Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iː	see	ɪ	sit	e / ɛ	bed	æ	cat
ɑː	father	ɒ	hot (UK)	ɔː	law	ʊ	put
uː	too	ʌ	cup	ɜː	bird	ə	about
eɪ	day	aɪ	my	ɔɪ	boy	aʊ	now
əʊ / oʊ	go (UK / US)	ɪə	near	eə	hair	ʊə	tour

Consonants that look unusual

θ	thin	ð	this	ʃ	she	ʒ	measure
tʃ	church	dʒ	judge	ŋ	sing	j	yes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

-s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
-ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
-ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

Cathay

/kæˈθeɪ/ proper noun

proper noun (archaic) China, specifically medieval northern China as reached by the overland Silk Road to Xi'an or Beijing, not known at the time to be related to southern China as reached by the maritime routes to Guangzhou.
proper noun A settlement in North Dakota.

Synonyms

China People's Republic of China mainland China Communist China Red China PRC

Etymology

From Latin Cathaya, variant of Cataya, from Old Turkic 𐰶𐰃𐱃𐰪 (Qïtań), and ultimately from Khitan 𘱿𘲫 (*qid ún); the Khitan people who conquered northern China as the Liao dynasty in the 10th century and ruled the central Asian Qara Khitai Khanate in the 12th, just prior to the overland European missions to China occasioned by the Pax Mongolica. Most likely cognate with Mongolian хутга (xutga, “knife”) from Proto-Mongolic *kïtuga.
Doublet of Khitan. Cognate with Russian Кита́й (Kitáj, “China”). See Names of China.

Webster’s 1913

noun China; --an old name for the Celestial Empire, said have been introduced by Marco Polo and to be a corruption of the Tartar name for North China (Khitai, the country of the Khitans.) Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Tennyson.

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “Cathay”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details