English alphabet with transcription and pronunciation. English letters and their transcription

Those who want to gain a deeper understanding of the phonetic structure of the English language can look for resources on the Internet where they will tell you what sonorant, stop, fricative and other consonants are.

If you just want to understand the pronunciation of English consonant sounds and learn to read transcriptions without unnecessary theory, then we recommend sharing everything consonants sounds for the following groups:

• Sounds that pronounced almost the same as in Russian : This is the majority of consonants.
• Sounds that similar to those in Russian , but are pronounced differently. There are only four of them.
• The sounds that no in Russian . There are only five of them and it is a mistake to pronounce them the same way as in Russian.

Pronunciation of sounds marked yellow, practically no different from Russian, only sounds [p, k, h] are pronounced with “aspiration”.

Green sounds- these are the sounds that need to be pronounced in the English manner; they are the reason for the accent. The sounds are alviolar (you probably heard this word from your school teacher), to pronounce them, you need to raise your tongue to the alviols, then you will sound “English”.

Sounds tagged red, are not present in Russian at all (although some people think that this is not the case), so you must pay attention to their pronunciation. Do not confuse [θ] and [s], [ð] and [z], [w] and [v], [ŋ] and [n]. There are fewer problems with the [r] sound.

Another nuance of transcription is emphasis, which is marked with an apostrophe in transcription. If a word has more than two syllables, then stress is required:

Hotel -
police -
interesting — ["ɪntrəstɪŋ]

When a word is long and polysyllabic, it may contain two accents, and one is upper (main), and the second is lower. The lower stress is indicated by a sign similar to a comma and is pronounced weaker than the upper:

disadvantage - [ˌdɪsəd"vɑːntɪʤ]

As you read the transcription, you may notice that some sounds are presented in parentheses (). This means that the sound can be read in a word, or it can be left unpronounced. Usually in brackets you can find the neutral sound [ə], the sound [r] at the end of a word, and some others:

Information — [ˌɪnfə"meɪʃ(ə)n]
teacher — ["tiːʧə(r)]

Some words have two pronunciation options:

Forehead ["fɔrɪd] or ["fɔːhed]
Monday ["mʌndeɪ] or ["mʌndɪ]

In this case, choose the option that you prefer, but remember that this word can be pronounced differently.

Many words in the English language have two pronunciations (and, accordingly, transcriptions): in British English and in American English. In this situation, learn the pronunciation that corresponds to the version of the language you are studying, try not to mix words from British English and American English in your speech:

Schedule - ["ʃedjuːl] (BrE) / ["skeʤuːl] (AmE)
neither - ["naɪðə] (BrE) / [ˈniːðə] (AmE)

Even if you couldn’t stand transcription before, after reading this article you will see that reading and composing a transcription is not at all difficult! You were able to read all the words written down in the transcription, right? Apply this knowledge, use dictionaries and be sure to pay attention to the transcription if you have a new word in front of you, so that you remember the correct pronunciation from the very beginning and do not have to relearn it later!

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The sounds that represent are 44 English phonemes, which are divided into two categories: consonants and vowels. Since sounds cannot be written down, graphemes (letters or combinations of letters) are used to convey sounds in writing.

English alphabet

There are 26 letters in the English language. The standard one starts with the letter a and ends with the letter z.

When classifying alphabetic characters, the following are distinguished:

• 5 pure vowels: a, e, i, o, u;
• 19 pure consonants: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, x, z;
• 2 semivowels: y, w.

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Features of English consonants

A consonant combination is a set of two or three consonant letters that, when pronounced, retain the original sound. Such sets occur either at the beginning or at the end of a word. For example, the word brave, in which both “b” and “r” are pronounced, is the initial combination. In the word bank “-nk” is the final combination.

Classification:

1. The starting combinations are classified into sets with "l", "r", and "s". In "l" the combination ends with "l". An example would be the letters “bl” in the word blind. In the same way, the final sound in “r” is combined with “r” when “br” and “cr”, for example, in the words bridge, crane. On the contrary, in “s” it begins with s, “st” and “sn” - stap, snail.
2. The final combinations are grouped into sets with "s", "l" and "n": -st, -sk, -ld, -nd, -nk. Examples: first, desk, gold, sand, sink.

Digraphs

Consonant digraphs refer to a set of consonants that form a single sound. Some digraphs appear both at the beginning and at the end of a word - “sh”, “ch” and “th”. There are also strict initial and final digraphs – “kn-” and “-ck”.

Examples of digraphs:

Features of digraphs:

Table of pronunciation of English consonants

English vowels

Each English vowel is pronounced in three ways:

1. like a long sound;
2. like a short sound;
3. as a neutral vowel sound (schwa).

There are 5 vowels in the English alphabet, but sometimes y becomes a vowel and is pronounced like i, and w replaces u, for example in the digraph ow.

Rules for reading vowels

Short vowels, which are characterized by a "short" sound, occur when a word contains one vowel, either at the beginning of a word or between two consonants. For example, if, elk, hop, fan. The typical short vowel pattern is consonant+vowel+consonant (CGS).

Words are taught as families, which represent groups of words with a common pattern, such as the pattern “-ag” – bag, wag, tag or “-at” – cat, bat, hat.

vowels:

vowels:

The vowel sound in unstressed syllables is expressed with a shortened neutral sound ("schwa"), the phonemic symbol /ə/, especially if no syllabic consonants are used.

For example:

• a in about, around, approve, above [ə bʌv];
• e in accident, mother, taken, camera;
• i in, family, lentil, officer pencil;
• o in memory, common, freedom, purpose, London;
• u in supply, industry, suggest, difficult, succeed, minimum;
• and even y in sibyl;
• schwa appears in function words: to, from, are.

Features of vowel sounds in English

Vowels are classified as monophthongs, diphthongs or triphthongs. A monophthong is when there is one vowel sound in a syllable, a diphthong is when there are two vowel sounds in a syllable.

Let's take a closer look:

1. Monophthongs – pure and stable vowels, the acoustic characteristics (timbre) of which do not change during the time they are pronounced.
2. - a sound formed by a combination of two adjacent vowels in one syllable. Technically, the tongue (or other parts of the vocal apparatus) moves when pronouncing a vowel sound - the first position is stronger than the second. In diphthong transcription, the first character represents the starting point of the body of the tongue, the second character represents the direction of movement. For example, you should be aware that in the letter combination /aj/, the body of the tongue is in the lower central position represented by the symbol /a/, and immediately begins to move up and forward to the position for /i/.
3. Diphthongs are often formed when individual vowels work together in fast conversation. Usually (in the speaker’s speech) the body of the tongue does not have time to reach the /i/ position. Therefore, the diphthong often ends closer to /ɪ/ or even to /e/. In the diphthong /aw/, the body of the tongue moves from the low central position of /a/, then moves up and back to the position of /u/. Although there are also single diphthongs, which are heard as separate vowel sounds (phonemes).
4. There are also triphthongs in English.(combinations of three adjacent vowels), including three sound types, for example, fire /fʌɪə/, flower /flaʊər/. But in any case, all diphthongs and triphthongs are formed from monophthongs.

Pronunciation table for simple English vowel sounds

All vowel sounds are formed from only 12 monophthongs. Each, regardless of spelling, is pronounced using some combination of these sounds.

The table shows examples of simple English vowels with pronunciation in Russian:

Diphthong pronunciation table

Learning transcription of English words

Let's look at some features of English transcription:

There are a large number of videos online to listen to, and you can also practice using exercises.