IPA

IPA = International Phonetic Alphabet. This enables anyone to work out the pronunciation of a word, including a name, if they know the sounds of the IPA letters.

IPA pronunciations are conventionally enclosed in slashes // to represent the ‘standard’ pronunciation without regard to regional or dialectical phonetic variant. Square brackets [] are used to reflect the actual phonetics of a particular speaker or dialect.

Ordinary phonetics may not transfer even to other English dialects. E.g. if the phonetics conform to General American, an English reader used to Received pronunciation would not get the right impression. Same goes for native speakers of Australian, New Zealand, South African, Scottish dialects. But any of them would get the right pronunciation, or pretty close to it, with knowledge of IPA. In fact, speakers of any language who learned IPA would get the right pronunciation.

Some Romanization schemes are not always very intuitive to native English speakers, e.g. Pinyin and Korean Revised Romanization. Sometimes, the same word or name can be written in different s Romanizations. But there will be only one IPA rendering.

Links

• International Phonetic Alphabet, Wikipedia
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Chart With Sounds