Learning the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is not necessary in order to learn to speak English clearly. The exercises in “Course One: Sound and Word Drills” are written with common English letters so that everyone can use the course, whether they know the IPA or not.

However, learning the IPA is fun! Many of the letters already look similar or identical to letters in the English alphabet. You will find that as you start learning the IPA, you feel empowered as much of English pronunciation becomes demystified. 

While letters in English can be pronounced many different ways in different words (such as the “a” in hat, face, father, sugar), the pronunciation of IPA letters is always the same (although the length of vowels may change).

In these short video puzzles, you can try to guess these words that are spelled with the IPA. In this unique system each IPA letter is also given its own color and texture to help you get used to seeing all of the symbols and differentiating them from one another.

Have fun!