Help:English Respelling Pronuciation

This help page provides a guide to pronunciation respelling for English using both the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and traditional dictionary respelling systems, such as those used in the OED. It focuses on common American English pronunciations.

Overview

Many English words are not pronounced the way they are spelled. To assist with pronunciation, dictionaries may use systems such as the IPA or respelling methods with diacritics. This guide compares the two systems.

Pronunciation Chart

This table lists common American English phonemes, their IPA representations, OED-style respellings, and example words.

Comparison of IPA and Dictionary Respelling for American English

Sound	IPA	OED-style Respelling	Example
Long E	/iː/	ee	see
Short I	/ɪ/	i	sit
Long A	/eɪ/	ay	say
Short E	/ɛ/	e	bed
Schwa (unstressed)	/ə/	uh	about
Short A	/æ/	a	cat
Broad A	/ɑː/	aw	father
Short O	/ɒ/	o	hot (UK)
Long O	/oʊ/	oh	go
Short U	/ʌ/	u	cup
Long U	/juː/	yoo	cute
Long OO	/uː/	oo	blue
Short OO	/ʊ/	uu	book
AW / AU	/ɔː/	aw	saw
OI / OY	/ɔɪ/	oy	boy
OW / OU	/aʊ/	ou	out
Voiceless TH	/θ/	th	thin
Voiced TH	/ð/	dh	this
SH	/ʃ/	sh	ship
ZH	/ʒ/	zh	measure
CH	/tʃ/	ch	church
J	/dʒ/	j	judge
NG	/ŋ/	ng	sing

Additional Notes

• The IPA is a standardized system used internationally to represent the sounds of spoken language with high precision.
• The OED-style respelling is designed to be more accessible to general English reader.
• The schwa (/ə/) is the most frequent vowel sound in English, especially in unstressed syllables.

See Also

• Help:IPA
• Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Pronunciation
• International Phonetic Alphabet
• Oxford English Dictionary

References

• Pronunciation respelling for English, Wikipedia