How to read and pronounce English transcription. English transcription: pronunciation of letters and sounds in English Transcriptions in English and their pronunciation

22.01.2024

There is nothing more natural than starting to learn English by writing your own name in letters of the Latin alphabet.

Writing Russian names in English often causes difficulties, largely because there are no uniform rules in this regard. However, a set of general principles can still be defined.

Read further in our article about the special transliteration rules currently used when issuing foreign passports.

General rules for transliterating names

The first thing to remember is first and last names are not translated, especially when it comes to documents and business correspondence. You should not select English-language analogues and call Elena Helen, and Mikhail Michael. Instead, the name should be transliterated, that is, written in Latin. In this case, you can use the following correspondence system:

A	A	Andrey (Andrey)	ABOUT	ABOUT	Olga (Olga)
B	B	Boris (Boris)	P	P	Pavel (Pavel)
IN	V	Valery (Valery)	R	R	Roman
G	G	Gleb (Gleb)	WITH	S	Sergey (Sergey)
D	D	Dmitry (Dmitry)	T	T	Tatyana (Tatyana)
E	Ye/E	Yelena, Elena (Elena)	U	U	Ulyana (Ulyana)
Yo	Yo/E	Pyotr, Petr (Peter)	F	F	Philip (Philip)
AND	Zh	Zhanna (Zhanna)	X	Kh	Khariton
Z	Z	Zinaida (Zinaida)	C	Ts	Tsarev (Tsarev)
AND	I	Irina (Irina)	H	Ch	Chaykin (Chaykin)
Y	Y	Timofe y(Timofe th)	Sh	Sh	Sharov (Sharov)
K	K	Konstantin (Konstantin)	SCH	Shch	Shchepkin (Shchepkin)
L	L	Larisa (Larissa)	Y	Y	M y skin (M s skin)
M	M	Margarita (Margarita)	E	E	Eldar (Eldar)
N	N	Nikolay (Nikolai)	YU	Yu	Yury (Yuri)
I	Ya	Yaroslav (Yaroslav)

Special rules for transliterating names

Apart from the more obvious rules of transliteration, there are cases where it is not entirely clear how a given name should be written. Let's look at these options.

Letters b And Kommersant are not transmitted in transliteration. Using an apostrophe (") in their place is also not recommended:

Daria - Darya
Igor
Olga - Olga

Letters Y And Y transmitted by letter Y:

Bystrov
Sadyrova
Mayorov

If the last name ends with "th", remains in transliteration "-y":

White

Since the letter H sometimes unreadable in English, to convey Russian sound "X" combination is used KH:

Akhmatova
Rakhmaninov

Russian combination KS better to convey in letters KS, but not X:

Ksenia — Ksenia
Alexander — Alexander

If the letter E denotes one sound (as in the name Vera), it is represented by a Latin letter E—Vera. If it denotes two sounds (after a soft sign), it is transmitted by the combination YE— Astafyev.

But: If E stands at the beginning of the name, both options are possible: the name Elena can be written as Elena or Yelena.

Letter E usually written the same way as E, but if you want to emphasize the pronunciation of the name, then you should use the letter combination YO— Fyodor, Pyotr.

Letter Ш can be written in the form SCH, but in German this combination will be read as "sh". In order to avoid confusion, it is recommended to use a seemingly unpronounceable combination of letters SHCH.

Ending "-and I" can be transliterated as -IA or -IYA. However, to avoid unnecessary bulkiness, Y usually don't write:

Maria - Maria
Valeria - Valeria

Important note: transliteration when issuing international passports

Transliteration rules for issuing foreign passports often change. At the moment, as of 2015, the following transliteration rules apply (we present the differences from the main table):

Previously, when issuing foreign passports, the rules of GOST R 52535.1-2006, introduced in 2010, were used.

If you want the previous spelling of your first and last name to be retained when receiving a new passport, you can write a corresponding application to the issuing authority, duly justifying your desire. The basis for such an application is the presence of documents with a different spelling of your first and last name: passports, diplomas, residence permits, visas, as well as other registration and banking documents, including bank cards.

“j”, but it is practically not used to record a specific sound. Its area of application is words borrowed from Latin (it is absent in Old Saxon).

The digraph “zh” fully corresponds to the Russian sound “zh” and is used exclusively in borrowed words: Zhukovsky, Zhenya, Zheleznogorsk.

Video on the topic

Sources:

letter g in english

When negotiating with foreign partners or when writing a letter to your foreign friend, sooner or later you will be faced with the question of how to translate your last name into a foreign language. You don’t have to turn to translators for help; you can do it yourself.

Instructions

The most common case is on your tongue. The main problem is that they write in Cyrillic, and the British write in Latin. But each letter of the Russian alphabet corresponds to a letter of the alphabet that is equal in sound to it. You probably know these correspondences if you have ever written Russian text using a foreign keyboard.
There are some nuances here. For example,
- the Russian letter "ch" corresponds to the English combination of letters "ch";
- the Russian letter “zh” corresponds to the English combination of letters “zh”;
- the Russian letter "sh" corresponds to the English combination of letters "sh";
- the Russian letter "ts" corresponds to the English combination of letters "ts";
- the Russian letter "ш" corresponds to the English combination of letters "tsh".
So, each in English.
These rules, with minor amendments, also apply to many other languages that use the Latin alphabet (for example, German, French, Italian).

If we are talking about languages that use other types of writing, for example the Arabic alphabet, then the same rule applies here as indicated above. You will need to find on the Internet (type in any search engine) a table of correspondence between Russian letters and the letters of the alphabet of the language you need. Keep in mind that in some languages words are written from right to left.

Translating your last name into languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet is not difficult. Actually, there is no need to translate anything - your last name will remain in the same form. It will only be necessary in some cases to replace traditional Russian letters with traditional letters of a related Slavic people. For example, Russian “i” into Ukrainian “i”.

note

Be careful with the Ukrainian language. Often, official Ukrainian authorities require literal translation of surnames and names. That is, if the root of your surname in Russian means a certain object, then be kind enough to translate this object into Ukrainian, and form your surname from the new word. For example, our citizen Zontikov in Ukraine will be called Parasolkov (“umbrella” in Ukrainian “parasolka”).

In some situations, it may be necessary to translate your last name and first name or other data into English to process various documents - visas, passports, etc. On licenses and bank cards you can see an example of writing your own name in Latin letters. The preparation of some documents does not require samples and then you have to do the translation yourself. To do this correctly, you need to have certain knowledge.

You will need

- knowledge of the required transliteration system

Instructions

To correctly fill out questionnaires and registration forms for documents, transliteration is used. In this case (first name, last name, etc.) in Latin letters. Transliteration is based on the replacement of letters with letters and their combinations of the alphabet in accordance with certain rules (as opposed to simple). First of all, find out which transliteration system should be used in your particular case, since there are several of them, respectively.

Transcription and reading rules in English are two closely related concepts. Reading rules explain how letters and letter combinations are pronounced in different cases, and with the help of transcription we record and read speech sounds.

Reading rules can confuse a beginner. There are many of them, they are confusing, and there are more exceptions than the rules themselves. In fact, these rules are only so scary if you understand them deeply and try to learn them by heart, along with the exceptions. In reality, everything is much simpler: reading rules do not need to be remembered by heart.

While studying English, you will constantly be doing something, and soon you will learn to correlate letters and sounds without thinking, automatically. There is no need to worry about exceptions either. Usually the pronunciation, spelling and meaning of a word are remembered as one whole - you just know that such and such a word is pronounced this way.

Feature of English phonetics: we write “Manchester” - we read “Liverpool”

The phonetics of the English language has a noticeable feature: words are often read differently from how they are written, that is, from the spelling of a word it is not always possible to guess how it is pronounced. As linguists joke: “We write “Manchester”, but read “Liverpool.”

In the history of many languages, the following pattern can be traced: the phonetic structure becomes more complex, but the letters and spelling remain the same or change with great delay. English is no exception. At the dawn of its development, words were read and pronounced more or less similar, but over time this discrepancy became greater and greater, the situation was aggravated by the diversity of dialects, and now we are in words though, thought And through read a combination of letters - ough completely different, although the words themselves differ by one letter.

No one is in a hurry to reform English spelling, there are many reasons for this. For example, the English language has long no longer had a single “control center”. Reforms initiated in London may be coolly received in Sydney and rejected in Washington. And in general, spelling reform is always a painful process that meets resistance among a significant part of native speakers. It's much easier to leave it as is.

What is transcription and why is it needed?

Transcription in English is the recording of speech sounds using special characters. She should not be afraid or avoided, because she is a very good assistant in learning the language, which will be great for saving time and helping to avoid mistakes. One glance at the transcription of an English word is enough for you to understand how it is read correctly.

When you memorize or write down a new word that comes across in the text, you definitely need to look at its transcription and/or listen to the pronunciation (for example, in), otherwise you may remember it incorrectly, and then they will not understand you.

Is it possible to write English words in Russian letters?

Sometimes on websites or even in books you can see “English transcription in Russian” or “pronunciation of English words in Russian letters” - that is, writing English words in Russian letters. Like, why learn sophisticated icons if Can convey sounds in Russian letters? Then what it is forbidden. The phonetics of the Russian language differs from the English phonetics so much that the sound can only be conveyed very, very approximately. We simply do not have some sounds of English speech, as well as vice versa.

Transcription and pronunciation of all sounds of the English language separately (video)

With this interesting video table, you can listen to the sound of all sounds separately and see how they are recorded using transcription. Click on play and wait for the video to load completely, then click on the sound you want.

Please note that in the transcription, in addition to the symbols themselves denoting sounds, the following are used:

Square brackets– traditionally, transcription is always written in [square brackets]. For example: [z].
Vowel length icon– in English, vowels can be long or short, longitude is indicated by a colon after the vowel. For example: .
Accent icon– if a word with more than one syllable is transcribed, the stress must be indicated with an apostrophe (comma at the top). It is placed before the stressed syllable. For example: – decision.

In total, there are 44 sounds in the English language, which, like in Russian, are divided into consonants and vowels. Among them there are sounds similar to Russian, for example: [b] - [b], [n] - [n], and sounds that have no analogues in the Russian language: [ ð ], [θ ].

In English phonetics there are no such concepts as softness/hardness of consonants, but there is longitude of vowels (not characteristic of the Russian language) - vowels can be short [a] and long. It should also be noted that vowel sounds in English can be:

single (monophthongs): [ i: ], [ e ],
consisting of two sounds (diphtogni): [ ai ], [ ɔi ],
consisting of three sounds (triphthongs): [ aiə ].

Diphthongs and triphthongs are read and perceived as solid sounds.

English sound table with examples and cards

Having studied how English sounds are pronounced individually, be sure to listen to how they are read whole words. It is often easier for students to understand and hear the pronunciation of English sounds when they are heard as part of a word, rather than separately.

In the tables below, all sounds are given with example words. Using electronic cards you can listen to the pronunciation.

Consonants in English
[ f] fox	[ d] date	[ v] vase	[ k] cat
[ θ ] think	[ g] go	[ ð ] father	[ tʃ] change
[ s] say	[ dʒ] age	[ z] zoo	[ m] mom
[ ʃ ] ship	[ n] nose	[ ʒ ] pleasure	[ ŋ ] sing
[ h]hound	[ l] lazy	[ p] pen	[ r] red
[ b] bro	[ j] yes	[ t] today	[ w] wine

Vowel sounds in English
[ i:] he, she	[ ei] name	[ i] his, it	[ ai] line
[ e] ten	[ au] town	[ æ ] hat	[ ɔi] toy
[ a:] car	[ ou] go home	[ ɔ ] not	[ iə] here
[ ʌ ] nut	[ ɛə ] dare	[ u] good	[ uə] poor
[ u:] food	[ juə]Europe	[ ju:] tune	[ aiə] fire
[ ɜ: ] turn	[ auə] our	[ ə ] paper	[ ɔ: ] all

How to learn to pronounce English sounds?

There are two approaches:

Theoretical– textbooks usually have a detailed description of how to press your tongue to the roof of your mouth to form a certain sound. With an illustration showing a cross-section of a human head. The method is scientifically correct, but it is difficult to use on your own: not everyone will understand what it means to “slide the upper teeth along the lower lip” and will be able to perform this action.
Practical– listen, watch and repeat. I think it's much easier this way. You simply repeat after the announcer, trying to imitate the sound as accurately as possible. Pay attention to articulation, try to repeat all movements of the lips and tongue. Ideally, of course, someone should supervise, but you can simply record yourself on a webcam and watch from the outside.

If you want to repeat after the speaker, imitating his speech, I recommend using the materials on Puzzle English, namely the “Video Puzzles” exercises, which are aimed at developing listening comprehension. In video puzzles, you can slow down your speech and, as in Lingvaleo, watch the translation of words by clicking on them directly in the subtitles.

In video puzzles, you first need to watch a video and then assemble sentences from words.

Detailed review of this service:

In addition, many kind people have made many videos for practical training that are available on YouTube. For example, these two videos examine in detail the sounds of English speech in the American and British versions:

British pronunciation

American pronunciation

When you start learning English, you shouldn’t strive to achieve “perfect” pronunciation. Firstly, there are a lot of varieties of pronunciation (the “generalized” British and American versions are presented above), and secondly, even native speakers who speak professionally (for example, actors) often take lessons from special trainers in order to master the features of or another version of pronunciation - practicing speech is not an easy task.

Just try to speak in a way that 1) is understandable and 2) doesn’t hurt your ears too much.

Reading rules in English: table and cards

Reading rules in English are, rather, not even rules, but generalized recommendations that are not particularly accurate. Not only can, say, the letter “o” in different combinations and syllable types be read in nine different ways, but there are also exceptions. For example, in the words food, too it is read as , and in the words good, look – as [u]. There is no pattern here, you just need to remember this.

If you look in different books, it turns out that the rules of reading, and indeed phonetics in general, can be told differently by different authors with varying degrees of immersion in detail. I think that there is no point in delving into the jungle of phonetic science (you can dive into it ad infinitum), and the easiest way is to take as a basis the most simplified version of the reading rules, that is reading rules in English for children.

For this article, I took as a basis the rules given in the textbook “English. 1 – 4 classes in diagrams and tables” N. Vakulenko. Believe me, this is more than enough for both children and adults!

What is an open and closed syllable?

In English, there are open and closed syllables; it also matters whether it ends with the letter “r” and whether it is stressed.

A syllable is called open if:

the syllable ends with a vowel and is the last in the word,
a vowel is followed by another vowel,
a vowel is followed by a consonant, and followed by one or more vowels.

A syllable is closed if:

it is the last in the word, and ends with a consonant,
A vowel is followed by two or more consonants.

In these cards and the table below you can see how different letters are pronounced in different combinations and syllable types.

Reading the letter “A”
Reading rules
A – in an open syllable	name, face, cake
A [æ] – in a closed syllable	hat, cat, man
A – in a closed syllable on r	far, car, park
A [εə] – at the end of the word vowel + re	dare, care, stare
A [ɔ:] – combinations all, au	all, wall, fall, autumn
Reading the letter “O”
O [əu] – in an open syllable	no, go, home
O [ɒ] – in a closed stressed syllable	not, box, hot
O [ɜ:] – in some words with “wor”	world, word
O [ɔ:] – in a closed syllable with r	form, fork, horse, door, floor
O – in combination “oo”	too, food
O [u] – in combination “oo”	book, look, good
O – in combination “ow”	town, down
O [ɔɪ] – in combination “oy”	toy, boy, enjoy
O [ʊə] – in combination “oo”	poor
Reading the letter “U”
U, – in an open syllable	pupil, blue, student
U [ʌ] – in a closed syllable	nut, bus, cup
U [u] – in a closed syllable	put, full
U [ɜ:] – in combination “ur”	turn, hurt, burn
Reading the letter “E”
E – in an open syllable, combination “ee”, “ea”	he, she, see, street, meat, sea
E [e] – in a closed syllable, combination “ea”	hen, ten, bed, head, bread
E [ɜ:] – in combinations “er”, “ear”	her, heard
E [ɪə] – in combinations of “ear”	hear, near
Reading the letter “I”
i – in an open syllable	five, line, night, light
i [ɪ] – in a closed syllable	his, it, pig
i [ɜ:] – in combination “ir”	first, girl, bird
i – in combination “ire”	fire, tired
Reading the letter “Y”
Y – at the end of a word	try, my, cry
Y [ɪ] – at the end of a word	family, happy, lucky
Y [j] – at the beginning or middle of a word	yes, year, yellow
Reading the letter “C”
C [s] – before i, e, y	pencil, bicycle
C [k] – except for combinations ch, tch and not before i, e, y	cat, come
C – in combinations ch, tch	chair, change, match, catch
Reading the letter “S”
S [s] – except: at the end of words after ch. and voiced acc.	say, books, six
S [z] – at the end of words after ch. and voiced acc.	days, beds
S [ʃ] – in combination sh	shop, ship
Reading the letter “T”
T [t] – except combinations th	ten, teacher, today
T [ð] – in combination th	then, mother, there
T [θ] – in combination th	thin, sixth, thick
Reading the letter “P”
P [p] – except for the combination ph	pen, penalty, powder
P [f] – in combination ph	photo
Reading the letter “G”
G [g] – except for combinations ng, not before e, i, y	go, big, dog
G – before e, i, y	age, engineer
G [ŋ] – in combination ng at the end of a word	sing, bring, king
G [ŋg] – in combination ng in the middle of a word	strongest

The most important reading rules

The table above looks very busy, even intimidating. From it we can highlight several of the most important rules, which have almost no exceptions.

Basic rules for reading consonants

The combination ph is read as [f]: photo, Morpheus.
The combination th is read as [ð] or [θ]: think there. These sounds do not exist in the Russian language; their pronunciation requires some practice. Do not confuse them with the sounds [s], [z].
The combination ng at the end of a word is read as [ŋ] - this is a nasal (that is, pronounced as if in the nose) version of the sound [n]. A common mistake is to read it as . There is no “g” in this sound. Examples: strong, King Kong, wrong.
The combination sh is read as [ʃ]: ship, show, shop.
The letter “c” before i, e, y is read as [s]: celebrity, cent, pencil.
The letter “g” before i, e, y is read as: age, magic, gym.
The combination ch is read as: match, catch.

Basic rules for reading vowels

In an open stressed syllable, vowels are usually read as in: no, go, name, face, pupil, he, five. These can be monophthongs and diphthongs.
In a closed syllable, vowels are read as short monophthongs: nut, got, ten.

How to remember reading rules?

Most people who are fluent in English as a foreign language will not be able to immediately name even a few basic reading rules. Rules readings do not need to be memorized, you need to be able to use them. But is it possible to use what you don’t know? As much as possible! Thanks to frequent practice, knowledge turns into skills and actions begin to be performed automatically, unconsciously.

In order for the reading rules to quickly reach the automatic stage, I recommend:

Study the rules themselves - read, comprehend, speak examples out loud.
Practicing reading aloud will help develop pronunciation skills, and at the same time, the rules of reading will be reinforced. Take the text with audio, video with subtitles so that you have something to compare it with.
Do small written works - writing practice is useful for developing vocabulary, consolidating knowledge of grammar and, of course, improving spelling.

Friends! Now I’m not doing tutoring, but if you need a teacher, I recommend this wonderful site - there are native (and non-native) language teachers there👅 for all occasions and for every pocket :) I myself took more than 50 lessons with teachers I found there !

Learn more about what the prime, colon, parentheses, and other symbols mean.

You can look at another version of the English transcription and, if necessary, print or copy it for editing in Microsoft Word
English Transcription

Pronunciation of English sounds.

Pronunciation of English vowels.

The pronunciation of English sounds is presented in Russian letters; you should understand that it is not possible to convey the correct English pronunciation using the Russian alphabet.

ɑː long, deep and
ʌ short vowel a, as in the Russian word run.
ɒ = ɔ - short, open about
ɔː - long o
zː - long vowel e, as in the Russian word hedgehog.
æ - open e
e - like e in the word these
ə - unclear unstressed sound, similar to e
iː - long and
ɪ - short, open and
ʊ = u - short u, pronounced with a slight rounding of the lips.
uː - long u pronounced without strong rounding of the lips.

Two-vowel sounds

Pronunciation of English consonants.

p - p
b - b
m - m
f - f
v - in
s - s
z - z
t - resembles the Russian sound t, pronounced with the tongue positioned at the gums.
d - resembles the Russian sound d, pronounced with the tongue positioned at the gums.
n - resembles the Russian sound n, pronounced with the tongue positioned at the gums.
l - resembles the Russian sound l, pronounced with the tongue positioned at the gums.
r is a very hard sound pronounced without vibration of the tongue. Corresponds to the sound r in the word lot
ʃ - soft Russian sh
ʒ - soft Russian zh, as in the word yeast.
tʃ- h
ʤ - similar to the Russian sound j (voiced ch)
k - k
h - inhale, reminiscent of a weakly pronounced x sound
ju - long yu in the word southern
je - sound e in the word spruce
jɔ - sound е in the word fir-tree
jʌ - the sound I in the word pit
j - resembles the Russian sound й before vowels. Occurs in combination with vowels.

English consonant sounds that have no approximate correspondence in Russianː

w - formed with the help of rounded lips (as in whistling). It looks like a sound uttered with just lips. In translation it is denoted by the letters в or у ː W illiams - Williams, Williams.
ƞ - Open your mouth slightly and say n without closing your mouth.
ɵ - Move the slightly spread tip of your tongue between your teeth and pronounce Russian with
ð - Move the slightly spread tip of your tongue between your teeth and pronounce Russian z