IPA Transcription of English

/ welkəm tʊ aʊə ɪŋɡlɪʃ trænˈskrɪpʃn̩ peɪʤ /

This webpage aims to help teachers of English to start using transcription and to provide a few exercises which can also be used in class.

First of all, if you haven’t installed the phonetic fonts yet, go to the download page.

The sounds of English

Here we are showing the phonemes of Standard Southern British English (SSBE). British English has 44 phonemes – 20 vowels and 24 consonants. The following picture shows all the phonemes, together with example words. (The symbols in the upper right corner represent marks for stress and intonation.)
Note: the diphthong /eə/ is today mostly pronounced as a monophthong, [ɛː].

english

Transcribing English phonemes

All English phonemes are found directly on the keyboard and the transcription is quite transparent; in the table below we give the keys as they apply on the Czech keyboard.

kbd

Vowels

Phoneme Transcription
 i
ɪ I
e  e
ɛː E
æ /
ʌ V
ɑː A
ɒ Q
ɔː O
ʊ U
u
ə !
ɜː š

   Consonants

Phoneme Transcription
p  p
b  b
t  t
d  d
k  k
ɡ  g
f  f
v v
θ T
ð D
s  s
z  z
ʃ S
ʒ Z
h h
ʧ either combination of two symbols, , or using the code &# followed by 679;
ʤ either combination of two symbols, , or using the code &# followed by 676;
m  m
n  n
ŋ N
r  r
l  l
j  j
w w

Other symbols

Symbol Transcription
ˈ 2 (stress)
ː “ or : (length mark; inverted commas on Czech keyboard, colon on English keyboard)
´ (syllabicity; as if writing a comma above „o“ in Czech)

 

Simple transcription exercises

exercise

  • Exercise 1 – Colour rhymes
    Match names of the colours with words which rhyme with them.
    worksheet     results
  • Exercise 2 – Body language
    Label the individual parts of the body in transcription.
    worksheet     results
  • Exercise 3 – Town orientation
    Can you find your way around the town square? The numbers will help you.
    worksheet     results

CUBE – a powerful pronunciation dictionary (instruction video here)

Úvod > O fonetice > Fonetická transkripce > IPA Transcription of English