A while back I wrote a couple of posts (Learning to Pronounce English Words with the IPA and More About Learning Pronunciation) about how to use the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) to learn English pronunciation. In one of the posts I recommended the University of Iowa online IPA chart for English students. However, the University of Iowa chart is not perfect. For one, it is intended for phonetics students and, as a result, it is not very easy to use and navigate without a solid understanding of the IPA and phonetics.

I still recommend the University of Iowa interactive IPA chart for learning how the various IPA sounds are formed in the mouth. Their animated diagrams are without equal. But, when you are first trying to learn the IPA, I recommend the IPA chart at stuff.co.uk. This online IPA chart is much easier to use; you don’t need to know anything about the IPA and phonetics to understand it; and it does a good job of showing which IPA letters are associated with which sounds.

So, when you start to learn the IPA, try the stuff.co.uk chart. Once you know the IPA and want to master pronunciation, try the University of Iowa interactive IPA chart.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 6:18 pm and is filed under English, Pronunciation, EFL, ESL, Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.