There / their / they're

Reading math symbols

English phonemic alphabet

This chart summarizes the phonemis in standard British English pronunciation:

If you want to know the position of each of these sounds, check Bruce Myhre's images for both vowels and consonants.

If you want to know more about this phonemic alphabet you might try one of these text to phonemic symbols converters:

• https://tophonetics.com/ - It converts text in English to phonemic symbols and you can also listen to the audio of the passage chosen.
• http://www.photransedit.com/ - It converts text of any length to phonemic symbols.

Text in phonetic symbols

Can you guess what the original text in English is? Have a try:

| ˈjestədi ˈaɪ həd ə ˈɡreɪt deɪ | ˈfɜːst | ˈaɪ wəʊk ʌp ət ˈsevn̩ əˈklɒk ɪn ðə ˈmɔːnɪŋ ənd ðen ˈaɪ həd ˈbrekfəst | nekst | ˈaɪ red ə bʊk fər əˈbaʊt tuː ˈaʊəz | ˈleɪtər ɒn ˈaɪ dɪd səm ˈeksəsaɪzɪz ənd wɒtʃt ˌtiːˈviː fə wʌn ˈaʊə |
| ət wʌn maɪ ˈsɪstər ənd ˈaɪ kʊkt lʌntʃ ənd ðen ɔːl ðə ˈfæməli həd lʌntʃ təˈɡeðə | ðen | wi ˈwent fər ə wɔːk ənd rɪˈtɜːnd həʊm ət sɪks |
ˈɑːftə ðæt | ˈaɪ ˈstʌdɪd fə tuː ˈaʊəz bət ˈaɪ ˈdɪdnt ˈstʌdi frentʃ ɔːr ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ | ət naɪn əˈklɒk wi həd ˈdɪnər ənd ˈfaɪnəli wi ˈwent tə bed ət ɪˈlevn̩ |

When to double the final consonant

Pronunciation of past simple "-ed"

Phonemic chart for English

This chart contains the sounds that stardard English uses:

How to read numbers in English

BASIC NUMBERS

Remember that large numbers are separated by commas: 123,456,789 and decimals need dots: 1.25

MORE DIFFICULT NUMBERS
We don't normally write numbers with words, but it's possible to do this and, of course, this will show how we say the numbers.

In writing large numbers, American English uses a comma ( , ) to separate thousands, millions, etc. American English also uses a hyphen ( - ) to separate "tens" words (twenty, fifty, etc.) and
"ones" words (one, three, six, etc.)

Examples:

written   said
1,011   one thousand eleven
   
21,011   twenty-one thousand eleven
   
721,011   seven hundred twenty-one thousand eleven
 ....................................................................................................................................
1,256,721   one million two hundred fifty-six thousand seven hundred twenty-one
   
31,256,721   thirty-one million two hundred fifty-six thousand seven hundred twenty-one
   
631,256,721   six hundred thirty-one million two hundred fifty-six thousand seven hundred twenty-one
 ....................................................................................................................................
1,492,638,526   one billion four hundred ninety-two million six hundred thirty-eight thousand five hundred twenty-six
   
41,492,638,526 forty-one billion four hundred ninety-two million six hundred thirty-eight thousand five hundred twenty-six
   
941,492,638,526  nine hundred forty-one billion four hundred ninety-two million six hundred thirty-eight thousand five hundred twenty-six
__________________________________________________________________

 NOTES:

1. In American English, the order of large numbers is thousand, million, billion, trillion, etc. (1,000; 1,000,000; 1,000,000,000; 1,000,000,000,000; etc.)
2. In American English a thousand million is a billion, but in British English, a thousand million is a milliard.
3. When saying large numbers, do not make thousand, million, billion, trillion, etc. plural. (WRONG: *twenty thousands dollars; *five millions people; CORRRECT: twenty thousand dollars; five million people)
4. Commas separate thousands, millions, etc. (21,011-31,256,721-941,492,638,526)
5. People often say "a" instead of "one" before hundred, thousand, etc. and they often add "and" before the last number (a hundred and twenty-one / a thousand and eleven)

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BRITISH AND AMERICAN ENGLISH (from Wikipedia)

	Common British vernacular	Common American vernacular	Common British vernacular
	"How many marbles do you have?"	"What is your house number?"	"Which bus goes to the high street?"
101	"A hundred and one."	"One-oh-one." Here, "oh" is used for the digit zero.	"One-oh-one."
109	"A hundred and nine."	"One-oh-nine."	"One-oh-nine."
110	"A hundred and ten."	"One-ten."	"One-one-oh."
117	"A hundred and seventeen."	"One-seventeen."	"One-one-seven."
120	"A hundred and twenty."	"One-twenty."	"One-two-oh", "One-two-zero."
152	"A hundred and fifty-two."	"One-fifty-two."	"One-five-two."
208	"Two hundred and eight."	"Two-oh-eight."	"Two-oh-eight."
334	"Three hundred and thirty-four."	"Three-thirty-four."	"Three-three-four."

ORDINAL NUMBERS AND FRACTIONS

Ordinal numbers are also used for fractions:

• 1/10 - one tenth
• 3/4 - three quarters
• 15/16 - fifteen sixteenths

SPECIAL NUMBERS

Some numbers have special names in certain contexts:

0:

• zero: formal scientific usage
• naught / nought: mostly British usage
• aught: Mostly archaic but still occasionally used when a digit in mid-number is 0 (as in "thirty-aught-six", the .30-06 Springfield rifle cartridge and by association guns that fire it)
• oh: used when spelling numbers (like telephone, bank account, bus line [British: bus route])
• nil: in general sport scores, British usage ("The score is two–nil.")
• nothing: in general sport scores, American usage ("The score is two–nothing.")
• null: used technically to refer to an object or idea related to nothingness. The 0th aleph number (\aleph_0) is pronounced "aleph-null".
• love: in tennis, badminton, squash and similar sports (origin disputed, often said to come from French l'œuf, "egg"; but the Oxford English Dictionary mentions the phrase for love, meaning nothing is at risk)

1:

• ace in certain sports and games, as in tennis or golf, indicating success with one stroke, and the face of a die, playing card or domino half with one pip
• birdie in golf denotes one stroke less than par, and bogey, one stroke more than par

2:

• couple
• pair
• eagle in golf denotes two strokes less than par
• duo

3:

• trio

6:

• half a dozen

12: 

• a dozen (first power of the duodecimal base), used mostly in commerce

100:

• A century, also used in cricket scores and in cycling for 100 miles.
• A ton, in Commonwealth English, the speed of 100 mph[5] or 100 km/h.

120:

• A great hundred or long hundred (twelve tens; as opposed to the small hundred, i.e. 100 or ten tens), also called small gross (ten dozens), both archaic

144: 

• a gross (a dozen dozens, second power of the duodecimal base), used mostly in commerce

10100: 

• googol (1 followed by 100 zeros), used in mathematics; not to be confused with the name of the company Google (which was originally a misspelling of googol)

COMBINATIONS OF NUMBERS IN SPORT

1–0    British English: one-nil; American English: one-nothing, one-zip, or one-zero

0–0    British English: nil-nil, or more rarely nil all; American English: zero-zero or nothing-nothing, (occasionally scoreless or no score)

2–2    two-two or two all; American English also twos, two to two, even at two, or two up.

REFERENCE:
http://www.studyenglishtoday.net/cardinal-numbers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_numerals

Homophones in English

How to pronounce the -s/-es of third person present simple verbs

This inforgraphic will let you see the three possible pronounciation patterns for the final -(e)s either in present simple verbs or in plural nouns:

Phonemic chart

This phonemic chart contains the standard sound of British Received Pronunciation. If you want to try the interactive version, go to the original interactive chart in the British Council website.

Phonetic symbols used in Standard British English

The english phonetic alphabet from Ana Arias Castro

IPA Symbols for English

The IPA is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet, even though certain symbols are taken from other alphabets. It represents oral language and it can be used to represent any oral language: English, Galician or Chinese, for instance. The IPA is particularly valuable for learners of languages which do not have a perfect letter-sound correspondence.

These are the symbols used to represent standard British English. Other varieties might require other symbols.

The Sounds of English and the IPA

The IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet was designed to represent the pronunciation of languages and therefore it consists of many different symbols but only some of them are used to represent each language.

Different dialects may have other sounds but the ones in these sheets are the most common ones in English language dictionaries.

• sheet with the most common spellings
• sheet with the sounds of English from www.antimoon.com
• click on each symbol and listen to the pronunciation

ESL / EFL "Every Breath You Take" by The Police

 ACTIVITIES

• Write the words in three groups: break, day, face, make, play, embrace, say, stay, take, trace, aches and take.

 

/ei/	/eis/	/eik/
day	face	break

• Now complete the song with those words:

 EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE

1                 Every breath you __________

Every move you __________

Every bond you _________

Every step you _________

I’ll be watching you.

2                 Every single __________

Every word you __________

Every game you __________

Every night you __________

I’ll be watching you.

3                 Oh can’t you see

You belong to me

How my poor heart __________

With every step you take.

4                 Since you’ve gone

I’ve been lost without a __________

I dream at night I can only see your _________

I look around but it’s you I can’t __________

I feel so cold and I long for your ___________

I keep crying, baby, baby, please

More songs and activities for English as a Foreign Language students.

ESL / EFL English sounds

Phonemes of the international phonetic alphabet used in English

If you are interested in learning the phonetic symbols of the English language, the BBC Learning English webside provides a good chart that summarizes them and that can be downloadable in a pdf version.

When trying to learn the sounds it is always a good idea to have a good chart with all the sounds.

Pronunciation tips - BBC learning English

However, this website provides many other useful sections such as an introduction, the sounds of English, features of English, quizzes and programmes. Most of the texts and audio files can be downloaded so that you can continue your study work off line.

The sounds of English section concentrates on those which can be confused by speakers of other languages.

In sum, this is an excellent site to improve one's English.