pinyin-to-ipa
A Python library, web application, and command-line tool for transcribing Pinyin to IPA.
Tone markers are attached to the vowel of each syllable.
Getting started
Installation
pip install pinyin-to-ipa[app] --user
Usage as library
from pinyin_to_ipa import pinyin_to_ipa
print(pinyin_to_ipa("hang4"))
# OrderedSet([('x', 'a˥˩', 'ŋ'), ('h', 'a˥˩', 'ŋ')])
print(pinyin_to_ipa("ng"))
# OrderedSet([('ŋ',)])
Usage as web app
Start the web app from the command-line:
$ pinyin-to-ipa-app
Or visit 🤗 Hugging Face for a live demo.
Usage as CLI
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli
usage: pinyin-to-ipa-cli [-h] [-v] [--sep SEP] [--first] PINYIN
Command-line interface (CLI) to transcribe pinyin to IPA.
positional arguments:
PINYIN pinyin
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-v, --version show program's version number and exit
--sep SEP separator between phonemes (default: )
--first return only first result (default: False)
Example
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "pang1"
pʰa˥ŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "pang2"
pʰa˧˥ŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "pang3"
pʰa˧˩˧ŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "pang4"
pʰa˥˩ŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "pang5"
pʰaŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "pang"
pʰaŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "hàng"
xa˥˩ŋ
ha˥˩ŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "hàng" --first
xa˥˩ŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "hng"
hŋ
$ pinyin-to-ipa-cli "test"
No IPA transcription available!
Phoneme set
Vowels
a ɛ e ə ɚ ɤ i o ɔ u ʊ y
Diphthongs
ai̯ au̯ aɚ̯¹ ei̯ ou̯
¹ These phonemes are not included if only the first transcription is used.
Consonants
f h¹ j k kʰ l m n ŋ p pʰ ɹ̩² ɻ² ɻ̩²
s ʂ t tʰ ts tsʰ tɕ tɕʰ ʈʂ ʈʂʰ
w x ɕ ɥ z̩¹² ʐ¹² ʐ̩¹²
² These consonants contain also tones.
Tones
Vowels and diphthongs contain one of these tones:
˥ (first tone)
˧˥ (second tone)
˧˩˧ (third tone)
˥˩ (fourth tone)
(none)
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
- https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
- Duanmu, San. 2007. The Phonology of Standard Chinese. 2nd ed. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
- Lin, Yen-Hwei. 2007. The Sounds of Chinese. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Acknowledgments
- pypinyin
- Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 416228727 – CRC 1410
Citation
If you want to cite this repo, you can use this BibTeX-entry generated by GitHub (see About => Cite this repository).
Taubert, S. (2026). pinyin-to-ipa (Version 1.0.1) [Computer software]. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7524690
1 maintainer
Release files for pinyin-to-ipa 1.0.1
For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.
Source distribution (sdist)
| File | Size | Uploaded | |
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| pinyin_to_ipa-1.0.1.tar.gz | 32.9 kB | Details |
Built distribution (wheel)
| File | Interpreter | ABI | Platform | Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pinyin_to_ipa-1.0.1-py3-none-any.whl | Python 3 | none | any | Details |
Total release size: 47.3 kB
Release files / pinyin_to_ipa-1.0.1.tar.gz
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