The ‘phonemic chart’ is a set of symbols that represent all the sounds in spoken English. Although the most common phonemic charts are based on Received Pronunciation and therefore don’t include all the sounds needed for different accents, they give us a good idea of what any word will sound like without needing to hear it. There are several versions of the chart for the most common varieties of spoken English, but the most famous phonemic chart in common use was created by a man called Adrian Underhill, who is very well known for his work on teaching pronunciation.
Phonemic charts are useful for learning English pronunciation because the spelling of a word in English doesn’t always tell us how it is going to sound. If we write them using the symbols from the phonemic chart, then we can clearly show how a word sounds. That’s why so many dictionaries have phonemic transcriptions of words next to them.
How many sections is the phonemic chart divided into?
It’s split into three sections. First, there are the vowels. Monopthongs are on the left and dipthongs are on the right. The consonants are down below. Then the consonants are split into voiced sounds like b and d and v; and unvoiced sounds like p and t and f.
There are three sections to the chart.
- Single Vowel Sounds or Monophthongs in Blue.
- Diphthongs in Gold.
- and the Consonants Pairs and Single Consonants in Black.