Click Transcribe IPA to view phonetic transcriptions with clickable interactive phoneme breakdown.
Word Breakdown (Click phoneme for audio; ≈ = estimated pronunciation)
Generating Phonetic Transcription...
Vowel
Consonant
Suprasegmental
Pulmonic Consonants Chart
Manner \ Place
Bilabial
Labiodental
Dental
Alveolar
Postalveolar
Retroflex
Palatal
Velar
Uvular
Glottal
Vowels & Diphthongs
Stress & Suprasegmentals
Speech-to-IPA Audio Transcriber
Record your voice and your browser's built-in speech recognition will recognize the words, which are then transcribed to IPA using the same offline engine as the Text tab. Requires Chrome/Edge (Web Speech API) and microphone access.
Click record to start voice audio capture
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Speech Audio IPA Analysis
Spoken Text Recognized:
IPA Phonetic Transcription:
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IPA Phonetic Quiz
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Frequently Asked Questions
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is a standardized system of symbols that represents the actual sounds of speech, rather than how a language is spelled. English spelling is notoriously inconsistent (think "though," "through," and "tough"), so IPA gives every sound its own unique symbol - this app is a tool for converting written English into that symbol system.
English learners and teachers working on pronunciation, linguistics and TESOL/TEFL students, actors and voice-over artists preparing an accent, singers and public speakers, dictionary/subtitle/course writers who need accurate transcriptions, and anyone curious about how a word is actually pronounced.
Type or paste English text into the Text to IPA tab and click Transcribe - click any phoneme in the result to hear it and see its features. Use the IPA Chart tab to browse every symbol by sound, Speech to IPA to transcribe your own voice, and Practice to test yourself with the quiz. Accent, notation, stress, and syllable options are all in the controls above the input box.
Checking how to pronounce a new or difficult word, preparing pronunciation notes for language lessons, comparing American/British/Australian accents, practicing minimal pairs and stress patterns in the Practice tab, transcribing scripts or lyrics for performance, and building phonetic awareness with the interactive IPA chart.
No. Every transcription runs locally in your browser using a built-in pronunciation dictionary and letter-to-sound rules - there's no API key, account, or network call involved once the page has loaded.
Very high for real English words: pronunciations come from a ~124,000-word dictionary derived from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. For words it doesn't recognize (rare names, invented words), it falls back to rule-based spelling-to-sound estimates, which are flagged with a ≈ so you always know when a result is a best guess rather than a verified pronunciation.
Word pronunciations are derived from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (public domain, Carnegie Mellon University). Words it doesn't recognize are estimated using rule-based letter-to-sound heuristics and marked with ≈.
Broad (phonemic) notation, shown in slashes like /kæt/, captures the distinct sounds of a word. Narrow (phonetic) notation, shown in brackets like [kʰæt], adds finer detail such as aspiration and flapping for General American English.
General American, British (RP), and Australian English. American is the dictionary's native accent; British and Australian are generated from it using standard phonological rules (like non-rhotic vowel mergers), so treat them as close approximations rather than a native RP/AuE dictionary.
No. Text-to-IPA transcription and audio playback happen entirely on your device via your browser's built-in speech engine. Speech-to-IPA uses your browser's built-in speech recognition to get a transcript, which is then transcribed locally the same way as typed text.
Speech synthesis engines can't reliably pronounce an isolated IPA character on its own. Instead, each symbol plays a real example word (like "cat" for /k/) so you hear the sound the way it actually occurs in speech.
Settings
Choose US, UK, or Australian English. This picks the browser/OS voice used for "Listen" and phoneme audio playback - no account, key, or network access needed. Real example words are spoken for each IPA symbol (bare IPA characters can't be pronounced correctly by speech synthesis).