The phonetic symbol and sound e

(Reproduced from  EnglishClub)

This sound is found in words like bed and red, but also words such as head and instead:

bed = / bed / 

red = / red /

head = / hed /

instead = / ɪnsted /

However, the /e/ sound is not found in words such as equal and equivalent, despite the letter ‘e’ being used in the spelling:

equal = / i:kwəl / (here, the letter ‘e’ is sounded as / i: / ) and

equivalent = / ɪˈkwɪvələnt /  (here, the letter ‘e’ is sounded as / ɪ / in the first syllable but / ə / in the last syllable. More about that / ə / sound soon!)

You can maybe see here why it’s useful to have just one symbol per sound: We can't know how to pronounce words just by looking at the English spelling, but we can know how to pronounce any word by looking at its phonetic symbols.

Tomorrow we will look at /ə/. It is one of the most useful phonetic symbols, because we hear it everywhere in English, always in unstressed syllables.