American English Phoneme Representation

This is a brief introduction to the use and implementation of the SAPI phoneme representations.

Symbolic and Numerical Representation

Application developers can create pronunciations for words that are not currently in the lexicon by using the English phonemes represented in the following table. The phoneme set is composed of a symbolic phonetic representation (SYM).

The application developer will be able to enter the SYM representation to create the pronunciation using the XML PRON tag, or by creating a new lexicon entry. Each phoneme entry should be space delimited.

Tag	Description
PRON SYM	Tag used to insert a pronunciation using symbolic representation.

Example: pronunciation for "hello":

<PRON SYM = "h eh l ow"/>

For improved accuracy, the primary (1), secondary (2) stress markers, and the syllabic markers (-) can be added to the pronunciation.

Example: pronunciation for "hello" using the primary stress (1) and syllabic (-) markers:

<PRON SYM = "h eh - l ow 1"/>

American English Phoneme Table

SYM	Example	PhoneID
-	syllable boundary (hyphen)	1
!	Sentence terminator (exclamation mark)	2
&	word boundary	3
,	Sentence terminator (comma)	4
.	Sentence terminator (period)	5
?	Sentence terminator (question mark)	6
_	Silence (underscore)	7
1	Primary stress	8
2	Secondary stress	9
aa	father	10
ae	cat	11
ah	cut	12
ao	dog	13
aw	foul	14
ax	ago	15
ay	bite	16
b	big	17
ch	chin	18
d	dig	19
dh	then	20
eh	pet	21
er	fur	22
ey	ate	23
f	fork	24
g	gut	25
h	help	26
ih	fill	27
iy	feel	28
jh	joy	29
k	cut	30
l	lid	31
m	mat	32
n	no	33
ng	sing	34
ow	go	35
oy	toy	36
p	put	37
r	red	38
s	sit	39
sh	she	40
t	talk	41
th	thin	42
uh	book	43
uw	too	44
v	vat	45
w	with	46
y	yard	47
z	zap	48
zh	pleasure	49