以前有万国音标即D.J.音标，(Daniel Jones所创的英国音)。但随着英语使用的范围扩大，有些音改变了，在美国语言学John S. Kenyon和Thomas A.Knott两位表兄弟修订了D.J.的发音，因其姓氏第一格字母都是K，所以称之K.K.音标。两人所编的发音词典A Pronouncing Dictionary of American，这是一套最常用的也是最权威的注音法，因此人们把美语标准发音惯称为KK音标。
所以我们现在知道该使用哪一种音标了，那就是通常情况下，我们应该使用DJ音标。
1、英国音是用 DJ (Daniel Jones 1881 – 1967 英国语音学家)音标(phonetic symbols)。
2、美国音是用K.K.(John S. Kenyon 与 Thomas A. Knott美国语言学家)音标。
3、IPA 是International Phonetic Alphabet(国际音标，即英国音标)。
4、RP 是 Received Pronunciation 的缩写，翻译为“可接受的发音”，即英国国家广播公司(BBC)的英语，可谓标准英语，但仍谦称为“可接受的发音”。
现在中学教材使用了新的音标符号， 即 Daniel Jones 于1977年在English Pronouncing Dictionary( 第 14 版 ) 中所使用的新的音标符号。(主要是元音变化)。现在出版的字典每个单词大多注有国际音标，以英国丹尼尔.琼斯(Daniel Jones)的语音词典最新版本(15版)为依据，为读者提供标准英语发音。
Daniel Jones (1881 - 1967) was a British phonetician. He was a disciple of Paul-Edouard Passy. He wrote The Pronunciation of English in 1909 and The outline of English Phonetics in 1918. This is considered to be the first comprehensive description of Received Pronunciation. He uses the term phoneme in the current sense.
Jones uses in his theory a two-parameter diagram to visualize how vowels are produced and he promoted the term cardinal vowel. The two parameters are tongue height and lip-shape. Many later models at the end of the twentieth century are still based on this model.
Jones studied the phonetics of various languages. In particular for example he did an analysis of the tone in Tswana. He developed new alphabets for African and Indian languages.
