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In many English dictionaries, I saw the phonetic symbol of short-e is /e/ such as in bed (/bed/). However, I'm taught that the pronunciation of that is /ɛ/. Which one is right in standard English? Does such a difference exist for native speakers?

This question is very different from Could you clarify /e/ and /ɛ/? because I can very clearly understand the difference between /e/ and /ɛ/ in my mother tongue. I am asking which one is correct in standard English, and what's the native speakers' suggestion to English learners on these two sounds.

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    To people who care about such things, there's a slight difference in sound between the two vowels represented by [ɛ] and [e]. But I think I'm right in saying that most native speakers wouldn't really recognise any distinction - any given speaker would normally use only one version himself, but there's no "minimal pair" of different words that are distinguished by which of those two vowels are used. So really it's no more significant than the fact that (on average) she will articulate "the" phoneme in a higher pitch than he will.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 12:38
  • @Decapitated Soul Thanks, but I'm not asking how to clarify them apart. What I what to know is how English native speakers pronounce the short-e, or to say, what's the right pronunciation in standarad English.
    – C.K.
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 13:01
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    What do you mean by "standard"? Pronunciation of vowels varies considerably between countries. Could you tie it down to a particular area? Here is a pronunciation dictionary that allows you to hear various accents (click the LISTEN button). There are seven different ones for "bed"! wordreference.com/definition/bed
    – chasly - supports Monica
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 13:02
  • @PeterShor You can't treat [ɛ] and [e] as allophones since they have to be allophones of something; they are rather standards of sound that have allophones and it might be said that some allophones of the first are quite similar to allophones of the second, to the point even of not knowing which is which. I must mention my personal experience as I have got for the vowel in "bed" the American vowel (south) which is definitely [ɛ] and that I internalized; I still have it in spite of some training in RP and I can contrast it clearly with traditional English English [e] (1/2)
    – LPH
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 14:01
  • @PeterShor in its ideal form, that one being close to the French é. I is true that this ideal vowel is disappearing in British English (even in RP, which, let's recall that, a good twenty years ago wasn't spoken by much more than 3 % of the British population) but it isn't yet "dead and buried" and Wells' symbols are a testimony to that. I think the distinction has to be preserved for the time being, until at least when the time comes for a contemporary leading figure in this domain (such as J.C. Wells) to judge necessary to forget about it. (2/2)
    – LPH
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 14:01

2 Answers 2

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Which one is standard depends on which variety of English you speak.

In the U.S., the standard pronunciation is [ɛ]. If you say [bɛt], people would understand you to be saying bet, while if you say [bet], it might be heard as bait (although probably not if the meaning is clear from context).

In the U.K., the standard RP (upper-class) pronunciation used to be [e]. However, despite the fact that dictionaries still represent the phoneme as /e/, this has changed — see this blog post. Today, they're allophones; as @FumbleFingers says in the comments, both of them would be heard as bet, and various people use one or the other.

So when learning English, as a purely practical matter, you should use [ɛ], because that pronunciation will be clearly understood by both Americans and Brits.

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  • A good number of the pronunciations recorded in that blog are atrocious; it seems that their principle of selection of representative pronunciations of BrE is founded on an insistence on the lowest common denominator.
    – LPH
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 16:51
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    @LPH: whether you think the pronunciations are atrocious or not, Lexico has been keeping its pronunciation up to date with common modern standard British pronunciations. And they use /kat/ for cat, /bɛd/ for bed, /hɛː/ for hair, and /kjɔː/ for cure (this last one does sound atrocious to my American ears; it should be /kjʊr/, /kjər/, or maybe even /kjuər/).
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 19:08
  • Right, RP -ure is /kjʊər/, not far from /kjʊr/ as in diphthongs the second sound is always much less prominent. Would you believe that along with this regular pronunciation of -ure endings, as an exception in RP, "sure" is pronounced "ʃɔː"?
    – LPH
    Commented Dec 25, 2020 at 19:35
  • @LPH: sure and poor used to be pronounced /ʃʊə/ and /pʊə/ in RP, just like cure, moor, pure, tour, boor, and spoor. The only difference is that these two words changed their pronunciation to /ʃɔː/ and /pɔː/ in the early 20th century, before you learned English, while the others are changing their pronunciation afterward.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 28, 2020 at 21:35
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In AmE the pronunciation is rather [ɛ]: /bɛd/; in BrE the traditional pronunciation, considered to be RP by some, is [e]: /bed/. However, in BrE regional variants tend towards [ɛ] or are [ɛ]. This can be verified at John Wells Phonetic Blog.

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