| The English language support uses a vowel system based on John Wells' Lexical | The English language support uses a vowel system based on John Wells' Lexical | ||||
| Sets<sup>\[<a href="#ref1">1</a>\]</sup>. These were created by Wells in 1982 | Sets<sup>\[<a href="#ref1">1</a>\]</sup>. These were created by Wells in 1982 | ||||
| by comparing the Received Pronunciation British (RP) and General American | by comparing the Received Pronunciation British (RP) and General American | ||||
| (GenAm) accents in use at that time. | |||||
| The `en` transcriptions listed below are the phonemes used by eSpeak NG to | |||||
| transcribe the different lexical sets. | |||||
| (GenAm) accents in use at that time. The following accents are supported by | |||||
| eSpeak NG and are referenced in this document: | |||||
| | BCP47 | Abbreviation | Accent Name | | |||||
| |----------------|--------------|------------------------| | |||||
| | en | | British English | | |||||
| | en-029 | | Caribbean | | |||||
| | en-GB-scotland | ScE | Scottish English | | |||||
| | en-GB-x-gbclan | | Lancastrian | | |||||
| | en-GB-x-gbcwmd | | West Midlands | | |||||
| | en-GB-x-rp | RP | Received Pronunciation | | |||||
| | en-US | GenAm | General American | | |||||
| The BCP47 name is the standard language identifier for the accent, used as the | |||||
| espeak language name. The Abbreviation is used in the lexical set tables below | |||||
| for the IPA transcriptions of that accent, and the BCP47 names are used for the | |||||
| eSpeak NG phoneme names. | |||||
| ## Short Vowels | ## Short Vowels | ||||
| __NOTE:__ `/i@3/` is used for the NEAR lexical set to differentiate it from | __NOTE:__ `/i@3/` is used for the NEAR lexical set to differentiate it from | ||||
| `/i@/` used in words like `million`. | `/i@/` used in words like `million`. | ||||
| Additionally, espeak-ng has the following phonemes for different accents: | |||||
| | Lexical Set | en | en-GB-scotland | RP | ScE | | |||||
| |-------------|-------|----------------|-------|-------| | |||||
| | NURSE | `3:` | `VR` | ɜː | ʌɾ | | |||||
| | TERM | `3:` | `3:` | ɜː | ɛɾ | | |||||
| | BIRD | `3:` | `IR` | ɜː | ɪɾ | | |||||
| ## Reduced Vowels | ## Reduced Vowels | ||||
| These are unstressed vowels that differ from the vowels in the main lexical sets. | These are unstressed vowels that differ from the vowels in the main lexical sets. | ||||
| 1. <a name="ref1"></a> Wikipedia. | 1. <a name="ref1"></a> Wikipedia. | ||||
| [Lexical set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set). 2017. | [Lexical set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexical_set). 2017. | ||||
| Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). | Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). | ||||
| 2. <a name="ref2"></a> Wikipedia. | |||||
| [IPA chart for English dialects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_chart_for_English_dialects). | |||||
| 2018. Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). |