Help:Pronunciation

Pronunciation of English words in Wikipedia is most often given in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA. The goal is that interpretation should not depend on the reader's dialect, and therefore a broad transcription is generally used.

For a more complete key to the IPA, which covers sounds that do not occur in English, see Help:IPA.

Since this key covers standard American, British, and Australian pronunciations, not all of the distinctions shown here will be relevant to your dialect. If, for example, you pronounce cot and caught the same, you can ignore the difference between the symbols and. Again, in many dialects only occurs before a vowel; if you do this, simply ignore  in the pronunciation guides where you would not pronounce it. It is not necessary to give multiple transcriptions for such variation.

For a more precise use of the IPA to illustrate differences between English dialects, to transcribe languages other than English, or if the IPA symbols are not displayed on your browser, see the links at the bottom of this page.