving into learning a new language with IPA, I recommend starting to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) through a language you already know. Many sounds appear in multiple languages, so you’ll find it easier to learn using familiar examples. I see that others recommend the same.
The Main Symbols and Their Sounds
A very good resource that I use to learn the sounds of the IPA symbols are the audio clips available in each Wikipedia article about the symbol. These clips provide clear pronunciations, making it easier to differentiate between sounds that have similar pronunciations.
I’ll include a link to the article under each symbol. Just click on the symbol to access the article, where you can read about the symbol and listen to the audio recording. I found the Wikipedia audio clips to be the clearest and easiest to understand. I highly recommend checking them out.
You’ll notice that each symbol has a name (often a complicated one), but you don’t need to memorize these names. It won’t make any difference.
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Vowels in American English
i → see, sheep, heat, even, idea,
ɪ → english, ship, him, been, here, gym, if, women, which, big, give, music, fish, million, kill, kiss, rich,
ɛ → men, bed, pet, met, says, any,
æ → man, bad, apple, after, ask, back, last, rat, have, act, fat, hat, happy,
ə → mud, about, first, around, again, among, sofa, believe, stir, melody, holiday,
ʌ → cup, love, run, enough, blood, does, much, just
ɜ → burn, stir, worth, early, worm, world, word, learn, her, turn, girl, third, perk, journey
u → two, who, pool, include, prove, group, you, soon, do, blue, through, moon, noon, food. (Tense.)
ʊ → look, put, book, foot, good, could, pull. (Relaxed.)
ɔ → daughter, law, caught, tall, fall,walk, talk,
ɑ → father, modern, calm, palm, honest, hot, body, cop, star, coffee,
ɒ → not, God,
Diphthongs in American English
aɪ → pie, I, eyes, my, life,
aʊ (closer to “æʊ”, in American English) → down, now, out, brown, sound,
ɔɪ → boy, soy, oil, point, toy,
eɪ → day, clay, able,
oʊ → go, show, hotel, both, so, over, only
Consonants in American English
d → do, dry, odd.
t → tip, washed
v → value, of, love,
f → staff, enough,
b → big, abandon
p → pan
ɡ → go, egg, leg, gap, exhibit, fog.
k → king, choir, quiet, back
tʃ → teach, chair, future, chapter
dʒ → joy, edge, ginger, change
h → happy, hi
ɹ → red, wrong, operate, ear,
j → yes, you, neutral
θ → thing, both, thigh, thanks
ð → this, mother, thus
s → ice, some, this
z → lazy, flowers, possess, these
ŋ → ring, sing, king, thanks, anger, think, thing,
l → follow, lie, feel,
ʃ → she, sure, motion, ocean, issue, polish
ʒ → pleasure, vision, beige, genre,
w → we, win, with, quiet, will, one
m → man, moon, my, some
n → no, pin, undo, nice, nine
Best Video
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IPA Converter
I use IPA to learn the correct pronunciation of Russian words. However, I had great difficulty finding a Russian to IPA converter. One thing that helped me was a tool that has recently become popular: AI.
I used a simple command like “[insert Russian word or phrase] to IPA” and it converted the word to IPA.
Site to converte to IPA (including Russian), https://tophonetics.com/
“Word Stress
In IPA, the stressed syllable is denoted with a /ˈ/ written before the syllable. So the two pronunciations of <present> in English are /prɪˈzɛnt/ (for the verb) and /ˈprɛzənt/ (for the noun).
If the word has a secondary stressed syllable, use /ˌ/. E.g. <extraordinary> is /ɛkˈstrɔrdəˌnɛri/.“
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