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The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (abbreviated AHD) uses a phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet to transcribe the pronunciation of spoken English. It and similar respelling systems, such as those used by the Merriam-Webster and Random House dictionaries, are familiar to US schoolchildren.
The following table shows the 24 consonant phonemes found in most dialects of English, plus /x/, whose distribution is more limited. Fortis consonants are always voiceless, aspirated in syllable onset (except in clusters beginning with /s/ or /ʃ/), and sometimes also glottalized to an extent in syllable coda (most likely to occur with /t/, see T-glottalization), while lenis consonants are ...
Word-final /m/ became /n/. Word-final /n/ was then lost after unstressed syllables with nasalization of the preceding vowel. Hence Pre-PGmc * dʰogʰom > early PGmc *dagam > late PGmc *dagą > Old English dæġ "day (acc. sg.)". The nasalisation was retained at least into the earliest history of Old English. Word-final /t/ was lost after an ...
Words marked with subscript A or B are exceptions to this, and thus retains a full vowel in the (relatively) unstressed syllable of AmE or BrE. A subsequent asterisk, *, means that the full vowel is usually retained; a preceding * means that the full vowel is sometimes retained. Words with other points of difference are listed in a later table.
The following is the chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a standardized system of phonetic symbols devised and maintained by the International Phonetic Association.
Words like alms, balm, calm, Chalmers, qualm, palm and psalm now generally have /ɑː/ in the standard accents, while holm and Holmes are homophones of home(s). Some accents (including many of American English) have reintroduced the /l/ in these words as a spelling pronunciation. The word salmon generally retains a short vowel despite the loss ...
/zj/ → [ʒ] in words ending vowel+sure such as measure [ˈmɛʒəɹ] (also vowel+sion, r+sion) In some other words, the coalesced pronunciation is common in English dialects around the world, but an older non-coalesced form still exists among some speakers of standard British English: educate [ˈɛdʒʊkeɪt] (also in standard RP ...
That is reflected in the modern pronunciation of the endings that are spelled -s (the noun plural ending, the 'Saxon genitive' ending and the third-person present indicative ending), which now have the phonemic shape - /z/, having developed in Middle English from - [əs] to - [əz] and then, after the deletion of the unstressed vowel, to - /z ...