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An Introduction to Phonetic Transcription

with special reference to American English

The International Phonetic Association (IPA) was founded in 1886 in Paris by a group of language teachers led by Paul Passy to encourage the use of phonetic notation in schools to help children learn foreign languages and also to aid in teaching reading to young children.  The aim was to create a set of phonetic symbols that would represent the same sound in all languages--an International Phonetic Alphabet.  Today these are the symbols that are used in most European (not, unfortunately, American!) dictionaries to indicate pronunciation, and are normally divided into vowels and consonants.  Here is the main set of IPA vowel symbols, with those most often used to represent "mainstream" American (AE) and British English (BE)--for example, in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD)--highlighted in green, and one exclusively BE vowel in light blue.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i y	ɨ ʉ	ɯ u
	ɪ ʏ		ʊ
Close-mid	e ø	ɘ ɵ	ɤ o
		ə
Open-mid	ɛ œ	ɜ ɞ	ʌ ɔ
	æ	ɐ
Open		a ɶ	ɑ ɒ

Omitting the non-English sounds, we have: 

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i		u
	ɪ		ʊ
Close-mid	e		o
		ə
Open-mid	ɛ	ɜ	ʌ ɔ
	æ
Open			ɑ ɒ

These symbols, or a combination of them (diphthongs), allow us to represent, or transcribe, the vowel sounds of any English word. The OALD and the DCE, for example, use the following scheme (where [ː] indicates length). Exclusively British sounds are blue, with the American equivalents in yellow :

British English	American English
iː see	iː see
i happy	i happy
ɪ sit	ɪ sit
eɪ say	eɪ say
e ten	e ten
æ cat	æ cat
ɑː father, pass, heart	ɑː father	æ pass		ɑːr heart
ɒ got, dog	ɑː got		ɔː dog
ɜː fur	ɜːr fur
ə about	ə about
ʌ cup	ʌ cup
ɔː saw, caught, more	ɔː saw, caught		ɔːr more
ʊ put	ʊ put
u actual	u actual
uː too	uː too
aɪ my	aɪ my
ɔɪ boy	ɔɪ boy
aʊ now	aʊ now
əʊ go	oʊ go
ɪə near	ɪər near
eə hair	eər hair
ʊə pure, ritual	ʊər pure, ritual
eɪə player	eɪər player
əʊə lower	oʊər lower
aɪə tire	aɪər tire
aʊə tower	aʊər tower
ɔɪə employer	ɔɪər employer

This system is somewhat redundant, in that we do not find the any meaningful (phonemic) contrasts between

[i] and [iː], [i] being the unstressed form

[u] and [uː], [u] being the unstressed form

[ə] and [ʌ], [ə] being the unstressed form

[ɔ] and [ɔː], [ɔ] not occurring at all

[ɜ] and (BE) [ɜː] or (AE) [ɜːr], [ɜ] not occurring at all

[ɑ] and [ɑː], [ɑ] not occurring at all

[ɑɪ] and [aɪ], [ɑɪ] not occurring at all

[o] and [oʊ] (AE) or [əʊ] (BE), [o] not occurring at all

On the other hand, it economizes by not using ε, which is a more accurate phonetic transcription of the vowel in ten, by using the combination [eɪ] to represent the vowel in say and [e] alone the vowel in ten.

For transcriptions of general American English, this system can be considerably simplified. First of all, we can ignore the feature of length, which is predictable by stress. Secondly, we can eliminate [ʌ], which is also predictable by stress. Thirdly, we need not distinguish between the low back vowel [ɑ] as in father and the more central vowel in the diphthong [aɪ] as in fight, since the difference is predictable by the diphthong and in AE both vowels are phonetically closer to [a]. These can both be represented as [a]: [faδər, faɪt]. Fourthly, we can represent the diphthongs [oʊ] and [eɪ] more simply as [o] and [e], respectively, since they are always diphthongized—provided we use symbol ε to represent the open mid front vowel in ten.

Finally, we can dispense with [ɜ], since in AE it only occurs before /r/ and can be considered a combination of /ə/ + /r/. OALD represents this "American r" in fir, bird, occur, blur, etc. as /ɜːr/, although phonetically it is more accurately represented as a single vowel sound [ɹ] (a central vowel somewhat lower than [ə]), rather than as a combination of vowel + consonant. Alternatively, and most simply, the sound can be represented as /r/, that is, as the syllabic version of the consonant [r] (in IPA accompanied by a diacritic, or dot below the line), so that fir would be transcribed as [fr], bird as [brd], occur as [okr], etc. Thus ten or eleven vowel symbols suffice for a broad (phonemic) transcription of American English:

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i see		u too
	ɪ		ʊ put
Close-mid	e say		o go
		ə about, cup (ɹ bird)
Open-mid	ɛ ten		ɔ saw
	æ cat
Open		a father, got

to which we can add the diphthongs [aɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ] as in buy, bow, boy.

The simplest way to represent AE [ɹ] in broad transcription is probably /ər/. (In Irish English this represents the phonetic reality.) This keeps the number of strange symbols to be dealt with at a minimum (just ə, not ɜː or ɹ).

The easiest way to write phonemic script with the computer is to use Pete's Phonemic Script Typewriter. Follow Pete's directions for copying and pasting the transcription into Word (be sure to use the Lucida Sans Unicode font). Once in Word, you can cut and paste the symbols as you wish. For AE, just use what you need, and ignore the rest. Use /e/ for [ε], since that is the system Pete (and the OALD) has adopted. You can forget about /ɒ/, which in AE is either /a/ (/ɑː/ in Pete's system) or /ɔ/ (/ɔː/ in Pete's system). The diphthongs can be adjusted to AE by inserting /r/ where required, and by typing in /o/ for /ə/ in /əʊ/ to give /oʊ/ in words like bow, toe, crow, etc. (or simply use Pete's /əʊ/ bearing in mind that in AE the sound is [oʊ]). You can use /ɜːr/ for stressed and /ər/ for unstressed [ɹ], as in fir /fɜːr/ and further /ˈfɜːrδər/. Use /ʌ/ and /ə/ for the stressed and unstressed central vowels in cup /kʌp/ and about /əˈbaʊt/. You can delete the length symbol in final /iː/ for greater phonetic accuracy, as in money /ˈmʌni/.

Check your transcriptions against OALD, which gives both the BE and AE pronunciation.

The inventory of IPA consonants is as follows, with the English sounds in green:

	Bilabial	Labiodental	Dental	Alveolar	Postvelar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar	Uvular	Pharyngeal	Glottal
Plosive	p b		t d			ʈ ɖ	c ɟ	k g	q ɢ		ʔ
Nasal	m	ɱ	n			ɳ	ɲ	ŋ	ɴ
Trill	Β		r						ʀ
Tap/Flap			ɾ			ɽ
Fricative	ɸ ß	f v	θ ð	s z	ʃ ʒ	ʂ ʐ	ç ʝ	x ɣ	χ ʁ	ħ ʕ	h ɦ
Affricate					ʧ ʤ