About ELSA’s IPA transcriptions

Q: ELSA’s IPA transcriptions are not the same as the ones I find in my favorite online dictionary. Is ELSA serious about the IPA?

A: Yes, absolutely! However, different dictionaries or online sources may use slightly different styles for writing IPA, even though they’re all correct. At ELSA, we try to keep our transcriptions simple and easy to read for learners, while still following the main rules used in trusted dictionaries.

Here are five common reasons why IPA transcriptions might look a bit different:

Predictable vowel length

Vowel length (or duration) is predictable in English. For example, /i/ is always long, while /ɪ/ is always short. As a consequence, some dictionaries do not represent vowel length. For those that do, it is represented by the symbol /ː/. For simplicity, ELSA does not represent vowel length.

Predictable variants

The schwa sound (/ə/) is sometimes left out in certain words, depending on how people speak. Some dictionaries show the schwa in those words, while others leave it out. ELSA includes the schwa in its transcriptions, but it also accepts both ways as correct.

Narrow transcription

In some online sources, like Wiktionary, you might see small extra symbols added to IPA sounds you already know. These are usually used by speech experts or linguists to show very detailed pronunciation features. Dictionaries usually don’t include these extra symbols, and neither does ELSA.

The case of /r/

The exact IPA symbol for the English “R” sound is /ɹ /. You may come across this symbol in some online sources but, typically, dictionaries simply use the regular letter “r”, for convenience. ELSA does too.

Non-US English symbols

If the sources you are consulting use a schwa to represent the pronunciation of the letter “R” their focus is probably on British English. Same thing if you see the symbol /ɒ/, in a word like “hot”. At this point, ELSA does not support these symbols, but only those that represent US English pronunciations.