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CugelTheClueless's avatar

What's the deal with /e/?

I met a British ESL teacher and CELTA trainer who insists that /e/ is the IPA symbol for the English “short e” sound (as in let). But my French-English dictionary says that /e/ stands for a vowel we don’t have in English (the “tense e” in French “café”), and that the symbol for the “e” in let (also the “lax e” in French fête) is the lower-case Greek epsilon (/ε/). What’s going on here? I’m sure the CELTA people can hear the difference. Is this a dispute over which country gets to use plain old “e” and which one gets stuck with messing around with the funny character that’s not on the keyboard?

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