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The list actually doesn't have to be free! I just need something that I can buy once or whatever.

And if possible, but not needed, parts of speech.

Before you say anything, I have googled for this extensively and have looked at over 100 links and found nothing useful, except some pre-written rhyming program.

I am needing a list I can use for a programming project, a txt file, xml, or something similar that's not pre-compiled in an unprogrammatically interperable format.

Any help is greatly assisted. I have already viewed every other thread on stackexchange on which this was asked(and other sites of course), and have found no working or useable links.

3
  • Please explain what you mean by "English word phonetics". Do you mean a table giving the pronunciations of English words in some phonetic transcription? What about the cmudict?
    – BrenBarn
    Oct 8, 2014 at 4:34
  • Essentially, yes. I am trying to make a program that can for instance, search the database for the word, find the phonetic spelling, and then find words that share similar parts (aka similar sounding words). There are plenty of rhyming programs that utilize this principle but I want to build my own. That link you have provided seems like it can do the job adequately. Thank you. If you have any similar databases, feel I am open to hearing them.
    – Scott
    Oct 8, 2014 at 9:50
  • There is also this question, not sure whether they are similar enough to be duplicates: opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/527/ipa-phonology-database/…
    – maj
    Jun 4, 2015 at 16:39

8 Answers 8

10

The cmudict provides phonetic spellings of a sizable number of American English words. The CELEX database is a similar project; you can select which data you want and download wordlists at WebCelex. Part-of-speech data (word class) is also available in CELEX. The CELEX download interface is somewhat frustrating, but you should only need to use it right once to be able to download what you want.

3
4

I found that the UCLA Phonetics Lab (Archive) page has word lists with sound samples and IPA spelling. There are no parts of speech unfortunately.

e͡ɪ     hayed 
o͡u     hoed 
ɔ/ɑ     hawed 

Links to

They mention that only a fraction of data is online. If this is the right format, I'd contact them and ask to share more.

3

Anki is a flashcard tool for computers and phones. A cool thing is that you can use the decks for other purposes.

As on example, the deck "500 Word English Pronunciation with IPA and Audio" (link) contains 500 words formatted like this:

Lemma   business
IPA     [ˈbɪznɨs]
Audio   [non-mp3 audio]
Explanation     -[ɨ] is either [ɪ] or [ə]
Tags    

To get these cards in .csv (tab-separated) format, you'll need to install the Anki tool to your PC. Then, load the deck and choose the Export option.

business    [ˈbɪznɨs]   [sound:PerfectP (179).wav]  -[ɨ] is either [ɪ] or [ə]

(Pastebin link to this specific deck)

1
  • Thanks, though I do not really need an individual tool like this. I need a dictionary length word list. I was contemplating making my software parse individual words from websites that have the phonetics listed, and in the process grab the parts of speech and definition, but that would be an extremely bandwidth intensive process.
    – Scott
    Oct 8, 2014 at 8:12
3

The CMU Pronunciation Dictionary sounds like it would be useful for something like this:

http://www.speech.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/cmudict

It has pronunciation guides for 134,000 English words and uses the ARPAbet, which is directly mappable to IPA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpabet)

1

Look at the Wiktionary. It contains phonetics for many words, and it distinguishes part of speech consistently for its lemmas. And it is free data.

1
1

You can also checkout these word lists. I know its a Scrabble based site, but they seem to have everything from what I can tell. I use them all the time and they have some nice json exports as well.

3
  • The link is technically broken: There is a revoked certificate used.
    – user6083
    Apr 14, 2016 at 9:43
  • @jknappen I just went to it and it shows a Valid Certificate to me...weird Apr 14, 2016 at 17:33
  • I see that you edited the link to be http, so the certificate is not used any longer. I tried again, and Mozilla firefox warns about the revoked certificate when I try https instead. --- BTW: Where are the phonetic informations on that site? I only find word lists and scrabble points.
    – user6083
    Apr 15, 2016 at 9:31
0

Just list words that you are interested in and script phonetic symbols from a dictionary website. (I use ldoce.)

You could get something like this: {'happy': 'ˈhæpi', 'birthday': 'ˈbɜːθdeɪ'}

0

Here is a word-IPA mapping list converted from cmudict: menelik3/cmudict-ipa, and it also contains the brown-frequency-list-with-ipa.txt based on the most frequent 33862 words by the Brown Corpus.

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