I finally finished all the updates with English converter for American English. I followed very closely the recommendations from the book “Fundamentals of Phonetics” by Larry H. Small.
I had to do a lot of testing, because I didn’t want to affect a good quality of conversion, so the update took some time.
Ok, so what are the changes?
1) Syllabic consonants /l̩/, /m̩/ and /n̩/ are now displayed with a little vertical line below.
Example:
little /ˈlɪtəl/ became /ˈlɪtl̩/
2) Stressed /ˈər/ became /ɝ/, unstressed /ər/ – /ɚ/.
Examples:
first /ˈfərst/ became /ˈfɝst/
other /ˈʌðər/ became /ˈʌðɚ/
3) Final unstressed /i/ became /ɪ/.
Examples:
very /ˈveriː/ became /ˈvɛrɪ/
4) Unstressed /eɪ/ became /e/, unstressed /oʊ/ became /o/.
Examples:
maintain /meɪnˈteɪn/ became /menˈteɪn/
photos /ˈfoʊtoʊz/ became /ˈfoʊtoz/
Now there’s a new option that allows you to display allophones for some phonemes:
1) for /t/ – alveolar tap [ɾ] and glottal stop [ʔ],
2) for /l/ – light [l] and dark [ɫ] variants.
Right now I am working on an IPA chart for American English. It will include most popular English words for each sound.
I hope these online pronunciation learning tools will become invaluable to language learners in the future. Help me in my mission by offering feedback!