| Consonants | |
|---|---|
| b | be |
| d | do |
| dʒ | just |
| f | for |
| ɡ | go |
| h | he |
| j | you |
| k | can |
| l | like |
| m | make |
| n | not |
| ŋ | thing |
| p | part |
| r | room |
| s | say |
| ʃ | she |
| t | time |
| tʃ | child |
| θ | think |
| ð | the |
| v | very |
| w | with |
| z | zone |
| ʒ | measure |
| Vowels | |
|---|---|
| ɑː | palm, start |
| æ | trap |
| aɪ | price |
| aʊ | mouth |
| ɛ | dress |
| aɪə | fire |
| aʊə | power |
| ə | comma, letter |
| ɜː | nurse |
| eɪ | face |
| eə | square |
| iː | fleece |
| i | happy |
| ɪ | kit |
| ɪə | near |
| ɒ | lot, cloth |
| ɔː | thought, north, force |
| ɔɪ | choice |
| əʊ | goat |
| uː | goose |
| u | situation |
| ʊ | foot |
| ʊə | cure |
| ʌ | strut |
Stress is shown by the high stress mark (ˈ) before the syllable with the main stress, and by the low stress mark (ˌ) before any syllable with a secondary stress.
See also the chart for American English and the foreign sounds list.
The symbols above are commonly used for transcribing the pronunciation of British English. Some variants exist: some publications use ‹e› for ‹ɛ›, for instance. Additionally, ‹hw› may be used instead of ‹w› for the consonant ‘which’; ‹ɔə› is occasionally used for the vowel ‘force’ to differentiate it from ‘north’. These distinctions are now rarely made in standard British English.
Key words for consonants are selected from the most 1,000 frequent words in the Moby word list and the COCA word frequency data, favouring appearances in word-initial position. Key words for vowels are the standard lexical sets, with the exception of fire, power, and situation, which are from Wells.