Reading real dictionary transcriptions

You now know 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.

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 (/kɑr/, /bɝd/), use /oʊ/ for the vowel of go, and 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.

Two more conventions to recognise. A syllable dot, as in /ˈfəʊ.tə.ɡrɑːf/, marks where one syllable ends and the next begins. And Mandarin dictionaries often add tone letters after a syllable, like the ˥˩ of 是 /ʂʐ˥˩/, 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 6 and 7. 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.

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.