What is Phonofinder?

Phonofinder is a tool that allows you to search for English words that contain one or more specific sounds. This may be useful for students of English who want to practice certain sounds and for teachers and speech therapists who are making practice materials for their students and clients.

What type of English does this use?

Spelling is based on American English and pronunciation focuses on what some people call General American English or Standard American English. These terms don’t have strict definitions, but basically, the transcriptions show pronunciations that are used widely in the US and not strongly associated with a specific region.

What words are included?

Phonofinder covers over 23,000 of the most common words in American English, including some common contractions, interjections, acronyms, and hyphenated terms. It also includes many forms of the same word (e.g., singular and plural nouns, present and past tense verbs), though not comprehensively.

It doesn’t include many proper nouns (apart from a few categories like countries and some languages), and it doesn’t include many less common and specialized words.

Phonofinder is intended as a practice tool rather than a dictionary or a comprehensive word list. The idea is that by limiting the word list somewhat, it’s possible to include more detail (like alternate pronunciations) and ensure accuracy.

Pronunciation variations

Many words can be pronounced in different ways. If these variations are fairly common, they’re generally included (e.g., it’s common to pronounce the word caught with either ɑ or ɔ, so both are included). To avoid making the results too messy, not every possible pronunciation is transcribed. Instead, there are enough transcriptions to give a sense of the possible variety and also bring up words based on various potential searches. If a variation is fairly rare, it’s not usually included. This is why searching for t won’t bring up the word better. This word is generally pronounced with the sound ɾ (a sound called an alveolar tap), instead of a normal t sound.

There are a few types of variations that aren’t included. These are ones that can be understood based on fairly consistent patterns (e.g., dropping t when it’s between most pairs of consonants, like in effects). These variations are left out both in order to avoid cluttering the results and because they’re probably better learned as rules elsewhere.

How to use Phonofinder

1. Enter the sound or sounds you’re looking for in the search bar using International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols without any spaces. Some IPA symbols are normal letters, so you can type them with your keyboard, but there are also buttons for symbols you’re not able to type.

2. Set the search mode in the first menu.

   • Sequence: searches for words with a series of consecutive sounds

   • Sounds: searches for words with the sounds in any order, consecutive or not

   • Starts with: searches for words starting with a sound or sequence of sounds

   • Ends with: searches for words ending with a sound or sequence of sounds

3. Set the vocabulary level in the second menu. Beginner includes a little over 3,000 of the most common words, Intermediate includes around 10,000 additional words along with the Beginner ones, and Advanced adds another 10,000 or so words.

4. Set the order of the results in the third menu. Short to long and Long to short sort words by the number of sounds they contain (which is often different from the number of letters). If there’s more than one pronunciation listed, this is based on the first transcription. Other options are Alphabetical and Random.

5. Press the Search button to see the results. In each row you’ll see the word followed by one or more IPA transcriptions (uncheck the IPA in results box to hide the transcriptions). If Phonofinder includes more than one word with the same spelling, notes about the specific word are included before the transcriptions, like use (verb) and use (noun).

For some examples of how to use these different options to practice, see the Practice Ideas page.

IPA conventions in Phonofinder

There are various ways to transcribe a given word, with different dictionaries using different IPA conventions and levels of detail, and additional variations based on the specific dialects covered. Here’s a summary of some of the ways Phonofinder transcribes words that may differ from some other resources.

• Unstressed vowels that closely resemble a classic schwa sound (e.g., idea), with the tongue fairly low, are written ə, while unstressed vowels that can range from ə to more of an ɪ sound with the tongue higher (e.g., often), are written ᵻ. This is a useful distinction for some people, but it’s the least conventional part of Phonofinder’s transcriptions, so check the Weak Vowels page if you’d like to learn more.

• The vowel in cup is written ʌ (and not ə like some dictionaries). For some people, these are equivalent, but for others they aren’t, so they’re kept separate. Additionally, these two sounds (ʌ as in upper and ə as in about) can often present separate challenges for some learners, so it’s useful to be able to search for one or the other.

• The main rhotic vowel (as in her) is written ɚ, regardless of whether the syllable is stressed or not (so ɝ is not used), in order to make it simpler to search for this sound.

• Other one-syllable vowel + r combinations are written ɪɹ, ɛɹ, ɑɹ, ɔɹ, and ʊɹ.

• Phonofinder applies the Mary-marry-merry merger, so words that some people pronounce eɪɹ or æɹ are written ɛɹ here. The hurry-furry merger is also used, so words some people pronounce ʌɹ have ɚ instead.

• Two-syllable vowel + r combinations are written with the first vowel followed by ɚ (e.g., aɪɚ as in tired).

• The wine-whine merger is applied, so words like what are written with w (and not with the voiceless ʍ).

• Words that can have a very clearly syllabic n after ʔ (e.g., gotten) or after d (e.g., sudden) include a version with the symbol n̩. Other words that could be interpreted as having syllabic n don’t use this symbol (instead, they’re transcribed with a weak vowel followed by n, like ᵻn in even). The idea here is that for many learners, words like gotten and sudden can feel like a unique challenge and require some separate practice from other words with n, and this makes them easily searchable.

• Words that are pronounced by the vast majority of speakers with an alveolar tap (ɾ as in water) or glottal stop (ʔ as in eaten) are written only with those symbols (and not with t or d). If a couple pronunciations are fairly common, however, variations are included (e.g., versions with t and ɾ for inhabitants and versions with ʔ and t for mountain).

• Words that can be pronounced with a nasal tap in place of nt (e.g., winter) are written with both nt and the nasal tap symbol, ɾ̃, since both are generally common. Some people pronounce these words with n instead (so winter sounds like winner). In order to simplify the transcriptions, this version isn’t included. Just search for ɾ̃ if you want to practice these words, whether you’re aiming for the nasal tap or a normal n.

• Voiceless stops are divided up into aspirated (e.g., pʰ as in pin) and unaspirated (e.g., p as in spin) versions.

Extra sounds

If you check the Show extra sounds box, you’ll see an extra section of buttons below the consonants. This section includes a few uncommon sounds that aren’t really in English except in a few injections and borderline words (like the click sound some people use to pronounce tsk tsk tsk). With such limited uses, these won’t be useful for most people. They’re just included for fun and for people interested in learning a few IPA symbols beyond the basic English ones.

What details aren’t transcribed?

While Phonofinder’s transcriptions include a lot of information, it’s necessary to leave out some phonetic detail in order to balance the amount of information with ease of use and clarity. Many details that aren’t included, like the ones listed below, follow consistent patterns, so they’re still easy to search for, even if they don’t appear in the transcriptions.

• Devoicing of certain consonants (e.g., l in place) isn’t indicated.

• Nasal vowels (as in some pronunciations of can’t and mountain) aren’t included.

• Syllabic versions of l and m aren’t included, so search for əl to find words like bagel and ᵻm for words like rhythm. Syllabic n is included when it comes after ʔ and d (e.g., gotten, sudden), but not in other possible contexts (see IPA conventions in Phonofinder on this page for a little more about this).

• In many words, n (and occasionally m) can shift to other nasal sounds, like n becoming ŋ in include and m becoming ɱ in symphony. Apart from some of the most common n-to-ŋ changes, these variations generally aren’t included. They’re pretty easy to search for, though, since the change is based on the following consonant. If you want to practice words that can have ɱ, for example, you can search for the sequence mf.

• As mentioned in the Pronunciation variations section above, many pattern-based variations aren’t included. This includes dropping p, t, d, k, g, and θ when they’re between some consonants (e.g., in months); changing tʃ and dʒ to ʃ and ʒ, respectively, (e.g., in actually); and the optional relaxed vowel between certain vowels and l (e.g., riəl for real and taʊəl for towel).

• Another of these pattern-based variations involves changes to æ before nasal consonants (called æ-tensing). Phonofinder doesn’t include this either, so sang is written sæŋ, even though it’s usually pronounced seɪŋ, and plan is written plæn, even though it’s often something like pleən. Just search for the sequences æm, æn, and æŋ, if you want to practice these.