okay so you want to know how to say a word in english so you type it in the online dictionary and voila there it is there's the word in english but how do you pronounce it what can you do you can look at the phonetic transcription but there's a problem these have symbols which are scary that you don't know what they mean well listen i'm gonna make the international phonetic alphabet really really easy for you and at the end of this video i've got a little test for you and i'm pretty sure you are going
to be able to look at the phonetic transcription of words and know exactly how to pronounce them so let's go [Music] now i'm greg from englishwithgreg.com on this channel i teach advanced british english pronunciation grammar and vocabulary to help you master english conversation and this topic was one that was requested by quite a few of my subscribers basic phonetics so let's go there are 44 sounds in english that means there are 44 phonetic symbols that we need to know if we want to be able to look at a phonetic transcription of a word and know
how to pronounce that word okay 44 sounds a lot yeah well don't worry because 24 of those are consonants and for 16 of the consonants the phonetic transcription is exactly as you would expect it to be it is basically the letter that it usually represents in written english for example the t sound is like that the d sound is like that the g sound in greg is like that the r is like that the f is like that the b is like that so we don't need to worry about that if you read a phonetic
transcription you can easily understand 16 consonants without me teaching you anything so up to 24 consonants 16 are easy you already know them let's forget them we just now need to look at eight and six of those are scary but they're not too bad here are the scary six this one looks a little bit like an s right but it's not an s now this one instead is the shh sound that we have in shop or ship or wash shh so you can remember that because it's similar to an s and the sound is very
usually written with an sh the next scary one is this now pronounce the last sound again shh and at the same time i want you to vibrate your voice that is this sound and you find this sound in words like treasure treasure or pleasure pleasure the next scary one is this wait a second that's that's two letters right well yes but it's actually just one sound and it's actually the sound that we use at the beginning and the end of church church and in a similar way the next scary one is this again it's like
two symbols but it's actually one sound and we already know the second one i just told you it's so what happens when we put the d sound before you it sounds like it's the sound at the beginning of june and july or at the end of the word bridge bridge okay the next scary one is this but do you know in your language what the name of this greek symbol is it's theta in english theta [Music] and that's the sound that this represents feta like think or thirsty now this is the last scary one but
in my opinion it's a little bit similar to the feta but it's not let's try vibrating our voice at the same time and that is this sound it's the sound in this and that okay so they were your six scary ones and there are two more which are not scary but confusing perhaps we have this and what happens when a word ends in g well it sounds like this shopping going it's a sound that starts being produced through the nose and finishes with a in your throat and that is this symbol if you see it
it probably just means that the word ends with ng and the other confusing one is this because it looks like a j like june and july but actually this represents the pronunciation of the letter y like yes and young because as you know the sound in june and july is that one june july this one is yes young popular popular okay so we had 44 sounds 24 were consonants there were only six scary ones and two confusing ones and the rest are vowels 20 vowel sounds what okay so of the 20 vowels eight are diphthongs
and a diphthong is when two vowel sounds combine to make one other vowel sound they are easy if you know the other vowel sounds we look at those later they'll be easy once you learn the rest so from 20 we are down to 12. and of those 12 5 are exactly as you would expect them to be in phonetics the ear of ship is written like this the o in bug is written like this the e in bed is written like this the r in hot is written like this which requires a little bit more
imagination but no not too much and the ah sound in apple is written like this so again we need a little bit of imagination but hey the first part of that looks exactly like an a so it makes sense that that is the sound in apple one really important thing in phonetics is that if you see a vowel with two dots after it that simply means that it's a long vowel so that is the e of ship but that is the long version e of sheep that is o of butt and that is ooh of
boot that is a like cat and that is the long version ah like cart again just a long version of that a vowel and that is r like pot and that is the long version or like port well that was an easy four and it only leaves three and one of those is this sound which i personally don't use in my region of england we don't use this i say cup much and but with this symbol cup much but and in the south of england they would say cup much but with that symbol that leaves
two sounds and yes these are scary symbols and very very important sounds they are the schwa sound which is the most common sound in english it's everywhere it's in words which end e r o r o u r like better actor color it's in lots and lots of structure words like little grammar words like two like i'm going to the shops i want to be or four like that's for you for you listen it's absolutely everywhere where and when we use it is for a different lesson just know that this is the sound we make
when we relax our lips we relax our tongue we relax the back of our mouth and we relax our throat and we just make a very very short noise with everything relaxed uh that is the schwa sound and the other scary one is this which i call the disgusting sound because it's well it's the sound you make when you think something is disgusting it's actually the long version of the schwa sound so if we say the schwa sound again uh uh if we make a long noise that is the disgusting sound and we find that
in words like perfect nurse world this is a really really important sound but again where and when we use that is for a different lesson okay so the only thing that we need to talk about now is diphthongs there are eight diphthongs and hey there's only eight left and you thought phonetics was confusing now diphthongs might be scary because you're suddenly seeing two symbols very close together but really it's completely logical let's have a look at them this is one and as is the case with all diphthongs you will now recognize both of the symbols
that make this diphthong in this case we have the short a followed by the schwa sound so what happens when you pronounce one sound immediately after the other sound ear ear ear so i mean what else could that be ear it's the sound of this ear it's the sound in the word beer or here easy next again say them together e a a a a easy it's the sound in a like a b c or the sound in day or they the next one again say them together it's the sound in boy and toy in
mountain or brown cow now there are only two which need a little bit more imagination there's this one which is the schwa sound followed by the o o o words like go and vo o and the next one is this which is a followed by uh and this is the sound in words like air there and pear right there's one more which is kind of dying it's this one say them together and you will see this in words like tourist or paw so if we say it using that sound it would be tourist or pua
i think normally nowadays people do not use that but instead they tend to favor the long o sound or that we find in words like four the tourist knocked on the door or or okay you wanted basic phonetics all i've taught you is six scary consonants two confusing consonants and two scary vowels and the rest is pretty simple am i right now there's one more very important thing that you need to know when you're reading phonetic transcription of a word and that is this fella it's just like a little apostrophe and the apostrophe is written
before the stressed syllable it can really make it difficult for native speakers to understand you if you put the stress on the wrong syllable so that is a very important thing when you are reading a phonetic transcription of a word right let's have a look at the phonetic transcription of 10 words using the international phonetic alphabet and i want you to work it out and tell me what that word is are you ready let's go number one okay so the first sound is the scary symbol that is not an s but it's a shhh next
one okay so it begins with this combination which is ch we then have the diphthong a che and then n chain you know the next one it's the d followed by change and what's at the end changing how are you doing next one okay what's the greek symbol it's the theta that is the disgusting sound er the zed is as you would pronounce as head z first and then the end is day thursday okay the next one not too complicated just two scary symbols in the middle remember the first one was and the next one
is the schwa so in the middle we have je and the rest is easy vision vision next okay so don't be confused by the j in the middle we know now what that represents the uh sound the last sound is the schwa sound er so this is popular popular easy right the next one okay this is the symbol that i don't use but that's no problem the end has the scary one that's similar to the f sound and the end is the schwa mother mother okay the next one is an important one okay i don't
think this is too difficult but look where the little apostrophe thing is it's in the middle which means that we stress the last syllable there it's after and then we stress after noon afternoon okay number eight not too difficult it has the o sound so so which can be written like this so or this so look at this right three sounds or walk do you see an l there no so it's a silent l we know it's a silent l but look at the phonetic transcription there is no l in this word so don't pronounce
it walk and finally this one okay this has two sounds the m and a diphthong and the diphthong remember is the sound air air like there so the pronunciation of this is mer and that is how we pronounce this word mei so how did you do from those ten leave me a comment to let me know how many you got right if you like this video there are another couple of videos there which will really help you improve your british english pronunciation so watch one of those next thanks for being here and i'll see you
there bye for now
