The English IPA - Consonants

Pronunciation is one of the hardest parts in teaching and learning English. Here are the basics of IPA to help you improve your language skills and make you a better English teacher!

IPA

What is IPA?

IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet. Each IPA symbol has only one pronunciation making, so when you read a word in IPA, you’ll know exactly how to pronounce it.

Consonants

The following symbols are pronounced exactly like you'd expect based on what you're used to in English:

/b/ /d/ /f/ /g/ /h/ /k/ /l/ /m/ /n/ /p/ /s/ /t/ /v/ /w/ /z/

English also uses:

· /j/ – not to be confused with the sound we write in English as – this is the English “y” sound.

· /ŋ/ – the “ng” in “sing”.

· /θ/ – the “unvoiced” “th” in “think”, “path”, or “thistle”.

· /ð/ – the “voiced” “th” in “that”, “this”, or “there”.

· /ʃ/ – the “sh” in “ship” or “wish”.

· /ɹ/ – the “r” in “red”. Sometimes when writing English in IPA, this is written as /r/ for the sake of simplicity. But technically /r/ is the “rolled” r sound of a language like Spanish.

· /ʒ/ – the “s” in “pleasure” or “vision”, or the “g” in “genre”.

· /ʔ/ – a “glottal stop” – it's the pause in the middle of uh-oh. In many dialects, such as the British one, this sound can replace the /t/ in words like “water” or “Saturday”.

There's also the English <j> and <ch>. Both sounds are actually a combination of two consonants. So <j> in IPA is /dʒ/ and <ch> is /tʃ/.