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wjandrea
Asked: 2017-05-21 13:40:10 +0800 CST

How can I transliterate a foreign language into IPA?

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I want to learn an Irish Gaelic song, but the phonology is making my brain hurt. Here's a line:

’Sé mo Shaesar, ghille mear

Pronounced like:

/ʃe mo hezər ɣɪlə mar/

Is there a program that can convert the lyrics to the International Phonetic Alphabet?

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1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Use espeak -q --ipa to convert text input to IPA.

    Option -q means "quiet" -- in this case literally "don't speak".

    1. First check that it supports the language:

      $ espeak --voices
Pty Language Age/Gender VoiceName          File          Other Languages
...
 5  ga             -  irish-gaeilge        europe/ga     
...

    2. Then specify the language and feed the line:

      $ espeak -q -v ga --ipa "’Sé mo Shaesar, ghille mear"
 ʃˈeː mɐ hˈeːʃɐr
 ʁjˈɪlʲlə mˈar

    3. I don't know why the output has leading spaces and a linebreak, but feeding it into echo will remove them:

      $ echo $(espeak -q -v ga --ipa "’Sé mo Shaesar, ghille mear")
ʃˈeː mɐ hˈeːʃɐr ʁjˈɪlʲlə mˈar

    4. Use while read to do the whole lyrics:

      $ while read line; do
>     echo $(espeak -q -v ga --ipa "$line")
> done < "Mo Ghille Mear.txt"
ʃˈeː mɐ ləˈeːəx mɐ ʁjˈɪlʲlə mˈar
ʃˈeː mɐ hˈeːʃɐr ʁjˈɪlʲlə mˈar
nʲˈiː ˈuəɹɐs fˈeːn ˈeːən t̪ˈuən nɑː ʃˈeːn
ˈoː xˈui̯ɡ ɪ ɡʲˈeːn mɐ ʁjˈɪlʲlə mˈar
...
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