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กราบเรียนท่านอาจารย์ครับ,

คำว่า bed /bɛd/
ตัวอย่างในหนังสือเป็น bed /bed/

ปกติ มสธ.ใช้มาตรฐาน RP ทุกวิชา รวมทั้งวิชานี้ สำหรับคำนี้ ทำไมใช้ IPA /e/ ไม่ใช้ /ɛ/ ครับ

กราบขอบพระคุณครับ

It seems that the tradition in transcribing RP is to use /e/ rather than /ɛ/ here. However, this doesn’t mean that the way the sound is pronounced is actually different. You should take a look at the vowel charts for RP and General American at the Wikipedia page for “English phonology”. There is a note there as follows:

“RP transcriptions use /e/ rather than /ɛ/ largely for convenience and historical tradition; it does not necessarily represent a different sound from the General American phoneme, although the RP vowel may be described as somewhat less open than the American one.”

I think you should focus on the openness of this sound and try to pronounce it as /ɛ/. Don’t let “bed” sound like “bade” (/beɪd/ or /be:d/), where the vowel is more closed (higher) and longer as well. Many Thai people have a problem distinguishing these two sounds. Here are some minimal pairs to contrast them:

sled /ɛ/ vs. slayed /e/ or /eɪ/ in’stead /ɛ/ vs. stayed /e/ or /eɪ/ bled /ɛ/ vs. blade /e/ or /eɪ/

Hope that helps!

That is very helpful for me.
Thank you very much.