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Learning IPA Pronunciation with Anki

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I read a lot and often learn new vocabulary from text. Sometimes I guess the pronunciation of a new word incorrectly. I can check a pronunciation recording online, but it’s not always convenient to do that. I have dictionaries on all my devices, so I can read the IPA transcription of the word I want to learn, but I don’t read it confidently yet. I’ve decided to learn IPA properly.

I made an Anki deck to learn IPA symbols. The idea is to have a card for each symbol. On the front side of the card, there is the symbol and on the back side the correct pronunciation of the symbol, an example word and audio of its pronunciation.

Anki card showing an IPA symbol on the front side Anki card showing the IPA symbol, pronunciation audio, example word, and word audio on the back side

I took the list of IPA symbols, example words, and recordings of their pronunciation from the Cambridge Dictionary website. It has UK and US pronunciation variants. I use the US one.

I use it like this:

  • Open a card
  • Read the symbol aloud
  • Open the back side of the card
  • Listen to the correct pronunciation and the example word
  • Choose the difficulty based on how correct and fast I was: Again, Hard, Good, or Easy

I’m planning to learn all the symbols from the Cambridge Dictionary list. Then I will practice reading transcriptions of unfamiliar words and check myself by listening to the pronunciation in dictionaries or Forvo. The goal is to be able to learn the pronunciation of new words just by reading IPA transcriptions.