ɪ
Short i, as in sit
A small capital I. Not the /i/ of see - it is shorter and slightly lower, the vowel of sit, big and fish.
How to read IPA: the symbols you already know
The International Phonetic Alphabet has one idea at its heart: one symbol, one sound, always. English spelling breaks that rule constantly - the letter c is a /k/ in cat and an /s/ in city, and the sound /f/ is spelt f, ph and gh. IPA refuses to play along. A /k/ is a /k/ in every word of every language, which is why dictionaries print it next to the spelling.
The slashes matter. /kæt/ is a transcription of the sounds of cat, not a spelling, so read it one symbol at a time from left to right. Square brackets, as in [kʰæt], mean a more detailed transcription with extra marks for how exactly a sound is made. Learner dictionaries use slashes, and so does every word page on this site.
The good news is that most IPA consonants are ordinary letters meaning exactly what you expect. The catch is a handful of vowels: English spelling has five vowel letters for about twenty vowel sounds, so IPA needs extra symbols. This lesson starts with the six short vowels of words like sit, bed, cat, dog, cup and put.
Every transcription in these first lessons is British English (RP), the version most learner dictionaries print, and every word plays its real recording. You will not meet a symbol in a drill before the lesson that teaches it.
The symbols
e
Short e, as in bed
British dictionaries write the vowel of bed and pen as a plain /e/. Some print /ɛ/ for the same sound - treat them as the same letter in a different font.
æ
Ash, as in cat
An a and an e joined together, called ash. The open, flat vowel of cat, man and hat.
ɒ
Short o, as in dog
An upside-down, back-to-front a. The rounded British vowel of dog and long - American dictionaries mostly write /ɑ/ here instead.
ʌ
Wedge, as in cup
An upside-down v, called wedge. The vowel of cup, judge and but, never a /u/ despite the spelling.
ʊ
Short u, as in put
A horseshoe shape. The short vowel of put, book and good: English spells it u and oo, IPA spells it one way.
ɡ
Hard g, as in good
Always the g of good and big, never the sound of gem. That sound has its own symbol, /dʒ/, in lesson 2.
r
English r
British dictionaries print the English r as a plain /r/, and so do we. Strict IPA writes it /ɹ/ and saves /r/ for a rolled r - you will meet that one in lesson 7.
z
z, even when it is spelt s
The buzz at the end of his is a /z/, whatever the spelling says. IPA writes the sound, so his is /hɪz/.
The other consonants in this lesson's drill - p, b, t, d, k, f, v, s, m, n, l, h and w - mean exactly what they mean in English spelling, so they need no card. Read the transcription one symbol at a time, sound it out, then press play and check.
Drill
0/10
Which word is this?
/hɪz/