Phonetics

Phonetics is the study of the sounds of speech. It includes understanding how sounds are made using the mouth, nose, teeth and tongue, and also understanding how the ear hears those sounds and can tell them apart.
A study of phonetics involves practicing producing (sometimes exotic) sounds, and figuring out which sound you heard. The wave form of each sound can be analysed with the help of computer programs. In sign language, phonetics refers to the the possible shapes, movements and use of physical space.

There are three types of the study of the sounds of language. Acoustic Phonetics is the study of the physical properties of sounds.

Auditory Phonetics is the study of the way listeners perceive sounds. Articulatory Phonetics is the study of how the vocal tracts produce the sounds. This article will only describe articulatory phonetics.

The orthography (spelling) of words in misleading, especially in English. One sound can be represented by several different combinations of letters. For example, all of the following words contain the same vowel sound: he, believe, Lee, Caesar, key, amoeba, loudly, machine, people, and sea. 

The discrepancy between spelling and sounds led to the formation of the International Phonetics Alphabet (IPA.) The symbols used in this alphabet can be used to represent all sounds of all human languages. The following is the English Phonetic alphabet. You might want to memorize all of these symbols, as most foreign language dictionaries use the IPA.

Phonetic Alphabet for English Pronunciation
p	pill	d	dill	h	heal	ʌ	but
b	bill	n	neal	l	leaf	aj	light
m	mill	s	seal	r	reef	ɔj	boy
f	feel	z	zeal	j	you	ɪ	bit
v	veal	č	chill	w	witch	ɛ	bet
θ	thigh	ǰ	Jill	i	beet	ʊ	foot
ð	thy	ʍ	which	e	bait	ɔ	awe
š	shill	k	kill	u	boot	a	bar
ž	azure	g	gill	o	boat	ə	sofa
t	till	ŋ	ring	æ	bat	aw	cow

Some speakers of English pronounce the words which and witch differently, but if you pronounce both words identically, just use w for both words. The sounds /ʌ/ and /ə/ are pronounced the same, but the former is used in stressed syllables, while the latter is used in unstressed syllables. This list does not even begin to include all of the phonetic symbols though. One other symbol is the glottal stop, ʔ which is somewhat rare in English. Some linguists in the United States traditionally use different symbols than the IPA symbols. These are listed below.
http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/