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  • In this American English Pronunciation video, were going to go over why we need the IPA.

  • This video was created for a course on IPA that is part of the Rachel’s English Academy,

  • but I thought it was worth sharing here.

  • Rachel's English Academy is a collection of courses I've created

  • to help you speak better English.

  • Courses on everything you need to know about pronunciation,

  • listening comprehension, conversation courses, phrasal verbs, and so on.

  • You can join the Rachel's English Academy here for a small monthly fee.

  • Once you join, you're locked in to that price for life even if the price goes up.

  • Okay, without further ado, the lesson.

  • The International Phonetic Alphabet was created by the International Phonetic Association

  • as a standardized way to write the sounds of spoken language.

  • Why do we need this?

  • Because English is not a phonetic language

  • that means there’s not a 1:1 relationship between letters and sounds.

  • For example, these words:

  • They look the same except for the first letter.

  • They look like they should be pronounced the same except for the first sound.

  • But that’s not the case.

  • Lovehas the UH as in BUTTER vowel.

  • Covehas the OH diphthong,

  • andmovehas the OO vowel.

  • Uh, oh, oo.

  • Love, cove, move.

  • There are no rules to tell you which word should be pronounced which way,

  • you just have to know.

  • You just have to learn the pronunciation when you learn the word.

  • Let's go a little further. What about this word?

  • It looks like the other three words, and its pronunciation isdove’, just likelove’.

  • Wait, no. Its pronunciation isdove’, just likecove’.

  • Actually, both pronunciations are right.

  • For the noun, the bird, it’s ‘dove’. UH.

  • But for the verb, past tense ofdive’, it’s pronounceddove’.

  • So again, we need IPA to write these different sounds

  • so we can see that words are spelled the same, may still be pronounced differently.

  • This is called a heteronym.

  • One more confusing point: homophones.

  • Words that are spelled differently, but pronounced the same.

  • For example, pear.

  • Just one pronunciation for these two words: pear, pair.

  • There are lots of homophones in American English.

  • So we need the IPA to see, oh, theyre spelled differently, but theyre pronounced the same.

  • When you write a sound, in IPA, with a symbol instead of a letter, there’s no confusion.

  • Youre going to see a lot of IPA in the Rachel’s English Academy,

  • so this course is to help you get used to these symbols,

  • to help you start to recognize them.

  • For information on joining the Rachel’s English Academy, click here.

  • That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

In this American English Pronunciation video, were going to go over why we need the IPA.

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