Phonemic Alphabet

© Paul Smit 2006-2021

What is the phonemic alphabet?

The phonemic alphabet is a special alphabet designed for teaching and learning English (see an interactive chart here).

Why do we need another alphabet in English?

Firstly, many letters in English have a number of different ways of being pronounced. For example, the letter combination ch has a number of different sounds:

Secondly, the pronunciation of words in English can be different, depending on stress, the rhythm of a sentence and the words which come before or after. For example, in British English, the letter r is generally not pronounced at the end of a syllable unless the next word begins with a vowel sound. ‘Car’ can sound like /kɑ:/ or /kɑ:r/

• I bought a new car. The r is not pronounced: /kɑ:/
• That’s my car – the car on the left. The r is not pronounced the first time and is pronounced the second time: /kɑ:/ & /kɑ:r/

No doubt, you will know many other English words such as ghost, comb and heir, which are confusing because their pronunciation does not match their spelling.

Is English spelling and pronunciation so hard?

Don’t fear! Despite words like ghost, comb and heir, English is far more systematic than you may think. Native speakers are able to guess the correct pronunciation of new words most of the time. Even irregularities are repeated often, meaning you have to learn a limited number of exceptions. For example, words in which ch is pronounced as /k/ are usually long specialist words such as chemistry, charismatic or psychologist and generally come to us from Greek. Words in which ch is pronounced /ʃ/ as in shoe are usually easy to recognise as French words adopted into English such as chute, brioche or brochure.

How can this ‘phonemic alphabet’ help?

A special alphabet allowing us to write phonetically is very helpful for learning the system of sounds in English. However, the phonemic alphabet is not used as a system of writing English. Its purpose is just to help you become aware of the different sounds of English, and the relationship between spelling and pronunciation.

You can see a copy of the full Phonemic Chart below on this page and see an interactive version with the sounds by clicking this button:

Vowel sounds are another reason why we need the Phonemic Alphabet.

There are five written vowels in English, but there are twelve single vowel sounds and eight vowel combinations (two vowels together known as diphthongs). There are many more vowel sounds than there are written vowels, so each letter has more than one pronunciation. In many languages, vowels are all the same length. However, in English we have long and short vowels such as /ɪ/ in big and /i:/ in bean. Let’s listen to this pair contrasted:

Note: The short/long length of these two sounds is not the only difference: they are actually two slightly different sounds. For more on the /ɪ/ versus /i:/ pair, click here.