International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) for English: Vowels

1. [æ] cat, bad, sad, sand, land, hand.
2. [ɑː] bra, calm, palm, father, start, dark.
3. [ɒ] god, pot, top, spot (British English only)
4. [ʌ] but, cut, gun, come, some, glove.
5. [ɛ] get, bed, set, sell, fell, men.
6. [ɪ] pit, bin, fill, will, village, bullet.

What are the English Vowel Sound IPA symbols (International Phonetic Alphabet)? English has 20 vowel sounds. Short vowels in the IPA are /ɪ/-pit, /e/-pet, /æ/-pat, /ʌ/-cut, /ʊ/-put, /ɒ/-dog, /ə/-about. Long vowels in the IPA are /i:/-week, /ɑ:/-hard,/ɔ:/-fork,/ɜ:/-heard, /u:/-boot.

In elementary school, we all learned the vowels of the English language: A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y. Or, at least how we write them out, that is. But what makes a vowel a vowel? Vowels and consonants are two different categories of sounds that linguists use to better understand how speech sounds work.

The proper vowels are a, e, i, o, and u. Coming from the Latin word for “voice” (vox), vowels are created by the free passage of breath through the larynx and mouth. When the mouth is obstructed during speech production—most often by the tongue or teeth—the resulting sound is a consonant.

IPA symbols for English vowels. The IPA vowel symbols are typically more difficult than consonants for speakers of English to learn, since they seldom represent the sounds that the corresponding English letters (usually) do. The major vowel symbols, [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u], represent the sounds that the corresponding letters do in the spelling systems of many European languages, such as Spanish and Italian or, to a lesser extent, French or German.

In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English “ah” /ɑː/ or “oh” /oʊ/, produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant.

The major vowel symbols, [a], [e], [i], [o], and [u], represent the sounds that the corresponding letters do in the spelling systems of many European languages, such as Spanish and Italian or, to a lesser extent, French or German.