Phoneme Table for English (United States)

Article
08/18/2014

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The following tables show the phonemes and prosodic symbols used by the speech recognition engine for English (United States). These are a subset of the Universal Phone Set (UPS).

Phoneme and prosodic symbol labels are case-sensitive. When used in transcriptions, phonemes must be space-delimited.

Note

Character groups and plus signs (+) that comprise multi-symbol UPS Label forms also must be space-delimited.

Vowels

UPS Label	Example Word	UPS Transcription of Example Word
AA	pot	P AA T
AE	fat	F AE T
AH	bug	B AH G
AI	hive	H AI V
AU	out	AU T
AO	caught	K AO T
AX	driver	D RA AI V AX RA
AX RA	runner	RA AH N AX RA
EH	egg	EH G
EH RA	hair	H EH RA
EI	lake	L EI K
ER	her	H ER RA
I	meal	M I L
IH	ink	IH NG K
O + UH	rose	RA O + UH Z
OI	toy	T OI
U	food	F U D
UH	look	L UH K

Consonants

UPS Label	Example Word	UPS Transcription of Example Word
AX L	whistle	W IH S AX L
AX M	album	AE L B AX M
AX N	button	B AH T AX N
B	bin	B IH N
CH	chin	CH IH N
D	date	D EI T
DH	this	DH IH S
F	fax	F AE K S
G	gap	G AE P
H	help	H EH L P
J	yacht	J AA T
JH	gin	JH IH N
K	king	K IH NG
L	leg	L EH G
M	mail	M EI L
N	nose	N O + UH Z
NG	long	L AO NG
P	pin	P IH N
RA	ring	RA IH NG
S	sing	S IH NG
SH	shop	SH AA P
T	tip	T IH P
TH	thing	TH IH NG
V	very	V EH RA I
W	will	W IH L
Z	zip	Z IH P
ZH	vision	V IH ZH AX N

Prosody

UPS Label	Description	Example Word	UPS Transcription of Example Word
S1	primary stress	stress	S1 S T RA EH S
S2	secondary stress	secondary	S1 S EH . K AX N . S2 D EH . RA I
.	syllable break	vision	S1 V IH . ZH AX N
_^	linking (absence of a break)
_!	intonation - exclamation
_&	intonation - continue
_,	intonation - incompletion rise
_.	intonation ??? fall
_?	intonation - question rise
_s	silence

Phoneme Table for English (United States)

Vowels

Consonants

Prosody

See Also

Other Resources

Additional resources