IPA Phonetic Transcription of English Text

Paste your English text here:

British American

Transcription only Side by side with English text Line by line with English text

Show weak forms

Parentheses

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 the 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.
The 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”). Weak forms are italicized in the output.
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, Chrome).

*) American transcriptions are based on the open Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary.

We encourage students of linguistics/phonetics to do their own work during their assignments and remind them that submitting transcriptions produced by this website for academic credit is a breach of academic integrity.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

3.7K Comments

Newest

Oldest

Inline Feedbacks

View all comments

toPhonetics

6 months ago

NB: Audio playback!
The speech playback feature is heavily dependant on the OS/browser combination you use. If you want your comments about audio quality to be helpful, please, mention your OS and browser (ideally with versions).

At the moment we recommend Chrome for full audio playback functionality, which includes

wider choice of voice models,
looping
and speech highlighter features.

Safari dev team has been progressively destroying its in-browser voice support over the last few years and has other TTS implementation issues they don’t seem to be willing to address. There’s little we can do about it at the moment, unfortunately.

Let us know how Audio playback works for you by replying to this comment, especially if you use less common OS/browsers. Thanks!

Last edited 6 months ago by toPhonetics

Anon

6 months ago

Reply to toPhonetics

I’m on Firefox/Windows, and it’s not working for me.

Andrea

2 months ago

Reply to toPhonetics

Hi, audio playback is extremely fast, too fast for a non-native English speaker to learn, unless I’m doing something wrong..?

Thanks

toPhonetics

2 months ago

Reply to Andrea

You can change the playback rate with the slider next to the playback controls. The default speech rate may differ based on your OS and the browser. What OS/browser are you using?

Andrea

2 months ago

Reply to toPhonetics

Thanks guys, I’ve tried that but it is not correlating at all to changing speed? Great page by the way!

Andrea

2 months ago

Reply to Andrea

Chrome ..

toPhonetics

2 months ago

Reply to Andrea

What happens, the speech rate is not affected at all? What OS are you on, is it Chrome on Android by any chance?

Esther

3 days ago

I can still use the website normally on Chrome, but for the past two weeks, the audio hasn’t been working. Please kindly check. Both the British and American pronunciations are silent.
I’ve already checked my device and browser settings, but the issue persists.

toPhonetics

3 days ago

Reply to Esther

Indeed the Google remote voices in Chrome stopped working, will investigate.
Did you try selecting other voices? Daniel, Serena are good for British. Nicky, Samantha – for the American.

ana

3 days ago

I’m sad that neither iOS, Chrome, nor Edge are working with toPhonetics. The sounds aren’t natural. I don’t know which path to take.

toPhonetics

3 days ago

Reply to ana

Your operating system should allow you to download additional voices. Try installing English voices (both UK and US). Then they will appear in the voice selection dropdown. If you’re on mac, don’t install “enhanced” voices as Apple has not only made them unavailable in Safari, but they also block not-enhanced voices as well. They should appear in Chrome though.
Let us know if you want to try and sort it out together over the email.