Description

TRANSCRIPTION SYSTEM USED ON THIS WEBSITE

All the transcriptions in this site use the standard IPA system:

To mark the stress we underline the stressed vowel. In British English the sound / r / is only pronounced if it is followed by a vowel but in American English it is always pronounced, so we mark this sound with an asterisk / * / to show that it is silent in BrE but pronounced in AmE.

If you don't know these transcription symbols you can have a look here: IPA SYMBOLS, with sound. There is a complete Phonetics Section if you need to learn more about this.

Note: As far as I know, the phonetic symbols don't show correctly if you are using the old IE6 (Internet Explorer 6).

And then we have the AnswerTips functionality. When you double click a word, an AnswerTip bubble opens (try on this page to see). You can see that they use a very different transcription system, for example this: for the word sometimes. That transcription system is still popular in the USA (in the UK they are IPA system is now more popular). If you click on the transcription you will see a window explaining every symbol, but you don't need to understand that system if you don't want to, since you can also hear a man pronouncing it when you click the picture: .

Explanation