Ekphonetic notation

Have you ever learned about letters and sounds in school? Well, ekphonetic notation is like a special way to write down how words sound.

When we write words with regular letters, like "cat," the letters don't always give a perfect clue as to how the word should be pronounced. But with ekphonetic notation, there are special symbols that help us understand exactly how a word sounds when it is spoken out loud.

For example, the word "cat" in ekphonetic notation looks like this: "kæt". The "æ" symbol tells us that the "a" sound in the word is pronounced differently than the "a" in "cat" with regular letters.

Ekphonetic notation is used by linguists and researchers to study different languages and how they are pronounced. It's kind of like a secret code for sounds that helps people communicate better and understand speech in a more detailed way.