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
Results for “-form”
- re-formed verbsimple past and past participle of re-form
- ill-formed adjectivePoorly formed.
- semi-formal adjectivemoderately formal; requiring a dinner jacket
- well-formed adjective(linguistics, computing) Correctly written; syntactically correct; expressed in a way that obeys rules for constructing formulas in a certa…
- acid-forming adjective(chemistry) Yielding an acid when dissolved in water or in chemical reaction; acidic.
- base-forming adjectiveyielding a base in aqueous solution
- re-formation nounA new formation (a subsequent coming together of the elements of a former grouping).
- sixth-former noun(UK, Australia) A pupil in the sixth form.
- habit-forming adjective(formal, euphemistic) Addictive; likely to cause dependence or recurrence of use.
- back-formation noun(uncountable, linguistics) The process by which a new word is formed from an older word by interpreting the former as a derivative of the l…
- thicket-forming adjectivetending to form dense thickets
- membrane-forming adjectivecharacterized by formation of a membrane (or something resembling a membrane)
- polyvinyl-formaldehyde nouna polymer of vinyl formaldehyde