Reading real dictionary transcriptions
Mixed practice, and British against American.
You now know nearly every symbol a British learner dictionary prints for English, and the ones you will meet first in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian and Russian. This last lesson mixes all of it, the way a real dictionary does.
One more convention to recognise. IPA transcriptions of Mandarin often add tone letters after a syllable, like the ˥˩ of 是 /ʂʐ̩˥˩/, which draw the pitch as a little graph: high falling to low.
The drill below mixes English words you have not drilled yet with every word from lessons 7 to 9. Read each transcription before you press play, commit to an answer, and only then listen. The habit worth keeping is predicting the sound from the symbols; the recording is there to confirm it, not to replace it.
British and American dictionaries
Dictionaries do not all agree, so learn the usual differences rather than worrying about them. American dictionaries write the r of car and bird because Americans say it, use /oʊ/ for the vowel of go, and usually use /ɑ/ where British English has /ɒ/. Some print /ɛ/ where British ones print /e/, and some mark length, some do not. The sounds underneath are what matter, and you can now read any of those versions.
Our English pages and recordings are British, so the American column is for reading other dictionaries, not for checking against the clips.
That is the course. From here, every word page on the site prints its transcription beside a recording, which makes each one a little IPA exercise: read it first, then press play.
Drill
0/10
Part of Kilo Lingo Plus - the lesson above is free to read.
Which word is this?
/dy/
Every word page is an IPA exercise
An account puts a transcription and a native-speed recording beside every word you learn, in ten languages, with review timed to arrive before you forget.
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