What are the pharyngeals ħ and ʕ?

ح is the voiceless pharyngeal fricative /ħ/ and ع is the voiced pharyngeal fricative /ʕ/. Both are produced by constricting the pharynx and have no English equivalent, which is why explicit IPA symbols matter.

How does shadda work?

Shadda (ّ) marks gemination — a doubled consonant. The tool repeats the IPA of the consonant it sits on, so رَبّ transcribes with /bb/. A harakat on a shadda'd letter still applies after the geminate.

Are emphatic consonants shown?

Yes. ص ط ض ظ are the emphatic (pharyngealized) counterparts of س ت د/ذ and surface as /sˤ tˤ dˤ ðˤ/ with the superscript ˤ diacritic in IPA.

Does it transcribe long vowels?

Long vowels appear when ا و ي act as matres lectionis after the matching short vowel, giving /aː uː iː/. Unvowelled text cannot disambiguate these, so add harakat for accurate vowel length.

What is the Arabic IPA Transcription Tool?

Convert harakat-vowelled Modern Standard Arabic to IPA in your browser, including pharyngeals (ħ ʕ), emphatic consonants (sˤ tˤ dˤ ðˤ), uvulars (q χ ʁ), gemination from shadda, and long vowels. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

Arabic IPA Transcription Tool

Name: Arabic IPA Transcription Tool
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Get one useful tool a week

Like this tool? Enter your email and we'll send you one genuinely useful Gera tool a week — plus a link to come back to this one. No spam, one-click unsubscribe any time.

Arabic IPA transcription maps Modern Standard Arabic orthography to International Phonetic Alphabet symbols. Arabic’s consonant inventory includes sounds rare in European languages — pharyngeals, emphatics, and uvulars — so explicit IPA values are essential for accurate phonemic notation.

Why Arabic needs IPA

Arabic has 28 consonant phonemes, several of which have no equivalent in English or European languages. A romanised transcription without IPA diacritics loses critical distinctions:

Writing h for both ه (/h/) and ح (/ħ/) merges two genuinely different sounds
Writing s for both س (/s/) and ص (/sˤ/) loses the pharyngealisation that changes the sound of surrounding vowels
Writing a for both the short vowel and the long /aː/ loses the length distinction that can change word meaning

IPA solves all of this with dedicated symbols and diacritics that are unambiguous across languages.

The consonant map

ح → /ħ/   ع → /ʕ/     (pharyngeals)
ص → /sˤ/  ط → /tˤ/  ض → /dˤ/  ظ → /ðˤ/   (emphatics)
ق → /q/   خ → /χ/   غ → /ʁ/    (uvulars)

Other consonants map to their nearest IPA equivalents: ب→/b/, ت→/t/, ث→/θ/, ج→/dʒ/, د→/d/, ذ→/ð/, ر→/r/, ز→/z/, س→/s/, ش→/ʃ/, ف→/f/, ك→/k/, ل→/l/, م→/m/, ن→/n/, هـ→/h/, و→/w/, ي→/j/.

How it works

The transcriber walks the text letter by letter. Each Arabic consonant maps to a fixed MSA IPA value; harakat (vowel diacritics) attach to the preceding consonant, and shadda triggers gemination:

َ ِ ُ → a i u    ا و ي as matres → aː uː iː   (long vowels)
ّ (shadda) → double the consonant it sits on   (gemination)
ْ (sukūn) → no vowel

Hamza ء and the various seats (أ إ ؤ ئ) all map to the glottal stop /ʔ/. The definite article assimilation (sun letters) is not applied — this is a broad letter-by-letter phonemic transcription.

Worked examples

رَبّ (lord, rubb) → /rabb/: the fatḥa gives /a/ and the shadda geminates /b/.

صَحْراء (desert, ṣaḥrāʾ) → /sˤaħraːʔ/, showing the emphatic /sˤ/, the pharyngeal /ħ/, the long vowel /aː/, and the final glottal stop /ʔ/.

الشَّمْس (the sun, ash-shams) → /al.ʃams/ — note that in actual pronunciation the lam assimilates to /ʃ/, but this transcriber maps letter by letter without applying assimilation rules.

For correct vowel length and gemination, supply fully vowelled (mashkūl) text. Bare consonantal Arabic leaves vowels ambiguous and the transcription will be consonant-only.