scriptconv 0.0.3a9

Zero-dependency script & phoneme-notation core — ISO-15924 detection & metadata, IPA↔ARPABET/X-SAMPA/Lexique/Kirshenbaum/Cotovía/RFE, Buckwalter↔Arabic, Hangul→jamo, kana

scriptconv

scriptconv is a zero-dependency Python library for written-script and phoneme-notation operations:

• Script identification & metadata — ISO-15924 detection, character-range lookup, typological script_type, base direction, mixed-script segmentation (script_runs), and language ↔ script mapping.
• Phoneme-notation transcoding — IPA ↔ ARPABET, X-SAMPA, Lexique, Kirshenbaum, Cotovía and RFE, routed through IPA, with queryable per-notation fidelity metadata (NOTATION_INFO) and a looks_like_ipa detector.
• Script transliteration & decomposition — Buckwalter ↔ Arabic script, Hangul → jamo (compatibility or conjoining), Hiragana ↔ Katakana.

Every conversion is a pure data table or arithmetic operation — no phonemization, no linguistic rules, no external files, and no runtime dependencies beyond the Python standard library.

Transcoding is reversible where the target inventory permits — see Fidelity guarantees for the exact per-notation guarantees.

Scope

scriptconv is exclusively about written scripts: identification and metadata, transliteration between script representations, re-encoding of phoneme symbols between notation systems, and orthographic decomposition. It never phonemizes — anything that requires knowing how a language sounds (grapheme-to-phoneme rules, allophony, coarticulation, sandhi) is outside this library's scope.

Installation

pip install scriptconv

Development

uv pip install -e '.[test]'
pytest tests/

tests/test_examples.py runs the scripts under examples/, which import the installed package — install with -e first.

Quick start

from scriptconv import (
    detect_script, char_script, script_distribution, script_runs, base_direction,
    lang_to_script, script_to_langs, normalize_script_tag, SCRIPT_REGISTRY,
    arpa_to_ipa, ipa_to_arpa,
    xsampa_to_ipa, ipa_to_xsampa,
    buckwalter_to_arabic, arabic_to_buckwalter,
    lexique_to_ipa, ipa_to_lexique,
    kirshenbaum_to_ipa, ipa_to_kirshenbaum, cotovia_to_ipa, ipa_to_cotovia,
    rfe_to_ipa, ipa_to_rfe, looks_like_ipa,
    decompose_hangul, hira_to_kana, kana_to_hira,
    convert, can_convert, convert_batch, Notation, NOTATION_INFO,
)

detect_script("안녕하세요")           # "Hang"
char_script("ɑ")                    # "Latn" (IPA Extensions)
script_distribution("Hello مرحبا")   # {'Latn': 5, 'Arab': 5}
script_runs("привет hello")          # [('Cyrl', 'привет '), ('Latn', 'hello')]
base_direction("مرحبا بالعالم")      # "rtl"
SCRIPT_REGISTRY["Arab"].script_type  # "abjad"  (typological class)

lang_to_script("pt-BR")             # "Latn"
script_to_langs("Cyrl")             # ['av', 'ba', 'be', 'bg', ...]
normalize_script_tag("syllabics")   # "Cans"
normalize_script_tag("japanese")    # "Hira"

arpa_to_ipa("HH AH0 L OW1")        # "həloʊ"
ipa_to_arpa("həloʊ")               # "HH AX L OW"

xsampa_to_ipa("tS")                 # "tʃ"
ipa_to_xsampa("ɹ")                  # "r\\"

buckwalter_to_arabic("mrHbA")       # "مرحبا"
arabic_to_buckwalter("مرحبا")      # "mrHbA"

lexique_to_ipa("b§ZuR")            # "bɔ̃ʒuʁ"  (bonjour)
ipa_to_lexique("vɛ̃")               # "v5"  (vin)

kirshenbaum_to_ipa("S")             # "ʃ"   (espeak-ng ASCII-IPA)
ipa_to_kirshenbaum("ŋ")             # "N"

cotovia_to_ipa("karro")             # "karo"  (Galician Cotovía TTS notation)
ipa_to_cotovia("ʎ")                 # "L"

rfe_to_ipa("kaša")                  # "kaʃa"  (Spanish/Romance RFE alphabet)
ipa_to_rfe("ɲ")                     # "ñ"

looks_like_ipa("pʰɑtʃ")             # True  (heuristic: has IPA-distinctive symbols)
looks_like_ipa("hello")             # False

decompose_hangul("국민")             # "ㄱㅜㄱㅁㅣㄴ"  (orthographic jamo, no assimilation)
hira_to_kana("ひらがな")             # "ヒラガナ"
kana_to_hira("カタカナ")             # "かたかな"

convert("NG", Notation.ARPA, Notation.XSAMPA)  # "N"
convert("HH AH0 L OW1", "arpa", "kirshenbaum") # "h@loU"
can_convert("arpa", "x-sampa")                 # True
can_convert("buckwalter", "ipa")               # False
list(convert_batch(["HH AH0", "AY1"], "arpa", "ipa"))  # ['hə', 'aɪ']

NOTATION_INFO[Notation.ARPA].lossless_from_ipa  # False (restricted inventory)

CLI

python -m scriptconv convert arpa ipa "HH AH0 L OW1"
python -m scriptconv detect "안녕하세요"
python -m scriptconv distribution "Hello مرحبا"
python -m scriptconv direction "مرحبا بالعالم"
python -m scriptconv decompose "국민"
python -m scriptconv lang ko

Modules

Module	Contents
scriptconv.scripts	Script dataclass (with script_type), SCRIPT_REGISTRY (34 scripts), detect_script, char_script, script_distribution, script_runs, base_direction, lang_to_script, script_to_langs, normalize_script_tag
scriptconv.notation	Notation enum, NotationInfo/NOTATION_INFO fidelity registry, convert facade, can_convert predicate, convert_batch generator, pair-wise converters (ARPABET ↔ IPA, X-SAMPA ↔ IPA, Buckwalter ↔ Arabic, Lexique ↔ IPA, Kirshenbaum ↔ IPA, Cotovía ↔ IPA, RFE ↔ IPA), looks_like_ipa detector
scriptconv.translit	decompose_hangul (Hangul blocks → jamo, compatibility or conjoining), hira_to_kana/kana_to_hira — all orthographic only

Documentation

• docs/scripts.md — Script registry, detection, language mapping, label normalisation
• docs/notation.md — Notation enum, per-pair converter reference, round-trip guarantees
• docs/translit.md — Hangul decomposition arithmetic and scope boundary

Examples

Runnable scripts in examples/:

File	Demonstrates
01_detect_script.py	Mixed-script text triage
02_lang_to_script.py	Language tag → ISO-15924 mapping
03_arpabet_roundtrip.py	CMUdict-style line → IPA and back
04_xsampa.py	X-SAMPA ↔ IPA, multi-char longest-first cases
05_buckwalter.py	Arabic ↔ Buckwalter both directions
06_lexique.py	French Lexique codes → IPA
07_hangul_decompose.py	Hangul syllable blocks → jamo letters
08_script_distribution.py	Character counts per script + base direction
09_script_to_langs.py	Reverse lookup: script → languages
10_new_labels.py	New normalize_script_tag labels (japanese, jamo, cjk…)
11_cli.py	CLI interface: detect, distribution, direction, decompose, lang
12_kirshenbaum.py	Kirshenbaum (ASCII-IPA) ↔ IPA, and ARPABET → Kirshenbaum routing
13_script_runs.py	Per-script segmentation of mixed-script text
14_kana_transliteration.py	Hiragana ↔ Katakana
15_cotovia.py	Cotovía (Galician TTS notation) ↔ IPA
16_rfe.py	RFE (Spanish/Romance philology alphabet) ↔ IPA

Fidelity guarantees

Transcoding faithfulness depends on the target notation's inventory. IPA is the hub; notation↔notation goes through IPA. The table below states, for each notation, whether a round-trip is exact and what happens to a symbol the table does not know.

Every converter (and convert()) accepts a codecs-style errors= policy for symbols outside its table: "pass" keeps the symbol (the default everywhere except ipa_to_arpa), "replace" substitutes the notation's placeholder (?; the historical ipa_to_arpa default, tunable via unknown=), "ignore" drops it, and "strict" raises UnknownSymbolError naming the symbol, its position, and the notation. The "Unknown-token behaviour" column below describes the per-converter default.

Notation	to_ipa → from_ipa round-trip	from_ipa → to_ipa round-trip	Unknown-token behaviour
ARPABET	Exact for base symbols; stress digits are dropped and AH0↔AX (schwa) is not distinguished	Lossy — ARPABET is an English-only inventory, so any IPA symbol outside it becomes the unknown placeholder	arpa_to_ipa: passed through unchanged. ipa_to_arpa: diacritics and suprasegmentals (combining marks, length/stress modifiers) are dropped; other out-of-inventory symbols are replaced with ? by default (unknown= param; unknown="" drops)
X-SAMPA	Exact for all canonical symbols	Exact except aliases (f\→ɸ, &→æ) normalise to their canonical spelling	Passed through unchanged
Buckwalter ↔ Arabic	Exact (the ^ shadda alias normalises to canonical ~; precomposed lam-alef ligatures decompose to two chars, visually identical)	Exact	Passed through unchanged
Lexique ↔ IPA	Exact except the °/3 schwa pair (both → ə; reverse always → °)	Exact	Passed through unchanged
Kirshenbaum ↔ IPA	Exact	Lossy — restricted ASCII inventory; IPA outside it passes through	Passed through unchanged
Cotovía ↔ IPA	Exact except the three L/Z/jj symbols for ʎ normalise to L	Lossy — Galician/Spanish inventory; IPA outside it passes through	Passed through unchanged
RFE ↔ IPA	Exact except ñ/n̮ for ɲ normalise to ñ	Lossy — core Spanish/Romance inventory; IPA outside it passes through	Passed through unchanged

This table is also available programmatically via NOTATION_INFO (NotationInfo records with lossless_to_ipa, lossless_from_ipa, token_separated, and a reference citation per notation).

Notes:

• The voiced velar stop is stored as script ɡ (U+0261) across all tables; ipa_to_arpa also accepts ASCII g (U+0067) on input.
• Only ipa_to_arpa substitutes for unknowns today (because ARPABET is a restricted inventory); every other converter passes unknowns through. See docs/notation.md for the per-symbol detail.

License and attribution

scriptconv is released under the Apache-2.0 license.

Derived tables used internally:

Table	Source	License
ARPABET ↔ IPA	chorusai/arpa2ipa	Apache-2.0
Buckwalter ↔ Arabic	Tim Buckwalter's Arabic transliteration scheme	— (factual 1:1 mapping)
Lexique phoneme codes	New, B. & Pallier, C. — Manuel de Lexique 3 v3.11, Tableau 2; chrplr/openlexicon	CC BY-SA 4.0
Kirshenbaum ↔ IPA	Kirshenbaum 1993 ASCII-IPA standard (comp.speech), cross-checked against espeak-ng	— (factual symbol mapping)
Cotovía ↔ IPA	Universidade de Vigo GTM Cotovía TTS project (fonemas.cpp)	— (factual symbol mapping)
RFE ↔ IPA	RFE phonetic alphabet (Revista de Filología Española, 1915)	— (factual symbol mapping)
Hangul jamo tables	stannam/hangul_to_ipa	—