Word of the Day
Pronunciation Guide
The AskOxford Word of the Day entries are sourced from the Oxford Dictionary of English, which uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the standard accent of English as spoken in the south of England (sometimes called Received Pronunciation or RP).
Pronunciations are only given where they are likely to cause problems for the native speaker of English, in particular for foreign words, foreign names, scientific and other specialist terms, rare words, words with unusual stress patterns, and words where there are alternative pronunciations or where there is a dispute about the standard pronunciation. Therefore not every entry for the Word of the Day will have pronunciation help.
The symbols used for English words, with their values, are given below.
Consonants: b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, v, w and z have their usual English values. Other symbols are used as follows:
|
g get t  chipd  jarx loch  ring |
 thin this she decisionj yes |
Vowels | |
|---|---|
| SHORT VOWELS | |
a cat bed ago siti cosy |
 hot run put |
LONG VOWELS (  indicates length) | |
|
a arm hair her |
i see sawu too |
DIPHTHONGS | |
|
my a howe day no |
near boy poor |
TRIPTHONGS | |
|
fire |
a sour |