LearnEnglish Sounds Right is the British Council’s free pronunciation chart for learners and teachers of English worldwide.
Learners of English
Do you have difficulty with the sounds and pronunciation of the English language, or with understanding the symbols of the phonemic alphabet? With LearnEnglish Sounds Right on your phone or tablet you can practise anywhere and anytime. Just tap a sound and you will hear it. Tap the downward arrow sign and listen to three example words with that sound.
Teachers of English
Do you use phonemic script in class to help your students with their pronunciation? With LearnEnglish Sounds Right installed on your class set of devices, or your students’ own devices, you can teach the individual sounds and symbols easily.
- The pure vowels are arranged the same way as in the IPA chart: according to mouth shape (left to right, lips wide / round – top to bottom, jaw closed / open).
- The diphthongs are grouped in rows according to their second sound.
- The consonants are arranged from left (front of mouth) to right (back of mouth). The top two rows of consonants are paired (top row – unvoiced, second row – voiced). When you tap a plosive consonant, the schwa (ə) appears. This is because the plosives were recorded with a schwa for clarity.
We hope you enjoy using this chart! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment below.
Hello there, My name is Francisco And I'm from Costa Rica. I'm an English teacher.
I would like to know if I could use your English language material for my Facebook page where I upload English language material too.
Since your info is reliable I would love to use it for my page so my students can learn from that too..
Would it be any problem with that?
For example I upload pronunciation stuff..so If I use your IPA Chart would it be an issue?
Hi there Francisco,
I'm glad to hear you find out material useful. If you teach younger learners then you might also take a look at our sister-sites for kids and teens:
https://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/
https://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/
As far as using our material goes, please fee free to link to any material on the site but please don't reproduce it on your own page. You know, I'm sure, how these things can rapidly end up in other places, being exploited commercially, plagiarised and so on. We offer a free service here so please link to the site.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi,
Why is the th sound missing as in the word "think"?
Many thanks,
Regina
Hello Regina,
It's not! This sound is represented by the symbol θ, which is in the top right corner of the Phonemic chart of consonants in the picture above.
Best wishes,
Kirk
LearnEnglish team
My phone is telling me that the 'app is made for an older device', do you have an updated version?
Hi mkelly42,
Thanks for getting in touch. This app is currently only supported on devices using Android 11 and below.
Devices running Android 12 and 13 are not able to run this app at the moment.
Apologies for the inconvenience, and we'll let you know if/when we update it to support those recent Android versions.
All the best!
Kirk
On behalf of the LearnEnglish Mobile team
oh thats so useful tnx for sharing it with us...we are really appreciate that🙏
I like the app a lot. Should I recommend this app to my primary students, age 9?
Hello nhien249,
It wasn't designed for primary age students and I doubt I'd use it with that age, but I suppose you could try it.
If it works well, we'd certainly be curious to hear about it.
All the best,
Kirk
LearnEnglish team
This App is so good, sound and how use with words