Misaki English Phonemes

For English, Misaki currently uses 49 total phonemes. Of these, 41 are shared by both Americans and Brits, 4 are American-only, and 4 are British-only.

Disclaimer: Author is an ML researcher, not a linguist, and may have butchered or reappropriated the traditional meaning of some symbols. These symbols are intended as input tokens for neural networks to yield optimal performance.

🤝 Shared (41)

Stress Marks (2)

• ˈ: Primary stress, visually looks similar to an apostrophe.
• ˌ: Secondary stress.

IPA Consonants (22)

• bdfhjklmnpstvwz: 15 alpha consonants taken from IPA. They mostly sound as you'd expect, but j actually represents the "y" sound, like yes => jˈɛs.
• ɡ: Hard "g" sound, like get => ɡɛt. Visually looks like the lowercase letter g, but its actually U+0261.
• ŋ: The "ng" sound, like sung => sˈʌŋ.
• ɹ: Upside-down r is just an "r" sound, like red => ɹˈɛd.
• ʃ: The "sh" sound, like shin => ʃˈɪn.
• ʒ: The "zh" sound, like Asia => ˈAʒə.
• ð: Soft "th" sound, like than => ðən.
• θ: Hard "th" sound, like thin => θˈɪn.

Consonant Clusters (2)

• ʤ: A "j" or "dg" sound, merges dʒ, like jump => ʤˈʌmp or lunge => lˈʌnʤ.
• ʧ: The "ch" sound, merges tʃ, like chump => ʧˈʌmp or lunch => lˈʌnʧ.

IPA Vowels (10)

• ə: The schwa is a common, unstressed vowel sound, like a 🍌 => ə 🍌.
• i: As in easy => ˈizi.
• u: As in flu => flˈu.
• ɑ: As in spa => spˈɑ.
• ɔ: As in all => ˈɔl.
• ɛ: As in hair => hˈɛɹ or bed => bˈɛd. Possibly dubious, because those vowel sounds do not sound similar to my ear.
• ɜ: As in her => hɜɹ. Easy to confuse with ɛ above.
• ɪ: As in brick => bɹˈɪk.
• ʊ: As in wood => wˈʊd.
• ʌ: As in sun => sˈʌn.

Dipthong Vowels (4)

• A: The "eh" vowel sound, like hey => hˈA. Expands to eɪ in IPA.
• I: The "eye" vowel sound, like high => hˈI. Expands to aɪ in IPA.
• W: The "ow" vowel sound, like how => hˌW. Expands to aʊ in IPA.
• Y: The "oy" vowel sound, like soy => sˈY. Expands to ɔɪ in IPA.

Custom Vowel (1)

• ᵊ: Small schwa, muted version of ə, like pixel => pˈɪksᵊl. I made this one up, so I'm not entirely sure if it's correct.

🇺🇸 American-only (4)

Vowels (3)

• æ: The vowel sound at the start of ash => ˈæʃ.
• O: Capital letter representing the American "oh" vowel sound. Expands to oʊ in IPA.
• ᵻ: A sound somewhere in between ə and ɪ, often used in certain -s suffixes like boxes => bˈɑksᵻz.

Consonant (1)

• ɾ: A sound somewhere in between t and d, like butter => bˈʌɾəɹ.

🇬🇧 British-only (4)

Vowels (3)

• a: The vowel sound at the start of ash => ˈaʃ.
• Q: Capital letter representing the British "oh" vowel sound. Expands to əʊ in IPA.
• ɒ: The sound at the start of on => ˌɒn. Easy to confuse with ɑ, which is a shared phoneme.

Other (1)

• ː: Vowel extender, visually looks similar to a colon. Possibly dubious, because Americans extend vowels too, but the gold US dictionary somehow lacks these. Often used by the Brits instead of ɹ: Americans say or => ɔɹ, but Brits say or => ɔː.

♻️ Misaki to espeak

def to_espeak(ps):
    # Optionally, you can add a tie character in between the 2 replacement characters.
    ps = ps.replace('ʤ', 'dʒ').replace('ʧ', 'tʃ')
    ps = ps.replace('A', 'eɪ').replace('I', 'aɪ').replace('Y', 'ɔɪ')
    ps = ps.replace('O', 'oʊ').replace('Q', 'əʊ').replace('W', 'aʊ')
    return ps.replace('ᵊ', 'ə')