The International Phoneme Alphabet.

S.A.P. #8

Since the end of Midterms, all that we have been learning from (S.A.P.)class is pronunciation, enunciation, assimilation, phonemes, etc. In other words, how we pronounce the English words clearly and correctly.
Recently, we've been learning in our S.A.P. class of the symbols that correspond to what kind of pronunciation we should produce when we see this, most especially in dictionaries.

For example, the long 'ee' sound in words like 'equal', 'seat', 'meat', 'easy', etc. has the phonetic symbol /i:/; so if you encounter this on a dictionary, thesaurus, or any kind of pronunciation book that can help you pronounce words that has this pronunciation.
The short 'ee' sound, in words like 'hit', 'kit', 'ship', 'furniture', has the phonetic symbol /I/.
The 'Eh' sound, in words like 'edge', 'set', 'merry', 'egg', 'head', have the phonetic symbol /E/ or an inverted number three that is actually like an epsilon in Greek language.
/a:/ is the phonetic symbol for a long 'Ah' sound, like 'part', 'calm', 'lock' and more.

Diphthongs are a pair of vowel sounds combined together:
/eI/-for 'age', 'drape', 'cape', 'bake', 'lake'.
/aI/-for 'bite', 'pirate', 'deny', 'ice', 'eye'.
/(I/-for 'oil', 'joint', 'joy', 'boy', 'coin'.
/au/-for 'plow', 'out', 'loud', 'cow', 'owl'.

In Consonants, most of it is easy, since what we have basically learned about how we pronounce it in elementary is still unchanged.
But words like 'thin', 'ether', 'path', 'think', 'breath' has the symbol /θ/, which is a voiceless 'th' sound, compared to its other voiced 'th' sound that has the symbol /ð/, for words like 'that', 'the', 'either', 'this', 'then'.
The 'sh', 'zsh', 'ch', 'juh' sounds have the respective symbols /sh/, /3/, /tS/ and /d3/.

If you want to look up for more of what the symbols look like, we have the internet and the libraries for research. All in all, the lesson was a great topic, something I knew I would need when I see a very difficult word that I cannot pronounce and I have to see the dictionary for it.

See you and have a good day! XD