Nevertheless, many other dialects of English are spoken, which have developed independently from these standardized accents, particularly regional dialects. Phonological analysis of English often concentrates on or uses, as a reference point, one or more of the prestige or standard accents, such as Received Pronunciation for England, General American for the United States, and General Australian for Australia. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants ( stops, affricates, and fricatives). In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar (but not identical) phonological system. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. For the distinction between, / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.Įnglish phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English.
For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).