English IPA Chart — Hear Every Sound, Convert IPA to Speech

Complete English IPA chart with audio on every symbol — consonants, affricates, diphthongs, long and short vowels, the schwa, and stress marks. The groups below mirror the phoneme keyboard built into the SpeechGen editor. Drop any transcription into the SSML <phoneme> tag and force exact pronunciation.

English Consonants in IPA

English has 24 consonant phonemes. Most map onto familiar letters, but a few symbols differ from spelling: [θ] and [ð] for the two th sounds, [ʃ] for sh, [ʒ] for the s in leisure, [ŋ] for ng, and [j] for the y sound. See the dedicated TH and R sections below.

English Affricates ([tʃ] and [dʒ])

Affricates are single phonemes that begin as a stop and release as a fricative. English has two: the voiceless [tʃ] (the ch in changed) and the voiced [dʒ] (the g in magenta or j in jump). They appear as their own keys on the phoneme keyboard.

The TH Sounds in IPA ([θ] and [ð])

English spelling writes both th sounds the same way, but they are two distinct phonemes — and neither exists in many other languages, which is why learners and TTS engines often confuse them. The phoneme tag lets you pin down exactly which one you mean.

[θ] — voiceless (no vocal-cord buzz)

The breathy th in thigh, think, and bath. The tongue tip touches the teeth and air flows without voicing.

thigh [θaɪ] think [θɪŋk] bath [bɑːθ]

[ð] — voiced (vocal cords buzz)

The soft th in mother, this, and breathe. Same tongue position as [θ], but the vocal cords vibrate.

mother [ˈmʌðər] this [ðɪs] breathe [briːð]

The English R Sound in IPA ([ɹ] and [ɚ])

English R is a retroflex or bunched approximant [ɹ] — the tongue never touches the roof of the mouth, unlike the trilled R of Spanish or the uvular R of French and German. In American English the R also colors neighboring vowels.

[ɹ] — the consonant R

At the start of syllables, as in roaring or crown.

roaring [ˈrɔːrɪŋ] car [kɑːr]

[ɚ] — the R-colored vowel (American)

In unstressed -er endings the vowel and R fuse into a single rhotic sound, as in water or better. Stressed, it becomes [ɝ] as in bird.

water [ˈwɔːtɚ] better [ˈbɛtɚ] bird [bɝd]

English Vowels in IPA

English vowel sounds far outnumber the five vowel letters. The keyboard splits them into monophthongs (single, steady vowels), long vowels marked with [ː], diphthongs (gliding from one vowel to another), and the unstressed schwa pair. Note that exact vowels shift between American and British English.

Type IPA symbols straight from the editor's keyboard (see below) — no need to memorize Unicode codes. The chart at the top of this page also copies any symbol to your clipboard on click.

English IPA Diphthongs

A diphthong glides from one vowel position to another within a single syllable. American English typically counts five core diphthongs; British English adds centring diphthongs like [ɪə] (near) and [eə] (square) that American speakers render with an R instead.

The Schwa in English ([ə])

The schwa [ə] is the most common sound in spoken English — the lazy, neutral vowel that unstressed syllables collapse into. It is never spelled consistently: it hides in the a of again, the o of sofa, and both a's of banana. Mastering the schwa is what makes synthesized speech sound natural rather than robotic.

Stress & Syllable Marks

English stress is phonemic — it can change a word's meaning or part of speech. The primary stress mark ˈ precedes the stressed syllable, secondary stress uses ˌ, and a period . marks a syllable boundary. Compare the noun REcord with the verb reCORD.

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="fəˈtɒɡrəfi">photography</phoneme>
<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="ˌʌndərˈstænd">understand</phoneme>

photography [fəˈtɒɡrəfi] understand [ˌʌndərˈstænd]

Move the stress to another syllable

Because the stress mark is just a character in the transcription, you decide which syllable carries it — useful for heteronyms whose meaning depends on stress. Put ˈ before the syllable you want emphasized and the engine follows. Listen to the same spelling stressed two different ways (voiced by Joey):

Same trick works for any word the engine stresses wrongly — move ˈ in front of the syllable you want, and add secondary stress with ˌ for longer words.

Using the <phoneme> Tag in Practice

When a word has more than one accepted pronunciation, the phoneme tag lets you pin down exactly which one you want. The classic example is GIF — listen to the same spelling forced two ways (voiced by Joey, an Amazon-engine voice that honors the IPA tag):

Typical candidates for the phoneme tag:

• Proper names — Saoirse [ˈsɜːrʃə], Hermione [hɜːrˈmaɪəni]
• Loanwords — quinoa [ˈkiːnwɑː], niche [niːʃ]
• Heteronyms — the noun record [ˈrɛkɚd] vs the verb [rɪˈkɔːrd]
• Technical terms — hyperbole [haɪˈpɜːrbəli], epitome [ɪˈpɪtəmi]

Compose IPA Visually — Built-in Keyboard

You don't need to memorize IPA symbols or hunt for them in a character map. SpeechGen has an interactive phoneme keyboard inside the editor, grouped exactly like the chart at the top of this page — consonants, affricates, diphthongs, long and short vowels, the unstressed pair, plus stress and syllable marks. Every key carries an English example word so you always know which sound you're picking.

1. Open speechgen.io and make sure an English voice is selected (Den, Andrew, Matthew — any en-US voice).

2. In the editor toolbar click the </> SSML toggle. The SSML tag bar appears. Click Phoneme.

   

3. The Phoneme (IPA) · en-US modal opens with the full English IPA keyboard. Click symbols to build the transcription in the input field, hit Listen to preview, then Insert to drop the <phoneme alphabet="ipa"> tag into your text. Tip: if you select a word first and leave the field empty, the editor tries to generate the IPA automatically.

   

The keyboard adapts to the voice's language automatically — switch to a British, Indian, or Australian English voice and the example words and available symbols update to match that accent.

Frequently Asked Questions