In questions such as this one (What’s the pronunciation for loathed) answerers often answer pronunciation questions with special characters, as Matt does for that question by using ləʊðd. Though I already know how to pronounce the word loathed, I for the life of me can't look at those special characters and figure out how the pronunciation comes from them! How exactly do they work? Is there a reference somewhere for how each character is to be pronounced, so I can get a better handle on this system? It makes it hard for me to read questions and answers containing these symbols when I don't understand them.
Answer
The characters are from the International Phonetic Alphabet or IPA. To cover it fully would take more space that we've reasonably got here, but the Wikipedia link above should help you out if you care to dig in. Also, here is a link to the offical chart of the symbology.
And one more: this Merriam Webster pronunciation guide might be a better place for a first look.
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