espeak-ng/docs/phonemes.md

Table of contents

• Phonemes
  • English Consonants
  • Some Additional Consonants
  • English Vowels
  • Some Additional Vowels

Phonemes

In general a different set of phonemes can be defined for each language.

In most cases different languages inherit the same basic set of consonants. They can add to these or modify them as needed.

The phoneme mnemonics are based on the scheme by Kirshenbaum which represents International Phonetic Alphabet symbols using ascii characters. See: www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/ascii-ipa.pdf.

Phoneme mnemonics can be used directly in the text input to espeak-ng. They are enclosed within double square brackets. Spaces are used to separate words, and all stressed syllables must be marked explicitly. eg:
D,Is Iz sVm f@n'EtIk t'Ekst 'InpUt

English Consonants

Phoneme	Phoneme
[p]	[b]
[t]	[d]
[tS] church	[dZ] judge
[k]	[g]
[f]	[v]
[T] thin	[D] this
[s]	[z]
[S] shop	[Z] pleasure
[h]
[m]	[n]
[N] sing
[l]	[r] red (Omitted if not immediately followed by a vowel).
[j] yes	[w]

Some Additional Consonants

Phoneme	Phoneme
[C]\ German ich	[x] German buch
[l^] Italian gli	[n^] Spanish ñ

English Vowels

These are the phonemes which are used by the English spelling-to-phoneme translations (en_rules and en_list). In some varieties of English different phonemes may have the same sound, but they are kept separate because they may differ in another variety.

In rhotic accents, such as General American, the phonemes [3:], [A@], [e@], [i@], [O@], [U@] include the "r" sound.

Phoneme	Pronunciation	Description
[@]	alpha	schwa
[3]	better	rhotic schwa. In British English this is the same as [@], but it includes 'r' colouring in American and other rhotic accents. In these cases a separate [r] should not be included unless it is followed immediately by another vowel.
[3:]	nurse
[@L]	simple
[@2]	the Used only for "the".
[@5]	to Used only for "to".
[a]	trap
[aa]	bath	This is [a] in some accents, [A:] in others.
[a#]	about	This may be [@] or may be a more open schwa.
[A:]	palm
[A@]	start
[E]	dress
[e@]	square
[I]	kit
[I2]	intend	As [I], but also indicates an unstressed syllable.
[i]	happy	An unstressed "i" sound at the end of a word.
[i:]	fleece
[i@]	near
[0]	lot
[V]	strut
[u:]	goose
[U]	foot
[U@]	cure
[O:]	thought
[O@]	north
[o@]	force
[aI]	price
[eI]	face
[OI]	choice
[aU]	mouth
[oU]	goat
[aI@]	science
[aU@]	hour

Some Additional Vowels

Other languages will have their own vowel definitions, eg:

Phoneme	Description
[e]	German eh, French é
[o]	German oo, French o
[y]	German ü, French u
[Y]	German ö, French oe

[:] can be used to lengthen a vowel, eg [e:]