Limitations of the chart

This chart is far from complete. It contains the majority of consonant sounds used in the basic description of English pronunciation. There are, however, several differences between this basic set of symbols and the much more comprehensive chart produced by the International Phonetic Association (IPA). The most obvious difference is in the range of sounds covered.

We would go to an IPA chart for a description of the sounds of all languages. It includes, for example, symbols for the velar fricative sound you may have heard in the German pronunciation of the “ch” part of Bach or Achtung. It also includes sounds made with the back of the tongue and the uvula (the “little grape” hanging at the end of the velum) which represents the “r” parts of the French pronunciation of rouge and lettre. Uvular sounds also occur in many native languages of North and South America. Other non-English sounds such as pharyngeals (produced in the pharynx) occur in languages such as Arabic. There are many other consonant sounds in the languages of the world.

Another way in which the chart is incomplete is the single entry covering “r” sounds in English. There can be a lot of variation among speakers in the pronunciation of the initial sound in raw and red, the medial sound in very, and the final sound in hour and air. Different symbols (e.g. [ɹ], [ʀ]) may be encountered in transcriptions where the different “r” sounds are distinguished.

Finally, in some phonetic descriptions, there are different symbols for a few of the sounds represented here. These alternatives are [sˇ] for [ʃ], [zˇ] for [ʒ], [cˇ] for [ʧ], [jˇ] for [ʤ] and [y] for [j]. For a fuller discussion of the use of these symbols, see Ladefoged (2006).