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How to pronounce "black" in British English:
blæk
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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.

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3.8K Comments
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Diego
Diego
3 days ago

Is there a way to include all syllable breaks? (IPA marks them with “.”)

Noah Ross
Noah Ross
4 days ago

Hello,
Why are there strange characters such as ” ‘ ” and “,” in the phonetics of some words? Is there any significance to these characters, or can they be removed without an effect?
Best,
Noah

Noah Ross
Noah Ross
4 days ago
Reply to  toPhonetics

Ok thank you very much.

sun
sun
5 days ago

I’m a regular user of tophonetics, but the new Cloudflare human verification is disrupting my use. It’s often cumbersome or fails to load, making the tool hard to access.
 
Could you adjust it to balance security and usability?
 
Thanks

Noah
Noah
2 days ago
Reply to  toPhonetics

Hello,
I’m getting the same error. What word/character count and/or submissions per minute count as too high?
Best

Lanh
Lanh
8 days ago

pls add more function to export transcript text to pdf, because i can’t copy to past on MC word sheet.

Andrew
Andrew
9 days ago

My sister is so interesting. – maɪ ˈsɪstə z səʊ ˈɪntrɛstɪŋ.?
may be : sɪstər iz

Aditi Maitra
Aditi Maitra
13 days ago

Audio quality is not come all the time. Very rare I get ‘Audio’. My request ,kindly enhance the Audio quality. Thank you.

JACK
JACK
17 days ago

能直接粘贴到word里吗

Original
18 days ago

Hello, humanoid still doesn’t work. I don’t need it anymore but I still think you should add a translation.

Noah
Noah
19 days ago

Why do the “aw” and “or” sounds share the same British phonetic?

Anon
Anon
21 days ago

What dictionary is used for the British English transcription?