The English Phonetic Alphabet. EPA is fun and easy to use because
it has only computer keyboard symbols and letters that represent the
sounds you expect them to make. It is smart, simple, and long
overdue. English teachers love it and students love it more!
What happened before?
The Latin alphabet or ABCs have been used to represent the
English language since 1476 when William Caxton opened his
printing press in London, England. The problem is that the Latin
alphabet has only 26 symbols. English as a spoken language has
been developing since 450 AD and commonly uses 40 sounds. The
Latin alphabet has never accurately represented the English
spoken language.
In 1886, an international group developed an enormous bank of
symbols to represent every sound in human speech. It was a great
idea, and it was called the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
However, the first issue the English language has with IPA is that it is
based on the French language. In French, the letter e is called i
and the letter i is spelled ay and so on… In other words, the IPA
symbols represent French, not English sounds. It doesn’t work. The
other major problem with IPA is that IPA symbols are not available
on standard computer keyboards. The International Phonetic
Alphabet is computer hostile and, therefore, obsolete.
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There are 40 sounds in English including 24 consonant sounds and
16 vowel sounds.
Here are their English Phonetic Alphabet symbols:

24 Consonant Sounds
18 symbols are familiar (because they represent the
sound you expect)
/b/ boy
/d/ dog
/f/ five
/g/ good
/h/ house
/j/ July
/k/ king
/l/ lemon
/m/ money
/n/ never
/p/ people
/r/ red
/s/ summer
/t/ time
/v/ visa
/w/ work
/y/ yellow
/z/ zoo
6 symbols are new (but they logically represent their
sounds)
/SH/ shoe
/CH/ church
/TH/ think (tongue between your teeth and blow air out)
/th/ then (tongue between your teeth and suck air in)
/ng/ Hong Kong
/Zh/ Asia, beige, television (there is no English letter for /Zh/)

Note:
There is no ‘c’, ‘q’ or ‘x’ in the phonetic alphabet because all the sounds they
make are represented by other letters.
‘c’ usually makes the sound /s/ as in city or /k/ as in cat
‘q’ usually makes the sound /kw/ as in queen
‘x’ usually makes the sound /eks/ as in x-men
16 Vowel Sounds
 Vowel Sounds – a, e, i, o, u

/Ay/, /a/, /Ey/, /e/, /Iy/, /i/, /Ow/, /o/, /Uw/, /u/, /^/, /Oy/, /Aw/,
/Er/, /Ar/, /Or/