Phonetic symbolism
How to use the phonetic symbols in dictionaries
I am a huge admirer of phonetic symbols. While this might be revealing a little too much of my true inner nerd, I still have some of my notebooks from my undergraduate linguistics days when my friends and I handed notes to each other in the back of the lecture theatre written entirely in IPA.
Needless to say, with all of my coaching clients I incorporate an element of IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) ‘training’. The symbols can be used as a key to help decode the ‘average’ pronunciation - this is particularly helpful in English where we don’t have a one-to-one relationship between our letters and our sounds. This not only gives my clients a valuable tool when looking up a word in a dictionary, but also turns pronunciation/speech from something that is often considered nebulous to something that has structure and direction. The symbols are not just a label, but more like coordinates on a map - something that can be found.
Why dictionaries can be confusing
Many people come to me already familiar with the fact that dictionaries often include a phonetic ‘transcription’ of words. But dictionaries don’t make life particularly easy for those whose first language isn’t English. For starters, most dictionaries don’t use the IPA specifically, but their own versions of it. This means that there is, unfortunately, no consistent use of symbols across different dictionaries.
In most cases, dictionaries actually use a mix of IPA symbols and the alphabet letters typically used to write a sound in English, even where the letter is the phonetic symbol for an entirely different sound. This is fine if English is your first/only language, but not if you are using the dictionary to help you learn how to pronounce English as a second language. The two biggest offenders here are /r/ for /ɹ/ and /e/ for /ɛ/.
Common mismatches and confusions
In the first pair, the ‘/r/’ is being used by dictionaries to represent the alveolar approximant usually written with the letter ‘r’ in English, but actually symbolised by /ɹ/ in the IPA. This is fine for English - there is no /r/ sound (alveolar trill) in English, but, conversely, in many languages there is no /ɹ/ sound, with /r/ being much more common. This leads to understandable confusion if you are used to seeing the ‘/r/’ actually being used for an alveolar trill in your first language’s dictionary!
We have effectively the same issue with /e/ and /ɛ/. We don’t have an /e/ sound in English (per the IPA), but we do have an /ɛ/ sound. However, dictionaries will often transcribe the /ɛ/ sound as /e/, on account of this being the same symbol as is generally used to spell the sound. Again, /e/ per the IPA is actually quite common in other languages!
Simplifying vowel distinctions
The other point of confusion is just how many symbols are used. There is nothing wrong with this - it is just dictionaries making a decision about how narrow to go in their transcription. But when teaching pronunciation - and in particular when teaching vowels - I find it is helpful to minimise confusion and limit the distinctions.
For example, dictionaries will often mark vowel length by using a colon after the symbol. While this is an accurate representation of the fact people will typically produce these vowels a little bit longer, it is not the length of the vowel that distinguishes it from other vowels, but the quality (put very simply, the configuration of the mouth as air passes through it). So, no matter how long you make the vowel in the word ‘bit’ it will never become ‘beat’. So to avoid confusion, when teaching my clients pronunciation I don’t use any length diacritics.
Likewise, some dictionaries will indicate a quality difference between /ɜ/ and /ə/ (the vowel in ‘turn’ and the first vowel in ‘about’, respectively), while others will state this as a length distinction. I just call them all a schwa (/ə/) - the two sounds are effectively indistinguishable, and certainly not something to panic about when working on your English pronunciation.
Some practical advice
I have put together a table, shown below, that highlights the symbols used by major dictionaries and how these compare to the symbols that I use. I have not incorporated the Merriam-Webster symbols for a couple of reasons - 1) they are off-the-chart with their weirdness and 2) they are tailored for American English pronunciation which doesn’t make them easily comparable with the other dictionaries.
I hope this table proves helpful, but in short I would recommend anyone looking to work on their pronunciation becomes familiar with the IPA, and also treads carefully when applying this knowledge to dictionaries.
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