This introduction gives you the examples of the sounds /e/ and /É›/, but it is the same principle for all other sounds.
/e/ and /É›/ are sounds. Sounds are transcribed with symbols, a bit like you use symbols to transcribe music.
All sound symbols form the phonetic alphabet. This alphabet allows you to transcribe all languages in the world, as it was designed especially for that objective.
However, as you already know, each language has its own way of spelling these sounds in its everyday language. Some languages use the Latin alphabet, Greek people have their own alphabet, several countries use the Cyrillic alphabet etc.
Some phonetic signs look like letters from our Latin or Cyrillic (and some other) alphabets. This is the case for example of the phonetic sign /e/.
This is why I have adopted a colour code in my lessons to avoid all confusion between the phonetic sign, and the letter (or group of letters) of the alphabet that write this sound.
Sounds are noted in my lessons in red, and between two slashes. Like this: /e/ However, you also see it written with brackets sometimes: [e]
Letters or groups of letters are noted in my lessons between quotation marks, and are written in green. Like that: "e"
