X-SAMPA (Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet) is an ASCII-only encoding of the IPA created so phonetic transcriptions can be typed and transmitted with a plain keyboard. Each IPA symbol has a unique ASCII code, such as A for the open back vowel and S for the postalveolar fricative.

How does the converter handle multi-character codes?

X-SAMPA codes vary in length — some use a backslash or backtick, like r\ for the alveolar approximant or 3` for the rhotic vowel. The tool matches the longest possible token first, so r\ is recognised before a bare r and J\_< before J, preventing mis-parsing.

Are some letters the same in both systems?

Yes. Plain ASCII letters such as p, b, t, d, k, m, n, f, s, v, z, l, w, j and the vowels a, e, i, o, u, y represent the same sounds in X-SAMPA and IPA, so they pass through unchanged.

What about stress and length marks?

The double quote (") becomes the primary-stress mark ˈ, the percent sign (%) becomes secondary stress ˌ, and the colon (:) becomes the length mark ː. A half-length :\ maps to ˑ.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. The entire conversion runs locally in your browser using a lookup table. Nothing you type is sent to a server, so it is safe for unpublished or sensitive transcriptions.

What is the X-SAMPA to IPA Converter?

Convert ASCII-only X-SAMPA phonetic transcription into proper Unicode IPA. Maps every standard X-SAMPA code — vowels, consonants, clicks, implosives, stress and length marks — to its International Phonetic Alphabet equivalent, longest tokens first. Runs entirely in your browser. It runs free in your browser on Gera Tools, with nothing uploaded.

X-SAMPA to IPA Converter

Name: X-SAMPA to IPA Converter
Creator: Gera Tools
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Convert X-SAMPA to IPA

X-SAMPA is a clever workaround for a real problem: the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses hundreds of special Unicode characters that are awkward to type. X-SAMPA re-encodes every one of those symbols as plain ASCII so linguists can transcribe speech on an ordinary keyboard. This tool reverses that encoding, turning an X-SAMPA string back into the proper Unicode IPA symbols.

How it works

The converter scans your input left to right and, at each position, tries to match the longest X-SAMPA token in its lookup table before falling back to shorter ones. This greedy, longest-first matching is essential because many codes share a prefix:

r\`   → ɻ   (retroflex approximant)
r\    → ɹ   (alveolar approximant)
r`    → ɽ   (retroflex flap)
r     → r   (alveolar trill, unchanged)

If no multi-character token matches at the current position, the single character is checked; if it still isn’t in the table it is passed through unchanged, because ASCII letters like p, t, s and the vowels a e i o u already mean the same thing in both systems. Stress marks (" → ˈ, % → ˌ) and length marks (: → ː, :\ → ˑ) are mapped the same way.

Example and notes

The X-SAMPA string h@"loU wr3ldconverts tohəˈloʊ wrɝld, recognising @as schwa,”as primary stress,oUas the diphthong, and3“ as the rhotic vowel. Because the table covers clicks (O\ → ʘ, |\ → ǀ) and implosives (b_< → ɓ, g_< → ɠ) as well, it handles transcriptions from a wide range of languages, not just English. For the reverse direction, use the companion IPA-to-X-SAMPA converter.

Who uses X-SAMPA and why it matters

X-SAMPA was standardised by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) specifically for speech synthesis and speech recognition systems that must remain plain-text at every stage. It appears in:

TTS/ASR lexicons — pronunciation dictionaries for text-to-speech engines often store entries in X-SAMPA so the files remain ASCII and version-control friendly.
Corpus linguistics — older corpora, especially those from the 1990s and 2000s, encoded phonemic transcriptions in X-SAMPA before Unicode became universal.
Conlang and phonology note-taking — working phonologists sometimes draft transcriptions in X-SAMPA in a plain text editor and convert to proper IPA only at publication time.

Common symbols quick-reference

X-SAMPA	IPA	Sound (example)
`@`	ə	schwa (“about”)
`E`	ɛ	open-mid front vowel (“bed”)
`O`	ɔ	open-mid back vowel (“thought”)
`S`	ʃ	voiceless postalveolar (“ship”)
`Z`	ʒ	voiced postalveolar (“measure”)
`N`	ŋ	velar nasal (“sing”)
`tS`	tʃ	affricate (“church”)
`dZ`	dʒ	affricate (“judge”)
`"`	ˈ	primary stress
`:`	ː	length mark

Plain ASCII letters that are identical in both systems (p, b, t, d, k, g, m, n, f, v, s, z, l, w, j, r, and the basic vowels a, e, i, o, u, y) pass through the converter unchanged.

Practical tips

Always paste the full X-SAMPA string including stress and boundary markers — omitting the primary-stress diacritic " produces correct IPA letters but drops the ˈ, which matters for TTS.
If a character comes through unchanged and you expected a conversion, check whether the source uses a non-standard variant. Some tools output SAMPA (without the “X” extension) which differs slightly from X-SAMPA for a handful of symbols.
The converter outputs Unicode codepoints; paste the result into a document that uses a phonetic-capable font (SIL Doulos IPA, Charis SIL, or similar) to ensure all glyphs render correctly.