To clarify, a rounded vowel is a vowel like the “ oo” in “ room,” while an unrounded vowel might be the “ ee” in “f ee.” It’s pretty simple principle, really: you will notice that your lips round slightly as you make some vowel sounds, and stay unrounded while making others. i/, /ɛ/, /ɑ/, and /a/ are all examples of unrounded vowels. y/, /u/, /o/ and /ɒ/ are all examples of rounded vowels. So, from the IPA chart above, we can deduce the following: The symbol on the right of these positions is the rounded version, meaning the lips are rounded when you pronounce the sound. The symbol on the left is for an unrounded vowel, meaning that the lips aren’t rounded when you pronounce the sound. You will notice that most “positions” in the IPA chart above have two symbols next to each other. Each of these symbols appear on the chart above in about the position that you have to move your tongue to produce them.īut this doesn’t explain all of the symbols in the diagram, does it? Rounded and Unrounded Vowels in the International Phonetic Alphabet And the IPA symbol (the vowel in American English “ goose“) has the tongue high in the mouth and pulled toward the back. The IPA symbol, the vowel in “f ather,” has the tongue low and to the back. The IPA symbol represents the vowel in American English “feet.” This vowel is pronounced with the tongue high and toward the front. Let’s break this down with some examples: The vowel symbols on the IPA vowel chart are in the position where the tongue is placed when creating a vowel. The rule of thumb for this chart is as follows: What’s important about this chart is the where each symbol is placed in relation to the other symbols. And don’t worry about any of the text on the chart.

Don’t worry about what these symbols mean for now. So how does the International Phonetic Alphabet represent this tongue action? To answer this question, let’s take a look at the standard IPA chart for vowels:Ībove you’ll see large number of symbols, some of them recognizable (like i) and others which look like gobblety-gook (like ɞ).

We’ve now established that tongue position is important for creating vowel sounds.

Now we’re getting to the good stuff! How the IPA Represents Vowels Right now you’re probably asking, “weren’t we supposed to learnsome crazy alphabet?” Don’t worry. If you raise your tongue toward the roof of the mouth, you create one sound if it’s pushed toward the front of the mouth it creates another sound, etc. But for the time being, the tongue position is the important thing to understand. Most people pronounce vowels using many parts of the vocal apparatus, such as the lips and the jaw. This is a simple explanation of the process. To make the long “ ah” sound I do the opposite: I keep my tongue at the bottom of my mouth. That is because vowels are mostly created by the tongue being in a particular position.įor instance, to make the long “ eee” sound, I move the tip of my tongue to the topmost, front-most part of my mouth. Your tongue is moving into a lot of different parts of the mouth to create them. You may notice something when you make these sounds. Make a couple of vowel sounds, like the “ ah” in the word “ father,” and the “ eee” in the word “ feet.” Make any combination of vowels. Before we look at the vowel symbols of the IPA, it helps to know a bit about how vowels are made. Let’s get started! How Are Vowels Made?įor the first lesson of our tutorial of the International Phonetic Alphabet, we’re going to take a look at the vowel sounds. The IPA is like a language: just as you don’t need to memorize every word in the dictionary to use English, you don’t need to know every single symbol in the IPA to starting using it.īut enough introduction. Rather, I am going to give you the information you need to start using the IPA. This guide is not designed to explain every nuance of the IPA. Any language, in fact: the IPA can represent nearly any vowel or consonant made by humans. The International Phonetic Alphabet is like any alphabet, except that, where most alphabets form the words of a language, the IPA represents the sounds of a language. So what is this weird “alphabet” and why is it so important when studying language? The International Phonetic Alphabet in a Nutshell As you can see from the snippet above, the IPA looks like normal English writing, but with some bizarre letters thrown in. You may have seen this kind of writing in the pronunciation section of a dictionary definition. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a look at this sample: You will see it used on countless other linguistics websites as well. Just what is the International Phonetic Alphabet (or IPA)? I often use the IPA on this blog and a number of our accent training resources.

Ipa talking alphabet