How to read the International Phonetic Alphabet | Complete Beginners Guide

The IPA is one of the first things you will likely learn in any Linguistics class, and it is essential to any discussion of pronunciation. In this 3 part video series, I give you all the information you need to know about the International Phonetic Alphabet.

To see my Linguistics 101 Video series, click the links below:

0:00 The International Phonetic Alphabet
1:07 Why we need the IPA
3:46 Vowels in the IPA
7:09 Consonants in the IPA
15:00 IPA Practice Exercises

Huge thanks to Hilary, Nathan, Mark, Taylor, Brendan, Ryan, Joltrast, Tobi, and Breanna for supporting my channel on Patreon!

Kaj egan dankon al Interkultura Novelo-Konkurso (INK) pro ilia subteno! Jen kelkaj informoj pri la konkurso:

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New to my channel?

Welcome! I am an aspiring polyglot with a degree in Linguistics. I speak English, Spanish, French, and Esperanto, and I'm currently working on Thai. I make videos twice a week to talk about my methods of learning languages and to try to help others make language learning faster, easier, and more fun.

[matthewdunivan]

I went to Columbia University grad school for acting.... We had an accent class and I learned more watching this video than I did in the whole semester.

[genekisayan]

Honestly learning IPA was one of my biggest and most rapid return on investment. It took me 2 days to get along with it and it improved my english pronunciation drastically and quicker in two weeks than all the precedent years that I spent studying the language. What a shame it is not always taught in schools 😕

[pablo]

First thing I do when I start a new language is google phonology of language and focus on phonetics (IPA) of the sounds of the language. I do this before I even start lesson 1 of the language. I discovered your channel tonight and I can tell right away that you are someone who has learned how to master languages. Congratulations.

[rtj]

Learning how to read and write in IPA was part of my teacher training in my ELA Methods class. I am currently re-learning it!

[johnjordan]

Great video and thanks for posting — you made the topic accessible and fun.

Slight error at 11:43: ð is lowercase "eth", not "thorn" (þ).

[manuelrincon]

I think you're the only one on YouTube with this information. Thank you man!

[IlusionHunter]

I love your channel. You give us tip to learn a second language, you teach us phonetics, linguistics, you speak to us in french, Spanish, Thai, you're awesome and I would love a teacher like you. Aaron, you're one of the best teachers I have no YouTube 😎

[robertomcdonald]

As a total beginner, the drills are really useful to bring the theory to life.

[felizziajehdalcazar]

Thanks for this really helpful video! I'm an English major and we're taking up Phonetics now so this is just perfect. Easy to understand and not to mention entertaining, especially with the Disney references 😆

[andrew_owens]

This is great! I'm an amateur linguist and trying to master German and Dutch. When languages have overlapping words that are spelled the same or similarly, it's best to focus on pronunciation. Excellent pronunciation means that when you read a passage, you hear it in the language as opposed to some poorly rendered sounds that aren't from that language. Thanks again for a great video.

[JorgeRafaelNogueras]

Great video, Aaron! I love this series: please keep these videos coming! 😃

[arting]

Thank you for this video and giving a comprehensive explanation. I've been looking at IPA videos and it is so frustrating that some videos just don't explain anything, show no chart, and straight dive into pronouncing just some random letters.

[martianram]

THANK U SM FOR GOING DEEPER THAN THE ENGLISH SOUNDS

[chrisinator]

Thanks a lot! I just started learning the IPA and this comes in handy.

[gladysma]

Thank you for such a wonderful teaching video and even listing the link to your other IPA video.

[kaff_o]

Just got curious among IPA, are there any websites/apps where they make quiz (pluralis) or exercises.
Sometimes I wish this was taught earlier in children school, and I even wish that books/articles were written in IPA's. Even though, language is very subjective and can be used in many dialects, though I think it would interact with the reader some more rather than the usual usage of alphabets.
Btw I'm also really glad that I found this Channel, I've been wanted to learn lots of language. With this, would be a great start to learn IPA. Also it made me wonder, are there other types of IPA's, besides the Europe-central IPA? By Europe-central I mean, Europe+USA's IPA. If that makes sense.

[VictoriaSethunya]

Great teacher! The Bantu pronunciation is on point :)

[IamFrogVR]

the glottal stop is from Lushootseed alphabet

[shekelboi]

Great video, IPA always seemed a bit daunting but it's actually quite logical. The exercises were also really useful but I honestly don't think the IPA is 100% accurate (even when it comes to the representation of a single dialect), nevertheless it's a great tool still

[rikkichunn]

Dear Dr. Lindsey,

I beg to differ about the traditional New York accent. The non-rhotic accent that is popularly associated with New York City is originally a Dublin Irish accent brought in by immigrants in the 1800s who settled in the Lower East Side and spread from there to New Jersey. The real traditional New York City accent, which is called Anglo-Dutch is in fact a rhotic accent. The best known speaker of it was probably Dick Cavett. The classic way of detecting it, is to ask a speaker to pronounce the three words merry, marry, and Mary. In the Anglo-Dutch accent, these three words have different first vowels. Merry is pronounced mεri, marry is pronounced mæri, and Mary is pronounced meri. (I'm not using the right symbol for the r sound I know). For most Americans, the three words are pronounced identically.