International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds

ɡ vs. g

Be aware that the IPA symbol for ɡ is a different Unicode symbol to the g on your keyboard.

Coarticulated consonants

Non-pulmonic consonants

Vowels

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back High i Arabic Chinese Italian Japanese Russian Spanish  y Chinese Danish French ɨ Kashmiri (India) Romanian Vietnamese  ʉ Norwegian ɯ Japanese Korean Portuguese  u Arabic Chinese Italian Russian Spanish ɪ Dutch English German Hindi  ʏ Dutch German ɪ̈  ʊ̈   ʊ German Hindi Swedish e French Italian Japanese Russian Spanish Vietnamese  ø Danish French German Korean ɘ Jebero (Peru) Shiwiar (Ecuador)  ɵ Farsi (Tajikistan) Mongolian Toda (India) ɤ Bulgarian Chinese  o French Italian Japanese Russian Spanish    ə Chinese Dutch French Javanese      ɛ Dutch English French German Italian Korean Portuguese Vietnamese  œ Danish French German Swedish ɜ English Yiddish  ɞ Kashubian (Poland) Somali ʌ Danish English Korean  ɔ English French Hindi Italian Portuguese æ Danish English Hindi Norwegian      ɐ Danish Greek Portuguese   a Arabic French  ɶ Danish ä Chinese Italian Japanese Romanian Russian Spanish  ɒ̈ ɑ Dutch French Hindi Norwegian  ɒ Danish Near- high High- mid Mid Low- mid Near- Low Low

a vs. ä

Many well known languages, such as Spanish and Italian, have the vowel ä. However this vowel very is often simply written as a, so long as the language doesn't have true a, and so long as it is specified that a represents a "central low" vowel for the purpose of the document. This is a fairly normal practice among linguists, to avoid excessive diacritic usage. It may happen with other vowels, and even consonants, although it more common with vowels, and particularly common with this vowel.

IPA for English

Note: Diphthongs (vowels that are made up of two different vowel sounds) do not have their own dedicated audio recordings.