Today in one of my classes I was explaining RP (Received Pronunciation) which you could call British English or English English. Not to be confused with American English, Scottish English, Welsh English, Irish English or International English. IPA is International Phonetic Alphabet.
RP is one standardised way to pronounce each word sound (phoneme) and has a symbol to represent it. If you own a dictionary or look up a definition online, either below or next to the word are symbols that show how to pronounce it. It will also tell you which English it is (British, American etc.)
The sounds for these phonemes can be found on a phonetic chart, being British I use the Received Pronunciation one to help people with their English pronunciation.
Some of my Japanese students use katakana to write out English words but not all English sounds are in the Japanese writing system. For example write in katakana, the words bus (ﾊﾞｽ) and bath (ﾊﾞｽ) , they are the same. But, using RP phonemes, bus is /bʌs/ and bath is /bɑːθ/.
Once you have learnt these symbols, you will know the correct pronunciation of the word; saying it correctly though, is a bigger challenge because these sounds don't exist in the Japanese language.
Incorrect pronunciation can be confusing but sometimes your sentence will help the listener understand; I have never caught a bath to Tokyo and I don't think a long hot bus is relaxing.
If you want to improve your English pronunciation, I do recommend you looking into English phonemes and how they sound. /ɡʊd/ /lʌk/
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