American English Phonemes

The unit of sound the recognition engine actually recognizes are phonemes. All phrase formats are ultimately translated into phonetic spelling for decoding. These phonetic spellings can be directly entered if surrounded by curly braces. See Using Phonetic Spellings and Adding Foreign Words for more information about working with phonemes. You may also be interested in Australian English Phonemes, UK English Phonemes, Spanish Phonemes or Canadian French Phonemes.

The English phonetic alphabet used by the decoder:

Phoneme	Example #1	Phonetic Spelling #1	Example #2	Phonetic Spelling #2
Vowels
AA	barn	B AA R N	top	T AA P
AE	bat	B AE T	crab	K R AE B
AH	what	W AH T	cut	K AH T
AO	more	M AO R	auto	AO T OW
AW	cow	K AW	house	HH AW S
AX	about	AX B AW T	dial	D AY AX L
AXR	butter	B AH DX AXR	career	K AXR IH R
AY	type	T AY P	life	L AY F
EH	check	CH EH K	mess	M EH S
ER	church	CH ER CH	bird	B ER D
EY	take	T EY K	hail	HH EY L
IH	little	L IH DX AX L	rib	R IH B
IX	action	AE K SH IX N	women	W IH M IX N
IY	team	T IY M	keep	K IY P
OW	loan	L OW N	robe	R OW B
OY	hoist	H OY S T	joy	JH OY
UH	book	B UH K	look	L UH K
UW	flew	F L UW	who	HH UW

Consonants
B	web	W EH B	bear	B EH R
CH	chair	CH EY R	statue	S T AE CH UW
D	reed	R IY D	dark	D AA R K
DH	with	W IHDH	other	AH DH ER
DX	forty	F AO R DX IY	butter	B AH DX AXR
F	four	F AO R	graph	G R AE F
G	peg	P EH G	exam	IH G Z AE M
HH	halt	HH AO L T	Jose	HH OW Z EY
JH	cage	K EY JH	Jack	JH AE K
K	coin	K OY N	back	B AE K
L	late	L EY T	really	R IH L IY
M	lemon	L EH M AH N	mail	M EY L
N	night	N AY T	any	EH N IY
NG	ring	R IH NG	ankle	AE NG K AH L
P	pay	P EY	beep	B IY P
R	rest	R EH S T	prior	P R AY ER
S	sit	S IH T	bass	B AE S
SH	blush	B L AH SH	sure	SH UH R
T	raft	R AE F T	taped	T EY PT
TH	three	TH R IY	youth	Y UW TH
V	van	V AE N	river	R IH V AXR
W	swap	S W AA P	wing	W IH NG
Y	yes	Y EH S	year	Y IY R
Z	arms	AA R M Z	blaze	B L EYZ
ZH	Asian	EY ZH AH N	genre	ZH AA N R AH

Note: The AO phoneme denotes a near-open, back, rounded vowel. The vowel in "more" and the first vowel in "auto" sound different to most American English speakers, but our acoustic model considers them the same.

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