Introducing English Linguistics

The phonetic alphabet
To study phonemes, it is important to use a system of symbols that repre-
sent one and only one sound. To see why such a system is necessary, it is
useful to compare the English alphabet with a phonetic alphabet. In
alphabetic writing systems, there is a (loose) association between letters of
the alphabet, or graphemes, and sounds. In English, the graphemes c-a-t
in the word cat correspond to the three phonemes in this word: /k/, /æ/,
The sounds of English
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and /t/. But as is the case in most alphabetic writing systems, there is not
a one-to-one correspondence between sound and grapheme – graphemes
can have more than one pronunciation. This is why the grapheme a in cat
can be associated with many different sounds: /ei/ in broadway, /i/ in sub-
st