Online dictionaries provide audio + phonetic description of the pronunciation of many words:

Merriam-Webster Online
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

Collins dictionary and thesaurus: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/ and https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus


Phonetic chart: sounds of English

The British Council phonemic chart is available as a free app, and it will help you hear the sounds of English by clicking on the symbols on the chart. 

Weak sounds:

Connected speech - weak forms  (video, 25 min) A bit longer but quite nice too -   a video talk on phenomena related to connected speech, especially weak forms.

Pronunciation issues by language background:

-  Finnish speakers
These two videos, Tips for Finns, focus on sounds that tend to be hard for speaker of Finnish and might be useful for you too, although the speaker first claims – incorrectly - that the unvoiced consonants are difficult for Finns.  In fact the opposite is true: voiced consonants tend to be harder. With certain unvoiced consonants, Finns may sometimes have problems with sufficient aspiration.

  • - th, t/d, b/p, k/g, ch/j
  • - z/s, sh/s, w/v, -nth  

- Other languages



Last modified: Thursday, 10 August 2023, 1:05 PM