SPR Symbols

The symbols allowed in Symbolic Phonetic Representations (SPRs) are listed in the table below.
  See Some Tips on SPR Symbols in order to use these symbols most effectively. 


VOWELS

Regular Vowels	Symbol	Example Words
	a  	rod, father
	A  	back, had
	e  	cake, pain
	E  	hedge, let
	i  	see, speak, believe
	I  	pick, ill
	o  	both, oak
	c  	law, cough
 	u  	zoo, truth
	U  	took, put
	H  	but, mug, son
	R  	butter, hurt


Reduced (unstressed) Vowels	Symbol	Example Words
	x  	sofa, alone, suppose, tedious, America
	X  	roses, connect, melody, symphony, hinted


Diphthongs	Symbol	Example Words
	W  	out, cow
	O  	toil, boy
	Y  	life, fine



CONSONANTS

	Symbol	Example Words
	b  	bad, sob
	p  	pit, rip
	d  	dip, had
	t  	tip, pet
"Flap"	F  	writer, fiddle
	g  	good, bug
	k  	kill, make, back
	D  	this, breathe
	T  	thing, Beth
	v  	vase, save
	f  	field, if, graph
	z  	zip, phase
	s  	seal, miss, ceiling
	Z  	treasure, garage
	S  	ship, wish
	J  	Jane, huge
	C  	chip, witch
	h  	hot, hero
	m  	man, hum, summer
	n  	never, sun, winner
"Syllabic Nasal"	N  	button, satin, eaten, burden
	G  	sing, finger
	r  	borrow, rake
	l  	low, hall
	y  	yes, Virginia
	w  	wear, quick
"Glottal Stop"	?  	kitten, Latin


Syllable Stress 

1  	primary stress (most prominent stress in the word)
2  	secondary stress
0  	no stress


Syllable Boundary 

.  	(period)  beginning of a syllable

Some Tips on Entering and Interpreting SPR Symbols

	Note that the symbols are case-sensitive, so `[a] and `[A] represent two different sounds.
	Since English, like other languages, exhibits dialectal variation in pronunciation, your own pronunciation may not match every example shown here.
	The sounds of every language have specific distributional patterns.  For example, in all dialects of English, the sound [G], as in "sing" `[.1sIG], does not occur at the beginning of a word.  Other sounds in English that have a particularly narrow distribution are the glottal stop [?], the flap [F], and the syllabic nasal [N].   If you enter a sound symbol in a context where it does not normally occur, the resulting speech may sound unnatural.

	ETI-Eloquence applies a sophisticated set of linguistic rules to its input to reflect the processes by which sounds change in specific contexts in natural language.  For example, in American English, the sound [t] of "write" `[.1rYt] is pronounced as a flap in "writer" `[.1rY.0FR].   SPR input will undergo these modifications in the same way that ordinary text input does.  In this example, whether you enter `[1rY.0tR] or `[1rY.0FR], the output of the program will be the same.



