Hi! Got an English text and want to see how to pronounce it? This online converter of English text to IPA phonetic transcription will translate your English text into its phonetic transcription using International Phonetic Alphabet. Paste or type your English text in the text field above and click “Show transcription” button (or use [Ctrl+Enter] shortcut from the text input area).
Features:
- Choose between British and American* pronunciation. When British option is selected the [r] sound at the end of the word is only voiced if followed by a vowel, which follows British phonetic convention.
- International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbols used.
- The structure of the text and sentences in it (line breaks, punctuation marks, etc.) is preserved in phonetic transcription output making it easier to read.
- An option to vary pronunciation depending on whether words are in stressed or weak position in the sentence, as in connected speech (checkbox “Show weak forms”).
- Words in CAPS are interpreted as acronyms if the word is not found in the database. Acronym transcriptions will be shown with hyphens between letters.
- In addition to commonly used vocabulary the database contains a very substantial amount of place names (including names of countries, their capitals, US states, UK counties), nationalities and popular names.
- You can output the text and its phonetic transcription along each other side-by-side or line-by-line to make back-reference to the original text easier. Just tick the appropriate checkbox in the input form.
- Where a word has a number of different pronunciations (highlighted in blue in the output) you can select the one that agrees with the context by clicking on it. To see a popup with a list of possible pronunciations move your mouse cursor over the word.
Note that different pronunciations of one word may have different meanings or may represent variations in pronunciation with the same meaning. If unsure which pronunciation is relevant in your particular case, consult a dictionary. - The dictionary database is regularly amended with most popular missing words (shown in red in the output).
- The text can be read out loud in browsers with speech synthesis support (Safari – recommended, Chrome).
*) American transcriptions are based on the open Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary.
Can’t you please make the application free for iOS users?
Hi! I can clearly see the phonetic transcription, and I can hit play to hear where the stress lies, but just curious – why aren’t stress and minor stress marks part of the transcription here, as they would be in a dictionary?
Should be there, unless it is a one syllable word.
j’aime bien ce site,il est vraiment bien pour les etudiants je le conseille
Firstly, thanks for the tool! It has proven itself to be very useful since times before the site’s name change.
Just a heads-up:
The British transcription for ‘super’ given above is /ˈs(j)uːpə/
Optional (limited) or no, there is no /j/ in that word in the standardised form. According to the above tool, this becomes a clearly enunciated /j/ in words which contain ‘super’ e.g. ‘supercilious’, ‘superficial’, ‘superfluous’, and ‘supersonic’ while maintaining the parentheses on the /j/ for prefixed words like ‘superbug’ and ‘superconductor’. Consider removing the /j/ as it is inaccurate and unnecessary. As a reference, check the following:
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/super_1
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/super
https://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/super_1
I feel American nurse should be nɚs, not nɜrs.
А можете сделать, чтобы ещё русские слова, предложения на английский переводило?
Откровенно говоря, это совсем другая задача. Гугл транслейт чем плох?
For your transcription of ‘year’ to / jɪr / I’m not sure I agree with the use of that / r / . Based on the IPA, that /r/ represents a ‘trill’ rather tha an ‘approximant’ / ɹ /
Just typed in “comb” and got “kəʊm” for British English. I was almost sure that was wrong so I went to US English and received “koʊm” which is more like what I was expecting. Kəʊm might be acceptable for a few vernacular forms of British English but would be very strange to the majority of speakers here. I’m still learning IPA and I just wanted to flag this because otherwise this has been really useful.
The əʊ in /kəʊm/ is the way that Received Pronunciation has standardized the vowel sound. It sounds pretty pretentious to a lot of people though, since it isn’t how most native speakers really say it in Britain. RP is based on one particular dialect frozen in time, which is why it probably sounds a bit weird to you. Go with what your ear tells you when transcribing. Just be aware that RP will always prescribe that diphthong.
Hello, thanks a lot for this tool!
I’m guessing it might be a bit complicated to implement, because of homophonic words, but is there any plan to allow reverse transcription ie. from phonetic to english? If not does anyone know a site that does that? I’m trying to teach a Deep Learning AI to learn poetry, it understands english syntax, and approximates lines length well enough however it doesn’t seem to catch on rhymes, which is why I’m looking into this.
Thanks again
It would be very useful to have a translator from phonetics to English text. I’m studying my Phonetics course for example and don’t recognize the word in Phonetic transcription.
Thanks, this feature is in the roadmap. No ETA at the moment though.
You will eventually gain that skill. You’ll have to work on understanding the sound relationships on the IPA charts and producing the sounds yourself. That’s part of the challenge of all phonetics classes. In theory, you should learn to be able to see any line of phonetic transcription (from any language) and at least imagine what it would sound like, even if producing it is a challenge for you. As long as it was transcribed correctly from English, you’ll know what the English word is.
you’re studying phonetics and you can’t read phonetic transcriptions?? maybe you’re just a bad student?