Where do the transcriptions come from?

They come from a subset of the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, converted to IPA symbols. The dictionary covers the most common English words used in everyday writing.

What happens to words not in the dictionary?

Words that are not found are shown unchanged inside square brackets, for example [photosynthesis]. This makes it clear which words were transcribed and which were left alone.

Which accent does it use?

The transcriptions follow General American pronunciation, which is what the CMU dictionary is based on. British (RP) speakers will notice differences such as rhotic r sounds.

Is the transcription narrow or broad?

It is broad, also called phonemic, transcription. It captures the distinctive sounds of each word without marking fine phonetic detail like aspiration or vowel length.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The lookup runs entirely in your browser against a built-in dictionary, so nothing is sent to a server.

What is the English to IPA Transcriber?

Free English-to-IPA transcriber — look up common English words in a CMU-derived pronouncing dictionary and get broad General-American IPA. Runs in your browser. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

English to IPA Transcriber

Name: English to IPA Transcriber
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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This tool converts common English words into International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) notation, the standard system linguists, voice coaches, and language teachers use to write down exactly how words sound, independently of any particular spelling system. It is useful for language learners, singers, voice actors, ESL teachers, and anyone curious about English pronunciation.

Why IPA matters for English

English spelling is notoriously irregular. The letters gh are silent in night, a /f/ sound in rough, and a /g/ in ghost. The vowel a represents completely different sounds in cat, cake, father, and all. IPA solves this by using a unique symbol for each distinct sound, making pronunciation unambiguous — the same symbol always represents the same sound regardless of which language you are transcribing.

How this tool transcribes your text

Because English has no consistent letter-to-sound rules, the tool uses a dictionary lookup rather than a rule-based algorithm. It splits your text into individual words, normalises each to lower case, and searches a built-in dictionary derived from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary — a large phonetic lexicon originally developed for speech research and covering tens of thousands of common English words.

When a word is found, it is replaced with its broad (phonemic) General American IPA transcription. Stress marks are included: ˈ marks a primary-stressed syllable and ˌ marks secondary stress. Words not found in the dictionary are left unchanged inside square brackets — for example [cryonics] — so you can see at a glance which words need a manual lookup.

Reading common IPA symbols

IPA	Example word	Sound
æ	cat	short “a”
eɪ	cake	long “a”
ɪ	kit	short “i”
iː	feet	long “i”
ʊ	book	short “u”
uː	food	long “u”
ɝ	bird	r-coloured vowel (American)
θ	think	voiceless “th”
ð	this	voiced “th”
ʃ	ship	”sh” sound

Worked example

The phrase Hello world transcribes to həˈloʊ wɝld. The ˈ before loʊ marks the stressed syllable in “hello”, and ɝ is the r-coloured mid vowel characteristic of General American, which is absent in non-rhotic accents like British RP.

Because the output is General American, British RP speakers will notice differences: world in RP would be transcribed with a lengthened vowel and no r, roughly /wɜːld/. For RP transcription, pair this output with a dedicated British pronouncing dictionary.

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