Education · 10K+ downloads on Google Play
Phonic turns English pronunciation into a game. Hear a word, spell it out with IPA symbols, and find out exactly which sound you got wrong — in British or American English.
Built for ESL learners — and handy when you're preparing for
Interactive demo
This is the real game in miniature. Tap the phonetic symbols to spell the word. Stuck? Listen to it, look it up, or take a hint — just like in the app, every helping hand costs you points.
The app does this with 10,183 real words, graded across 20 levels — plus audio recorded for both accents.
How it works
Three steps that turn pronunciation from something you copy into something you understand.
Phonic shows you an English word — from simple monosyllables in level 1 to long, stress-shifting words later on.
wɜːdTap IPA symbols to build the transcription. From level 5 on you also have to place the stress mark yourself.
saʊndzCheck your answer and Phonic points at the exact phoneme that's off — “replace i with ɪ” — instead of just marking you wrong.
lɜːnLook up the definition, replay the audio, or ask for a hint on the single symbol you got wrong. Each one nudges your score down, so you learn to reach for them only when they count.
What's inside
Phonic is a practice app first — but everything you need to make sense of the symbols is built in.
You get the word, you build the IPA. The core game: 20 levels of increasing difficulty, with progress and accuracy tracked separately for every level.
The game in reverse: read a transcription and work out which English word it spells. It's the fastest way to stop reading IPA one symbol at a time.
ˈnɒlɪdʒ → knowledge
Browse vowels, diphthongs, r-coloured vowels, and voiced and voiceless consonants. Tap any example word to hear it.
Search the built-in dictionary for a word's transcription and definition, even when you're not playing.
Short, practical guidelines for the patterns English actually follows — plus a chapter on where the language came from.
Phonetics teaching isn't uniform. Phonic lets you match the notation in your textbook instead of arguing with it.
British or American
Received Pronunciation or General American — the words, the audio and the symbol set all follow your choice, and your scores are kept separately for each.
Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Burmese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Sign in with email or Google and your progress is shared across every device you play on.
A proper dark theme for late practice, or just follow the system setting.
Phonic doesn't show ads. Nothing interrupts a round, in the free version or the full one.
Pricing
No subscription and no adverts. Play the first six levels for free; unlock the rest once, and they stay unlocked.
€0forever
One-timein-app purchase
Price shown in the app, in your local currency.
No. The Learn section walks through every English sound with example words and audio, and the first levels use short, familiar words so the symbols click quickly. Most people start recognising the vowels within a couple of sessions.
Both. You choose British English (Received Pronunciation) or American English (General American), and the words, audio and symbol set follow. You can switch whenever you like — scores are kept per accent.
The first six levels of both games — roughly 800 words — plus the whole Learn section, the pronunciation rules and word look-up. A single in-app purchase unlocks all 20 levels and the full 10,000-word vocabulary. There's no subscription.
No. Adverts were removed from the app; the free version is simply free.
Phonic isn't an exam course, but it sharpens the listening and phonetic awareness those exams lean on, and it builds the vocabulary you meet in them. Many learners use it alongside their main preparation.
You can skip sign-in and play straight away. Registering with an email address or a Google account keeps your scores in sync if you play on more than one device.
Phonic is on Android today, through Google Play.
Six levels, both accents and the whole sounds library — free, with no adverts and nothing to cancel.
