A short course
Learn IPA: read the phonetic alphabet in eight lessons
Every dictionary prints a word's pronunciation in the International Phonetic Alphabet, and most learners skip straight past it. This course teaches you to read it: one lesson at a time, with drills built from real recorded words rather than a chart to memorise.
IPA looks harder than it is. About half of its symbols are ordinary letters that mean exactly what you would guess, and the rest are a couple of dozen shapes you will meet again and again. The course starts with English, where you can check every symbol against a sound you already make, then steps out into the vowels and consonants of French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and Russian.
Each lesson has three kinds of question. Read a transcription and pick the word. Hear a word and pick its transcription. Fill in the one symbol missing from a transcription. Every word is a real word page on this site with its own recording, and no drill uses a symbol before the lesson that teaches it.
- 1How to read IPA: the symbols you already knowSlashes, one-symbol-one-sound, and the 22 symbols you can guess.Free drill
- 2The new IPA consonants: th, sh, ch, j, ng and yEight new consonants, including the two different th sounds.Free drill
- 3Long vowels in IPA and the length mark ːThe length mark and five long vowels.
- 4Diphthongs in IPA: two vowels in one syllableVowels that glide: the eight diphthongs.
- 5The schwa symbol (ə) and IPA stress marksThe schwa, weak vowels and the stress marks ˈ and ˌ.
- 6IPA vowels English doesn't haveFrench y and ø, nasal vowels, and pure Spanish vowels.
- 7IPA consonants English doesn't haveThree kinds of r, the throat sounds, and ñ, ll and gl.
- 8Reading real dictionary transcriptionsMixed review, and British against American dictionaries.
Questions
How long does it take to learn IPA?
Reading the symbols for one language takes a few hours spread over a week, not months. The eight lessons here are short on purpose; the drills are what make the symbols stick, and each one takes about five minutes.
Do I need to learn every IPA symbol?
No. The full chart covers every sound in every human language, and nobody memorises it. You need the symbols for the languages you care about, which for English and the major European languages means a few dozen shapes beyond the letters you already know.
Is this British or American IPA?
The English lessons use British transcriptions (RP), because that is what most learner dictionaries print and what our English recordings are. The last lesson shows what changes in American dictionaries: mostly the r, and the vowels of go and dog.
Is the course free?
Every lesson is free to read, and the drills for lessons 1 and 2 are free. The remaining drills are part of Kilo Lingo Plus, which starts with a free week.