Pronunciation Guides by Language

English pronunciation is famously inconsistent, with 44 phonemes represented by just 26 letters. Words absorbed from French, Latin, and Greek kept their original spellings while sounds shifted over centuries.

Irish has one of the most complex pronunciation systems in Europe, with broad and slender consonant pairs and initial mutations that alter the first letter of words in certain grammatical contexts.

French features nasal vowels, silent final consonants, and smooth liaison between words. Stress falls on the final syllable of word groups rather than individual words.

Italian is melodic and largely phonetic. Double consonants are genuinely held longer, and c and g soften before e and i, producing ch and j sounds respectively.

Spanish is highly phonetic with five pure vowels. The rolled r and regional variation between Castilian and Latin American Spanish are the main pronunciation challenges.

German follows strict pronunciation rules with three umlaut vowels (ä, ö, ü) and consistent final devoicing — final d sounds like t, final b sounds like p.

Classical Latin has no silent letters. Every character is pronounced, vowels are either long or short, and v was pronounced like w in ancient times.

Japanese uses pitch accent rather than stress accent. Five pure vowels and a consonant-vowel syllable structure make it more regular than most European languages.

Modern Greek has five vowels each with one sound. Several letter combinations produce single phonemes, and stress is marked with an accent on every polysyllabic word.

Arabic features pharyngeal consonants, emphatic consonants that affect surrounding vowels, and a distinction between long and short vowels not shown in most written texts.

Portuguese has nasal vowels unique among Romance languages and significant vowel reduction in unstressed syllables, especially in European Portuguese.

Korean Hangul alphabet was scientifically designed to represent the language precisely. Three-way consonant contrast (lax, aspirated, tense) is the main challenge for learners.