The 44 Sounds of American English

        Welcome to a New World - ESL

I am going to start with phonics although English is not a true phonetic language.  But to learn to speak any langauge, you need to master the sounds of that language.  So the first few blog posts will be about the Sounds of English.  I will focus on American English.  

In American English there are about 44 sounds formed from the 26 letters in the English Alphabet.  I say about because some dialects (regional variances) may have more or less.

In the United States, people tend to use the American Phonetic system shown in this photo from Scholastic book  Phonics from A to Z (2nd Edition) by Wiley Blevins (I see there is now a 3rd edition).  We talk about long and short vowels - I’ll discuss vowels in the next blog post.

 

In China where I taught for 7 years, they use the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA.  I have edited an American English IPA chart to add sample words.

 

There is an app available for Apple phones and iPads (free or paid; I use the free version) and I think it is from Macmillan publishing.  See images below. 

It may be available for Android devices also.  I have always used it on my iPad.  You can choose American or British Charts from the app settings and switch as you need.  It allows you to hear the sound in isolation.

 

Next blog - Vowels