Dictionary Coverage vs Estimates
Dictionary words (about 200 common words: numbers, days, months, everyday vocabulary) return the standard phonemic transcription — the same notation you'd find in a learner's dictionary, in General American or Received Pronunciation depending on your accent toggle. Unknown words are transcribed by letter-to-sound rules: reliable for regular spelling, approximate for irregular ones (English loves those), and the output is always labelled as an estimate.
Reading IPA
- Consonants: /θ/ (th in think), /ð/ (th in this), /ʃ/ (sh), /ʒ/ (zh as in measure), /ŋ/ (ng), /tʃ/ (ch), /dʒ/ (j).
- Vowels: /iː/ (ee), /ɪ/ (i in bit), /e/ (e in bet), /æ/ (a in cat), /ɑː/ (a in father), /ɒ/ (o in hot, UK), /ɔː/ (aw), /ʊ/ (u in put), /uː/ (oo), /ʌ/ (u in cup), /ɜː/ (er), /ə/ (schwa — the lazy vowel), /eɪ/ (ay), /aɪ/ (eye), /ɔɪ/ (oy), /əʊ/ (oh, UK) /oʊ/ (oh, US), /aʊ/ (ow).
- The ˈ mark shows primary stress: /ˌprəˌnʌnsiˈeɪʃən/ — stress the syllable after it.
Why not a full dictionary?
A complete IPA dictionary is tens of megabytes — this page ships a curated core for instant offline transcription and falls back to rules for the long tail. For perfect transcriptions of any word, a learner's dictionary or a speech API beats every rule system, including this one. If the word you need is common and missing from the list, tell us — the core list grows each release.