i'm a student at university of biology and we use the frensh language so; i find some diffecult in my research because they publish with english.i hope to study english it's help me and it's so useful in our life this langage

Hi Jonatan

Thanks for your comment. We've relaunched the chart with the /ʊə/ sound which was previously missing. This is available as an iPad app and will also be updated here soon.

Hi Ted

These pronunciation tips videos might help your students with the /i:/ (as in 'green') and the /j/ (as in 'yes') sounds:

/i:/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/sounds/vo...

/j/  http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/pronunciation/mp...

Any advice from pronunication experts is very welcome!

Sally

 Hello!

 I had such a difficult lesson to pass at university,and I study English! But the phonemic chart was so useful that I got a really good mark! thank you!

The problem of voiced consonants - consonants followed by a final schwa - arises not so much because the phonemic chart with it's (commonly accepted) 44 English sounds is 'wrong', but because it attempts to characterise with single sounds consonants that are produced differently when present at the start of a word (as an 'initial') versus the end of a word (as a 'final'). A good example is the final 'k' in the word bank. Really listen to, and focus on what you feel in your mouth as you produce it, and you will hear a very definite - albeit much quieter click-like sound; it is very much like 'k<schwa>' with the schwa component producedmuch more quietly. Try saying 'job' without parting your lips after producing the final 'b' sound, and what you will hear yourself actually produce is 'jo'. In short, the phonemic sound set generalises and over-simplifies. Of course, one should avoid over-complicating. But sometimes simplification produces more problems than it solves.

The way round this is quite simple - to provide brief explanatory notes about why certain consonants (and conceivably some vowels and diphthongs) have varying degrees of inconsistency with respect to both their inherent sounds and the symbol used to represent them.

But does even UK English utilise just 44 sounds? A source of irritation to Scottish speakers, for instance, is the failure of many speakers to produce the 'ch' sound as in 'Loch'; as a jewish person familiar with several of the Yiddish words that have now been adopted as standard English - chutzpah and Chanakuh, for instance, I myself find similar failures of enunciation equally jarring.

But is even the English spoken within what is technically England limited to 44 sounds. I was born in North London where I grew up with a marked North London urban accent in which the glottle stop is commonplace. In the glottle stop, 't' sounds are dropped and replaced with a sound that both sounds different from, and is produced quite differently, from any of the 44 sounds comprising the accepted [UK] English phonemic set.

With many foreign words - and with them new sounds - being incoporated into the English language, might an official considered revision (extension) of the phonemic set be timely?

I understand that even two Chinese (Mandarin) words are now standard English vocabulary in English business circles. Those teaching business English might find the phonemic set as it currently stands rather limiting.