Hello, now one question that we often ask is what's the best way to improve my pronunciation? Well, my first piece of advice is to try to learn each different sound of English. And in order to learn each different sound of English, it's very helpful to learn each different symbol that presents these sounds of English.

大家好！现在我们经常问的一个问题就是：提升发音最好的方法是什么啊？额，我的第一个建议则是试着学习英语的每一个语音。为了学习英语的每一个语音，学好代表语音的每一个不同的音标会有很大的帮助。

"Why do we need different symbols?"

“为什么我们需要不同的音标呢？”

Why do we need different symbols? I hear you ask. Well, in writing English, we use 26 letters of the alphabet. But there are more than 26 sounds in English. In fact, there are over 40 sounds in English. And it's not for you easy to show these using only the letters of the English alphabet, so that the system which uses groups of symbols.

为什么我们需要不同的音标？我听见你的这个问题了。在书面英语中，我们使用字母表中的26个字母。但是英语中的语音却多于26个。事实上，英语中有40多个的语音。并且对你们来说，只用英语字母表中的字母来展示这些语音是不容易的，所以语音体系中运用了不同类别的音标。

Now some of these symbols are of the same letters, and some of them are different. You can use the symbols to write out the pronunciation of words and in many dictionaries for English learners, you'll see the pronunciations written out using these special symbols.

现在有些音标和字母一样，有些则是不同的。你可以运用音标写出单词的发音，并且在许多适合英语学习者的字典中，你可以看到单词的发音则是用这些特殊的音标来表示的。

To show that it is the sounds which have been written and not for letters, the transcriptions of written are between slashes. For example, the pronunciation of word "pet" is written like this, /pet/. In this example, the sound's symbols look exactly the same as the letters, you can only tell what we are talking about "pronunciation" and not "spelling" because of the slashes.

为了区别写出来的是语音而非字母，音标外面是有两条斜线的。例如，单词“pet”的音标是像这样子写的，/pet/。在这个例子中，音标和字母拼写看起来基本上完全一样，你能区别这是“发音”而非“拼写”，靠的就是两条斜线。

However, some of words look very differently when you see the pronunciation. Look at this one, /'nɒlɪdʒ/, have you got any idea about this? It's the word "knowledge". And as you can see, it's very different from the spelling. So this is why it's very useful to learn the symbols.

但是，有些单词看起来跟发音音标的差异非常大。看看这个，/＇nɒlɪdʒ/，你知道这个词是什么吗？它是单词“knowledge”。如你所见，音标和拼写很不一样。这就是之所以学习音标很有用的缘故了。

You can't always match the letters of the word to the sounds of that word. So if you want to improve your English pronunciation, you should learn the different sounds, and if you want to learn the different sounds, you should learn the symbols.

你不能总是能将单词的字母和字母的发音相匹配。所以如果你想提升你的英语发音，你得学习不同的语音，如果你想学习不同的语音，你得学习音标。

And here is some good news, if you know the symbols on the sounds, you are able to use many dictionaries to find the pronunciation of any word in English, and you won't even need a teacher. So to help you learn the symbols of sounds, why not watching my videos here? Good luck and happy speaking!

学好音标的好处呢，则是如果你知道语音的音标，你能利用字典找到英语中任何一个单词的发音，你甚至不需要一位老师了。所以为了学好音标，大家可以看我的视频哦。祝你好运，学习快乐！