I still remember learning, in my early days at school, that there are five vowels in English: a, e, i, o and u. But I discovered later that this simple account doesn’t tell the whole story. For one thing, the letter y can also function as a vowel, as in the word sky. And, more importantly, the count of five (or six) vowels only applies to writing; in spoken English there are, depending on which regional variety you listen to, up to twenty-odd vowel sounds. The written letter e, for example, represents different sounds in the words end, me, happen and England. Hence the need for a bigger set of symbols than the 26 letters of the alphabet to represent the pronunciation of English words.

Different dictionaries use different sets of symbols, but in British publications for learners of English, including the Macmillan Dictionary, the most common is a subset of symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet. People sometimes find some of these symbols intimidating, but it’s really worth the effort of learning to recognize them and the sounds they represent, because you’ll then be able to check the pronunciation of any word you aren’t sure about, either in a general learner’s dictionary or – in the case of less frequent words, place names, personal names, etc. – in a specialized pronunciation dictionary. More.

See: Macmillan Dictionary Blog

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