kokorog2p

A unified multi-language G2P (Grapheme-to-Phoneme) library for Kokoro TTS.

kokorog2p converts text to phonemes optimized for the Kokoro text-to-speech system. It provides:

• Multi-language support: English (US/GB), German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Czech, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Swedish, Thai (optional), Russian (optional), Kazakh (optional)
• Native Vietnamese frontend: Pure-Python Northern/Hanoi vi-vn profile with six named tones
• Native Swedish frontend: Pure-Python deterministic rules with no runtime lexicon; external TSV benchmarking is development-only
• Native Thai frontend: Optional TLTK/PyThaiNLP frontend targeting wayu-kokoro-thai-v1; Latin phrases use lazy EnglishG2P
• Native Russian frontend: Optional RUAccent contextual stress, ё restoration, source-aligned tokens, and stock Kokoro 1.0 labels
• Native Kazakh frontend: eSpeak-NG kk raw IPA profile with Kokoro vocabulary validation
• Mixed-language preprocessing: Detect languages for per-word language switching
• Dictionary-based lookup with comprehensive lexicons
  • English: 179k+ entries (gold tier), 187k+ silver tier (both loaded by default)
  • German: 738k+ entries from Olaph/IPA-Dict
  • French: Gold-tier dictionary
  • Portuguese (Brazilian): Rule-based with affrication support
  • Italian, Spanish: Rule-based with small lexicons
  • Czech, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hebrew: Rule-based and specialized engines
• Flexible memory usage: Control dictionary loading with load_silver and load_gold parameters
  • Disable silver: saves ~22-31 MB
  • Disable both: saves ~50+ MB for ultra-fast initialization
• espeak-ng integration as a fallback for out-of-vocabulary words
• Automatic IPA to Kokoro phoneme conversion
• Automatic punctuation normalization (ellipsis, dashes, apostrophes)
• Context-aware abbreviation expansion (e.g., "St." → "Street" or "Saint" based on context)
• Optional highest-available spaCy model selection for supported POS-tagging languages (trf > lg > md > sm), with strict use_spacy=True, spacy_model, and spacy_model_size requests and no model downloads
• Number and currency handling for supported languages
• German structured normalization for safe abbreviations, German decimals and thousands separators, dates, times, temperatures, EUR amounts, and number-dependent units (1 Std. → eine Stunde, 2 kg → zwei Kilogramm)
• Stress assignment based on linguistic rules

Text-preparation architecture

abbr2words → lexical abbreviation recognition and customization
spokenform → authoritative written text to spoken semantic preparation
kokorog2p  → language routing, spans, overrides, tokenization, G2P, and phonemes

For Spokenform-supported languages, kokorog2p passes the original source syntax to Spokenform first. Once Spokenform accepts a source span, its replacement text and source provenance are preserved literally; kokorog2p only performs model-specific punctuation cleanup, tokenization, G2P, and phoneme conversion. PolyNorm remains an upstream Spokenform benchmark, while kokorog2p verifies compact downstream handoffs rather than copying that corpus.

German was the first migrated language, followed by French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, and English. For these seven languages, abbr2words recognizes lexical abbreviations and symbols, spokenform prepares written semantic forms, and kokorog2p keeps language routing, spans, overrides, typography, tokenization, G2P, and phonemes. Czech abbreviation and canonical quantity/currency recognition remains owned by abbr2words, while Czech numbers, dates, quantities, temperatures, and currencies are prepared by spokenform. Spanish keeps European/Latin-American dialect behavior in its G2P layer, while Portuguese keeps Brazilian/European semantic wording through its spokenform locale. English keeps G2P-specific handling only for spans that Spokenform leaves protected or unsupported; accepted Spokenform replacements are never rewritten downstream. Use spokenform for spoken text without phonemes and abbr2words for registry-only workflows.

For example, the released Spokenform 0.3.1 profile prepares a contextual countdown as three - two - one; KokoroG2P then maps that generic segment boundary to two model em dashes. KokoroG2P does not recognize countdown semantics itself.

Installation

# Core package (includes abbr2words and spokenform)
pip install kokorog2p

# With English support
pip install kokorog2p[en]

# With German support
pip install kokorog2p[de]

# With French support
pip install kokorog2p[fr]

# Thai support (optional TLTK and PyThaiNLP)
pip install "kokorog2p[th]"
# Russian support (optional RUAccent and eSpeak)
pip install "kokorog2p[ru]"

# Kazakh support (eSpeak-NG voice kk)
pip install "kokorog2p[kk]"
# With multilang preprocessing support
pip install kokorog2p[mixed]

# With espeak-ng backend
pip install kokorog2p[espeak]

# With goruut backend
pip install kokorog2p[goruut]

# Full installation (all languages and backends)
pip install kokorog2p[all]

Quick Start

from kokorog2p import phonemize

# English (US)
phonemes = phonemize("Hello world!", language="en-us").phonemes
print(phonemes)  # həlˈoʊ wˈɜːld!

# British English
phonemes = phonemize("Hello world!", language="en-gb").phonemes
print(phonemes)  # həlˈəʊ wˈɜːld!

# German
phonemes = phonemize("Guten Tag!", language="de").phonemes
print(phonemes)  # ɡuːtn̩ taːk!

# French
phonemes = phonemize("Bonjour!", language="fr").phonemes
print(phonemes)

# Italian
phonemes = phonemize("Ciao, come stai?", language="it").phonemes
print(phonemes)  # ʧiao, kome stai?

# Spanish
phonemes = phonemize("¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?", language="es").phonemes
print(phonemes)  # !ola! ?koˈmo estaˈs?

# Chinese
phonemes = phonemize("你好", language="zh").phonemes
print(phonemes)

# Korean
phonemes = phonemize("안녕하세요", language="ko").phonemes
print(phonemes)


- **Vietnamese** (native Northern/Hanoi profile)

# Hebrew (requires phonikud package)
phonemes = phonemize("שָׁלוֹם", language="he").phonemes
print(phonemes)

• Swedish (native deterministic rules)

from kokorog2p import get_g2p
g2p_sv = get_g2p("sv")
print(g2p_sv("Hej världen!"))

Advanced Usage

from kokorog2p import get_g2p

# English with default settings (gold + silver dictionaries)
g2p_en = get_g2p("en-us", use_espeak_fallback=True)
tokens = g2p_en("The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.")
for token in tokens:
    print(f"{token.text} → {token.phonemes}")

# Memory-optimized: disable silver (~22-31 MB saved, ~400-470 ms faster init)
g2p_fast = get_g2p("en-us", load_silver=False)
tokens = g2p_fast("Hello world!")

# Ultra-fast initialization: disable both gold and silver (~50+ MB saved)
# Falls back to espeak for all words
g2p_minimal = get_g2p("en-us", load_silver=False, load_gold=False)
tokens = g2p_minimal("Hello world!")

# Different dictionary configurations
# load_gold=True, load_silver=True:  Maximum coverage (default)
# load_gold=True, load_silver=False: Common words only, faster
# load_gold=False, load_silver=True: Extended vocabulary only (unusual)
# load_gold=False, load_silver=False: No dictionaries, espeak only (fastest)

# Error handling with strict mode (default: strict=True)
# Strict mode raises clear exceptions for debugging issues
g2p_strict = get_g2p("en-us", backend="espeak", strict=True)
# If espeak fails: RuntimeError with detailed error message

# Lenient mode for backward compatibility (logs errors, returns empty results)
g2p_lenient = get_g2p("en-us", backend="espeak", strict=False)
# If espeak fails: logs error, returns empty string (no exception)

# Automatic punctuation normalization
g2p = get_g2p("en-us")
tokens = g2p("Wait... really?")       # ... → … (ellipsis)
tokens = g2p("Wait - what?")          # - → — (em dash when spaced)
tokens = g2p("don't worry")           # All apostrophe variants → '
tokens = g2p("well-known topic")      # Hyphens in compounds preserved

# Context-aware abbreviation expansion (English)
# "St." intelligently expands to "Street" or "Saint" based on context
g2p = get_g2p("en-us", expand_abbreviations=True, enable_context_detection=True)
tokens = g2p("123 Main St.")          # St. → Street (house number pattern)
tokens = g2p("St. Patrick's Day")     # St. → Saint (saint name recognized)
tokens = g2p("Visit St. Louis")       # St. → Saint (city name recognized)
tokens = g2p("Born in 1850, St. Peter")  # St. → Saint (distant number ignored)

# Configure spaCy model selection for English POS tagging. With use_spacy=None,
# the highest installed loadable tier is selected automatically; no model falls
# back to native tokenization. use_spacy=True makes model resolution required.
g2p_auto = get_g2p("en-us", use_spacy=True)

# Select an exact tier (never falls back if it is not installed)
g2p_size = get_g2p("en-us", use_spacy=True, spacy_model_size="md")
g2p_md = get_g2p("en-us", use_spacy=True, spacy_model="en_core_web_md")

# Lower memory / faster download
g2p_sm = get_g2p("en-us", use_spacy=True, spacy_model="en_core_web_sm")

# Higher memory / explicit large spaCy English model
g2p_lg = get_g2p("en-us", use_spacy=True, spacy_model="en_core_web_lg")

# German with lexicon and number handling
g2p_de = get_g2p("de")
tokens = g2p_de("Es kostet 42 Euro.")
for token in tokens:
    print(f"{token.text} → {token.phonemes}")

# French with fallback support
g2p_fr = get_g2p("fr", use_espeak_fallback=True)
tokens = g2p_fr("C'est magnifique!")
for token in tokens:
    print(f"{token.text} → {token.phonemes}")

Error Handling and Debugging

kokorog2p provides robust error handling to help you debug issues, especially in CI/CD environments.

Strict Mode (Default, Recommended)

By default, kokorog2p uses strict mode (strict=True), which raises clear exceptions when backend initialization or phonemization fails:

from kokorog2p import get_g2p

# Strict mode is the default
g2p = get_g2p("en-us", backend="espeak", strict=True)

try:
    result = g2p.phonemize("test")
except RuntimeError as e:
    # Get detailed error message about what went wrong
    print(f"Error: {e}")
    # Example: "Espeak backend validation failed. Please ensure espeak-ng
    # is properly installed and voice 'en-us' is available."

Benefits:

• Catches configuration issues immediately
• Provides actionable error messages
• Prevents silent failures in CI/CD pipelines
• Recommended for production use

Lenient Mode (Backward Compatible)

For backward compatibility with older versions that silently failed, you can use lenient mode (strict=False):

from kokorog2p import get_g2p

# Lenient mode logs errors but doesn't raise exceptions
g2p = get_g2p("en-us", backend="espeak", strict=False)

result = g2p.phonemize("test")
# If espeak fails:
# - Error is logged to Python's logging system
# - Returns empty string "" instead of raising exception
# - Allows your application to continue running

When to use lenient mode:

• Migrating from older versions (< 0.4.0)
• Non-critical applications where empty results are acceptable
• When you have your own error handling logic

Common Error Scenarios

espeak-ng not installed:

# Strict mode (default)
g2p = get_g2p("en-us", backend="espeak")
# RuntimeError: Espeak backend validation failed. Please ensure espeak-ng
# is properly installed...

# Solution: Install espeak-ng
# Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt-get install espeak-ng
# macOS: brew install espeak
# Windows: Download from https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/releases

Invalid voice:

from kokorog2p.espeak_g2p import EspeakOnlyG2P

g2p = EspeakOnlyG2P(language="xx-invalid")
# RuntimeError: Espeak backend validation failed...voice 'xx-invalid' is unavailable

CI/CD Best Practices:

import logging

# Configure logging to see error details
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)

# Use strict mode in CI to catch issues early
g2p = get_g2p("en-us", backend="espeak", strict=True)

# Your CI will fail with clear error messages if there are issues

Stable Pipeline Span API

kokorog2p now provides a span-based phonemization API designed for integration with text processing pipelines. This API uses character offsets for deterministic override application and supports per-token language switching.

Key Features

• Offset-based alignment: Handles duplicate words correctly (e.g., "the cat the dog")
• Direct token ID output: Ready for model input without post-processing
• Per-token language switching: Mix languages within a single sentence
• Comprehensive warnings: Debug alignment issues with detailed feedback
• Backward compatible: Legacy word-based alignment still available

Quick Example

from kokorog2p import phonemize, OverrideSpan

# Simple phonemization
result = phonemize("Hello world!")
print(result.phonemes)    # 'həlˈoʊ wˈɜɹld!'
print(result.token_ids)   # [50, 83, 54, ...]

# Handle duplicate words with different pronunciations
text = "the cat the dog"
overrides = [
    OverrideSpan(0, 3, {"ph": "ðə"}),   # First "the"
    OverrideSpan(8, 11, {"ph": "ði"}),  # Second "the"
]
result = phonemize(text, overrides=overrides)
# Both overrides applied correctly!

# Language switching within text
text = "Hello Bonjour world"
overrides = [OverrideSpan(6, 13, {"lang": "fr"})]
result = phonemize(text, language="en-us", overrides=overrides)
# "Bonjour" phonemized with French G2P

SSMD + phrasplit integration

SSMD and phrasplit both expose zero-based, half-open offsets in their cleaned text. kokorog2p accepts those objects structurally, so the packages remain optional:

import phrasplit
import ssmd

from kokorog2p import phonemize
from kokorog2p.integrations import overrides_for_segment, overrides_from_ssmd

source = "Say [tomato]{ipa='təˈmeɪtoʊ'}."
parsed = ssmd.parse_spans(source)
overrides = overrides_from_ssmd(parsed.annotations)
segments = phrasplit.split_with_offsets(
    parsed.clean_text, mode="sentence", language="en", use_spacy=None
)

results = []
for segment in segments:
    assert parsed.clean_text[segment.char_start:segment.char_end] == segment.text
    results.append(
        phonemize(
            segment.text,
            language="en-us",
            overrides=overrides_for_segment(
                segment.char_start, segment.char_end, overrides
            ),
            use_spacy=None,
        )
    )

ipa attributes are normalized to kokorog2p's ph override. X-SAMPA is rejected explicitly unless an application performs a tested conversion first. Always rebase document-level SSMD spans before phonemizing individual sentence segments; do not align duplicate sentences by searching for their text.

use_spacy=None tries a local model and falls back without downloading. Use use_spacy=True, a concrete spacy_model, or spacy_model_size when a model is required; those requests raise a SpacyModelResolutionError if unavailable.

Tested compatibility targets are phrasplit 0.3.4 and SSMD 0.8.0 when those packages are installed in the integration environment.

Documentation

• API Reference - Complete function documentation
• Span Guide - Understanding character offsets and alignment
• Marker Helper - Convenient marker-based override syntax
• Examples - Working code examples

Use Cases

✅ Pipeline Integration: Preserve offsets through preprocessing stages ✅ Duplicate Handling: Apply different pronunciations to repeated words ✅ Multi-language: Switch languages per-word within sentences ✅ Model Input: Get token IDs directly without manual conversion ✅ Debugging: Comprehensive warnings for alignment issues

Mixed-Language Preprocessing

kokorog2p provides a standalone multilang preprocessor that detects word-level languages with lingua-language-detector and generates OverrideSpan objects for per-word language switching.

Installation

# Install with language detection support
pip install kokorog2p[mixed]

# Or install lingua directly
pip install lingua-language-detector

Basic Usage

from kokorog2p import phonemize
from kokorog2p.multilang import preprocess_multilang

text = "Ich gehe zum Meeting. Let's discuss the Roadmap!"
clean_text, overrides = preprocess_multilang(
    text,
    default_language="de",
    allowed_languages=["de", "en-us"],
)
result = phonemize(clean_text, language="de", overrides=overrides)

Confidence Threshold

from kokorog2p.multilang import preprocess_multilang

annotated = preprocess_multilang(
    "Hello! Bonjour! Hola!",
    default_language="en-us",
    allowed_languages=["en-us", "de", "fr", "es"],
    confidence_threshold=0.6,
)

Limitations

• Very short words (<3 chars) keep the default language
• Proper nouns may be misdetected
• Requires lingua-language-detector installation
• Detected language must be in allowed_languages

Example: Technical Documentation

from kokorog2p import phonemize_to_result
from kokorog2p.multilang import preprocess_multilang

text = """
Das System verwendet Machine Learning für die Performance-Optimierung.
Der Workflow ist sehr efficient durch das Caching.
"""

clean_text, overrides = preprocess_multilang(
    text,
    default_language="de",
    allowed_languages=["de", "en-us"],
)
result = phonemize_to_result(clean_text, lang="de", overrides=overrides)
print(result.phonemes)

Supported Languages

Note: Both gold and silver dictionaries are loaded by default for English. You can:

• Use load_silver=False to save ~22-31 MB (gold only, ~179k entries)
• Use load_gold=False, load_silver=False to save ~50+ MB (espeak fallback only)

Chinese Note: Chinese G2P uses Zhuyin (Bopomofo) phonetic notation for Kokoro TTS compatibility. Arabic numerals are automatically converted to Chinese (e.g., "123" → "一 百二十三"). For version 1.1 (recommended):

from kokorog2p.zh import ChineseG2P
g2p = ChineseG2P(version="1.1")  # Uses ZHFrontend with Zhuyin notation

Spanish Note: Spanish G2P supports both European and Latin American dialects:

from kokorog2p.es import SpanishG2P

# European Spanish (with theta θ)
g2p_es = SpanishG2P(dialect="es")
print(g2p_es.phonemize("zapato"))  # θapato

# Latin American Spanish (seseo: θ→s)
g2p_la = SpanishG2P(dialect="la")
print(g2p_la.phonemize("zapato"))  # sapato

Key features: R trill/tap distinction (pero vs perro), palatals (ñ, ll, ch), jota sound (j), and proper stress marking.

Korean Note: Korean G2P works out of the box with rule-based phonemization. For improved accuracy with morphological analysis, install MeCab:

pip install mecab-python3

Hebrew Note: Hebrew G2P requires the phonikud package for phonemization:

pip install kokorog2p[he]
# or directly:
pip install phonikud

Note: Hebrew text should include nikud (diacritical marks) for accurate phonemization.

Phoneme Inventory

kokorog2p uses Kokoro's 45-phoneme vocabulary:

Vowels (US)

• Monophthongs: æ ɑ ə ɚ ɛ ɪ i ʊ u ʌ ɔ
• Diphthongs: aɪ aʊ eɪ oʊ ɔɪ

Consonants

• Stops: p b t d k ɡ
• Fricatives: f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ h
• Affricates: tʃ dʒ
• Nasals: m n ŋ
• Liquids: l ɹ
• Glides: w j

Suprasegmentals

• Primary stress: ˈ
• Secondary stress: ˌ

Russian

Russian support is a native, source-aligned frontend. It uses lazy contextual stress when RUAccent is installed, supports explicit combining-acute input, and applies Russian reduction and orthoepy transforms against the stock Kokoro 1.0 vocabulary. Install kokorog2p[ru]; see Russian API and Russian provenance.

Kazakh

Kazakh (kk) uses eSpeak-NG voice kk as its pronunciation engine. The native frontend preserves raw non-English IPA semantics, applies only generic Kokoro compatibility transforms, and validates output against the stock Kokoro 1.0 vocabulary. Install kokorog2p[kk].

The upstream Kazakh voice is currently marked testing, so pronunciation quality follows the installed eSpeak-NG release. See Kazakh API and Kazakh provenance.

Arabic MSA

Native Arabic support targets Modern Standard Arabic with the Nabra-compatible nabra-82m-v0.1 profile. Already-vocalized input works without optional CAMeL data:

from kokorog2p import phonemize
result = phonemize(
    "مَرْحَبًا بِكَ؟",
    language="ar",
    g2p_options={"diacritizer": "none"},
)

Install kokorog2p[ar] for the Arabic eSpeak path. The optional kokorog2p[ar-diacritize] extra enables CAMeL integration, but its MSA data must be provisioned separately and is never downloaded automatically. See Arabic API for MSA scope, source offsets, and model-ID caveats.

Thai

Thai support is an optional native TLTK/PyThaiNLP frontend. It supports the aliases th, th-th, tha, and thai, preserves Thai combining marks, recovers failed engine chunks with diagnostics, and uses lazy EnglishG2P for Latin phrases.

The frontend targets wayu-kokoro-thai-v1; low tone ˩ is token ID 7 in that isolated vocabulary profile. See Thai API and Thai provenance.

License

Apache2 License - see LICENSE for details.

Credits

kokorog2p consolidates functionality from:

• misaki - G2P engine for Kokoro TTS
• phonemizer - espeak-ng wrapper