5 exercises mapping tricky IPA consonant symbols to IT words.
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The IPA symbol /θ/ (voiceless "th") is the first sound in which IT word?
/θ/ is the voiceless "th" sound, made by placing the tongue tip lightly between or behind the upper teeth and pushing air through — the vocal cords do not vibrate. It begins thread /θred/, and also "throughput", "thumbnail" and "thirty". Many learners replace /θ/ with /t/, /s/, or /f/, turning "thread" into "tread", "sread" or "fred". To fix this, let the tongue touch the teeth and produce friction, not a stop. Contrast it with the voiced /ð/ in "the", where the vocal cords do vibrate.
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The symbol /ð/ (voiced "th") is the initial sound of which word?
/ð/ is the voiced "th" sound: the tongue is in the same position as for /θ/ (tip near the upper teeth), but the vocal cords vibrate. It begins the /ðə/, plus "this", "that", "these" and "they" — all common function words in spoken documentation. The voiceless /θ/ ("thread") and voiced /ð/ ("the") form a minimal contrast, so getting voicing right matters. Place your hand on your throat: for /ð/ you should feel a buzz; for /θ/ you should not. Avoid replacing it with /d/, which turns "the" into "duh".
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The symbol /ʃ/ (the "sh" sound) is heard in which IT word?
/ʃ/ is the "sh" sound, made by raising the tongue toward the roof of the mouth and rounding the lips slightly while pushing air through — a voiceless fricative. It ends cache /kæʃ/ (pronounced "cash", NOT "cash-ay" or "catch"), and appears in "shell", "push", "bash" and "hashing". Be careful: "cache" /kæʃ/ uses /ʃ/, while "catch" /kætʃ/ uses the affricate /tʃ/. Do not say "cash-ay" — that is the unrelated French word cachet. In IT, the cache is simply pronounced "cash".
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The symbol /ʒ/ (the "zh" sound) appears in the middle of which word?
/ʒ/ is the voiced counterpart of /ʃ/ — the "zh" sound, like the "s" in "measure" or "vision". The tongue raises toward the palate and the vocal cords vibrate. You hear it in the middle of measure /ˈmeʒə/, and in tech-adjacent words like "version" (in some accents) and "usual". It is a relatively rare sound in English and often borrowed from French (e.g. "garage", "genre"). Do not harden it into /dʒ/ ("measure" is not "mejure") or unvoice it into /ʃ/ ("meshure"). Keep it soft, voiced and continuous.
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The symbol /ŋ/ (the "ng" sound) is the final consonant of which word?
/ŋ/ is the velar nasal — the "ng" sound at the end of string /strɪŋ/, "strong" /strɒŋ/ and "strung" /strʌŋ/ (all three end in /ŋ/; only the vowel differs). The back of the tongue touches the soft palate and air flows out through the nose. In standard English, this is a single sound, NOT /n/ + a hard /ɡ/: "string" ends in /ŋ/ with no audible "g". Avoid adding a /ɡ/ ("strin-guh") or replacing it with /n/ ("strin"). It is extremely common in coding speech: "parsing", "logging", "running", "debugging".