By listening to each pronounciation. Just click on the loudspeaker symbol. How will you otherwise learn the difference between BE and AE pronounciation? There is no general rule.

Of course there are rules for how the phonetic symbols relate to the sounds, and they're explained somewhere in every dictionary, usually under a title such as 'Guide to pronunciation symbols.'

Many AE dictionaries use a similar system, which is based not on IPA but on the way phonics is usually taught to children in US schools. The general rule is that letters with a macron (dash) over them are long vowels, which means they sound like the name of the letter in the English alphabet: name, me, like, hope, rude. Vowels without a long sign are short by default: hat, bed, sit, top, bud. There will be a couple more symbols for the vowels of father and book, and the schwa is a schwa (upside-down small E), but that's mostly it. It's really not that hard.

The other tip is that in many AE dictionaries, the stress mark comes after the syllable stressed, not before it as in IPA.

I don't know exactly which symbols M-W uses, and since I'm not fond of the M-W website either, I'm afraid I don't want to volunteer to test this link. But it looks like it may be what you're looking for:

http://mw1.m-w.com/help/pronguide.htm



@Werner: —> pronunciation, pronunciation, pronunciation

Thanks, hm. You said it: This was what I was looking for.

Long u.

The letter between t and v is a (partial) exception to how to pronounce long vowels: The vowel sound in the name is the sound of a long u, but the y sound at the start of the name is not.