Phonemic converter tool tips

The transcriber tool automatically starts converting as soon as a pause in text input is detected. The tool is consistently being updated and is completely free. This website does not contain any ads and does not collect any of your data. Your theme preference, last text input, and prefered alternatives are stored in your browser's local storage.

Settings

The settings can be modified by clicking on the options icon situated on the right-hand side of the screen, below the phonemic converter tool.

• Use slash notations - the phonemes of each transcribed word will be wrapped in slash notations.
• Hide stress symbols - Stress symbols (ˈ and ˌ) will not be included in the transcription.
• Text-to-Speech voice - will display an error message if your web browser does not have multiple TTS voices; will let you select a preferred voice if your web browser has multiple TTS voices.

Text-to-Speech audio

Once one or more valid words are detected, a play button will appear bottom-right of the phonemic converter tool. The Text-to-Speech voice is provided by your web browser's TTS voice. If your web browser doesn't have at least one voice, the play button will not be visible. Try using a different web browser if that's the case.

Clicking on the play button situated below the transcriber will read out loud the entirety of the text. Clicking on the play button situated in the top right corner of the detailed word window will read out loud that specific word only, disregarding context.

Color scheme

Once the phonemes are generated they will be displayed either in black or as highlighted blue text. Hovering over any phonemes will display the untranscribed word and additional alternative pronunciations, if available. The complete color scheme for characters in the transcription box is as follows:

• Red - word could not be converted into IPA phonemic transcription.
• Black - word has been transcribed and there are no alternative pronunciations available in the database.
• Pink - characters have been transcribed as an acronym.
• Blue - word has been transcribed and there are alternative pronunciations available in the database. Hover over the word and click on one of the alternative pronunciations to make it the main one.
• Grey - characters that have been detected at the beginning or at the end of a word but are invalid word characters (punctuation, numbers, etc.).

Acronyms

Acronyms are transcribed correctly as long as the letters are separated by a dot. An all-uppercase word will not be regarded as an acronym if its letters are not separated by dots.

Word context

A number of words are pronounced differently depending on context. For example, "the" can be transcribed as either /ðə/ or /ði/. If you want to transcribe multiple words at once but don't want their pronunciations to be influenced by context you should insert line breaks after each word.

Text-to-Speech

The Text-to-Speech audio will not always correspond with the transcribed text. The Text-to-Speech voice is generated by your web browser and does not directly interact with the phonemic transcription generated by the tool.

The phonemes are generated according to the North American English general pronunciation rules, however, UK Text-to-Speech voices might be available in the transcriber settings if they exist in your browser's TTS engine.

Phonemic vs phonetic transcriptions

This tool generates phonemic transcriptions and not phonetic transcriptions. Transcribing speech phonemically uses a single symbol for each phoneme of the language. The phonemic transcription is usually represented using slash notations. The phonetic transcription, noted within square brackets, is a representation of the actual sound heard during speech.

Transcription principles

The phonemic transcriptions generated by this tool are based on the CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) Pronouncing Dictionary. As opposed to other phonemic transcribers on the internet, text2ipa makes a clear distinction between phonemes and allophones. In most American English dialects, ɹ is considered an allophone of the /r/ phoneme and therefore noted as [ɹ]. The only rhotic phoneme used by our phonemic transcriber is /r/.