Tilavet Phonemizer

Developed by Tarık İsmet ALKAN

Rule-based Quranic Arabic phonemizer for the Hafs an Asim recitation.

This project is a core component of the broader Tilavet AI ecosystem.

Converts fully-vowelled Uthmani-script Quran text into a deterministic phoneme sequence that respects tajwid rules. Designed as a "golden label" for training acoustic speech models, aligning audio recitations to text, and building Quran-only ASR / teleprompter applications.

---

What it does

بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
                 │
                 ▼
   b i s m i l l aa h i r r a H m aa n i r r a H ii m i

Two output modes:

Mode	Use case	Example (الرحيم)
Wasl (connected)	Within an ayah, normal flow	r r a H ii m i
Waqf (stop)	At end-of-ayah, with tajwid transformations applied	r r a H ii6 m

Waqf mode applies: tanwin drop, taa-marbuta t → h, madd-i arıd lis-sukun (6 harakah), qalqalah kubra on final ق ط ب ج د.

---

Why this project

Quran applications need to align speech recordings to Quran text at the word (and even letter) level — for teleprompter highlight, hafız training, tajwid analysis. The standard approach is to train a CTC acoustic model that emits phoneme posteriors, then decode against a known Quran phoneme map.

For Quranic Arabic specifically, this phoneme map needs to encode tajwid rules (ikhfa, idgham, qalqalah, madd lengths, lafzatullah tafhim/tarqiq, …) — not just letter identity. There is no open-source tool that does this end-to-end for the full Hafs an Asim Mushaf. This project fills that gap.

Free, open source, no commercial intent. Intended as an ummah service.

---

Install

# From PyPI (planned)
pip install tilavet-phonemizer

# From source
git clone https://github.com/tialkan/tilavet-phonemizer
cd tilavet-phonemizer
pip install -e .

Requires Python 3.9+. No runtime dependencies.

---

Usage

Command line

tilavet-phonemize "بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ"
# → b i s m i l l aa h i r r a H m aa n i r r a H ii m i

tilavet-phonemize --json "بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ"
# → {"symbols":["b","i",...], "text":"b i s m i l l aa h i", "words":[...]}

tilavet-phonemize --rules-only "بِسْمِ"     # print only rule trace

tilavet-phonemize --waqf "ٱلرَّحِيمِ ۝"
# → ' a r r a H ii6 m PAUSE

tilavet-phonemize --file ayahs.txt          # one ayah per line
echo "هُوَ" | tilavet-phonemize -            # read from stdin

tilavet-phonemize --print-inventory          # canonical phoneme list

Python API

from tilavet_phonemizer import Phonemizer, PhonemizerConfig

# Wasl (default)
p = Phonemizer()
result = p.phonemize("بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ")
print(result.text)
# b i s m i l l aa h i

# Per-word offsets (for alignment / highlighting)
for word in result.words:
    syms = result.symbols[word.start:word.end]
    print(f"{word.token:20} → {' '.join(syms)}")
# بِسْمِ              → b i s m i
# ٱللَّهِ              → l l aa h i

# Waqf (end-of-ayah)
p_waqf = Phonemizer(PhonemizerConfig(waqf_on_pause=True))
print(p_waqf.phonemize("ٱلرَّحِيمِ ۝").text)
# r r a H ii6 m PAUSE

# Cross-ayah connected (nun qutni)
p_cross = Phonemizer(PhonemizerConfig(cross_ayah_wasl=True))

# Batch processing (e.g. building a dataset)
results = p.phonemize_many(["بِسْمِ", "ٱللَّهِ", "هُوَ"])

# JSON-serializable raw/debug output for web backend or inspection
ayah = p.phonemize("بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ").to_dict(include_rules=False)
# {"symbols": [...], "text": "...", "words": [{"token":..., "start":..., "end":...}, ...]}

# CTC/aligner target: elisions removed, PAUSE emitted as metadata
target = p.phonemize("رَيْبَ ۛ فِيهِ").to_alignment_dict()
# {"symbols": ["r","a","y","b","a","f","ii","h","i"], "pauses": [...], "words": [...]}

# Phoneme inventory for an acoustic model (49 entries incl. PAUSE;
# prepend the CTC blank for the persisted 50-class file)
Phonemizer.phoneme_inventory(include_metadata=True)
# ["'", "b", "t", ..., "PAUSE"]

The first downstream aligner contract is sketched in docs/aligner-mvp.md.

Inspecting tajwid rules per phoneme

result = p.phonemize("هُم مُّصِيبَةٌۭ")
for hit in result.rules:
    print(f"  {result.symbols[hit.symbol_index]}  ← {hit.rule}")
# m_g  ← idgham_shafawi
# m    ← shadda
# u    ← vowel
# ...

---

Symbol convention

Consonants

Sym	Letter	Sym	Letter	Sym	Letter	Sym	Letter
'	ء (hamza)	b	ب	t	ت	th	ث
j	ج	H	ح	kh	خ	d	د
dh	ذ	r	ر	z	ز	s	س
sh	ش	S	ص	D	ض	T	ط
Z	ظ	3	ع	gh	غ	f	ف
q	ق	k	ك	l	ل (tarqiq)	L	lafzatullah tafhim
m	م	n	ن	h	ه	w	و (cons.)
y	ي (cons.)

Vowels & madd

Symbol	Meaning
a i u	Short vowels (fatha, kasra, damma)
aa ii uu	Madd-i tabii (2 harakah)
aa4 ii4 uu4	4-harakah madd (muttasil, munfasil, silah-kubra)
aa6 ii6 uu6	6-harakah madd (lazim, arıd lis-sukun, farq)

Tajwid variants

Symbol	Meaning
n_g	Nun/tanwin ihfa OR idgham ma'al-ghunna
m_g	Mim idgham shafawi, iqlab, or ihfa shafawi
q_qal T_qal b_qal j_qal d_qal	Qalqalah on sakin ق ط ب ج د
PAUSE	Mushaf optional-stop marker (advisory, does not break wasl rules)

Design rules

• L only for lafzatullah tafhim. After kasra it becomes tarqiq → l. (بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ → l l aa h i, تَٱللَّهِ → L L aa h i.)
• Tanwin + lam/ra idgham bila ghunna: the n elides (هُدًى لِّلْمُتَّقِينَ → h u d a l l ...).
• Dagger alif / small alif is a single long vowel aa (not a aa).
• Hamza-i kat' is always pronounced; never dropped by wasl.
• كُفُوًا is rendered with waw, not hamza: k u f u w a n.
• Muqattaat letters apply inter-letter ihfa/idgham: كهيعص → ... 3 aa6 y n_g S aa6 d, الم → ... l aa6 m_g m ii6 m.
• Mushaf optional-pause markers (ۖ ۚ ۛ ۗ) emit PAUSE but do not block cross-word ikhfa/idgham/iqlab in wasl mode.
• In waqf mode: tanwin drops, taa-marbuta t → h, sakin qalqalah harf gets _qal, final tabii madd becomes 6-harakah arıd.

Full specification: docs/phoneme-spec.md.

---

What the symbols do not capture (V1 scope)

• Ra tafhim/tarqiq (no R/r split — rule available in result.rules metadata only)
• Imala, ishmam, sakta (rare in Hafs; flagged via U+06EA as plain i for the مَجْر۪ىٰهَا case)
• Idgham naqis vs kamil (always rendered as complete assimilation)
• PAUSE typing (lazim ۚ vs jaiz ۖ vs mutekarrir ۛ — distinction in metadata, single PAUSE symbol in output)

These are intentional simplifications for V1 to keep the CTC class set compact (50 classes incl. blank + PAUSE). All decisions documented in docs/v1-backlog.md.

---

Validation

The V1 release was reviewed by 5 independent hafız reviewers (3 LLM-based, 2 human-style detailed audits) over 60+ ayet samples. All flagged bugs have been fixed; their feedback is preserved in docs/llm-review-synthesis.md.

A 35-ayah gold dataset (gold_wasl_v1 + gold_waqf_on_pause_v1) lives at data/validation/recovered_seed_with_validation.jsonl. Each ayet has multi-reviewer verdicts and aggregate consensus.

Full-Quran sanity scan (6236 ayet):

Crashes:       0
Empty output:  0
4+ consecutive consonant runs:  0
3-consonant runs:               4  (all are correct: muqattaat ikhfa + rare orthography)

---

Pre-computed outputs

data/phoneme_index_full.json (≈14 MB): every ayet of the Quran processed by V1, with both wasl and waqf phoneme sequences and per-word offsets. Ready to drop into a decoder.

{
  "version": "v1.0",
  "source": "alquran.cloud/quran-uthmani",
  "ayah_count": 6236,
  "ayahs": [
    {
      "surah": 1, "ayah": 1,
      "arabic": "بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ",
      "wasl": {
        "symbols": ["b","i","s","m","i","l","l","aa","h","i", ...],
        "words":   [{"token":"بِسْمِ","start":0,"end":5}, ...]
      },
      "waqf": { ... }
    }
  ]
}

CTC class file (data/ctc_classes.json) lists the 50 phonemes (incl. blank and PAUSE) in fixed order for acoustic-model training.

---

Testing

PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m pytest tests/
# 108 passed, 35 subtests passed in ~0.07s

For development:

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/ -v --cov=src/tilavet_phonemizer

---

Scope and disclaimers

• Riwāyat: Hafs an Asim only (الرواية). Other turuq (Shâtibî, Tayyibe, …) are not supported by this V1.
• Religious authority: This tool is a computational representation, not a tajwid teacher. Phoneme symbols are engineering tokens, not a replacement for traditional learning under a qualified teacher. Latin transliteration is not displayed to end-users by design.
• Source text: Uthmani Mushaf (via alquran.cloud). Variant orthography is normalized to standard Unicode forms.

---

Roadmap (post-V1)

• Râ tafhim/tarqiq as a metadata layer
• Variant-graph output for PAUSE branches (wasl vs waqf paths)
• Multilingual Support: Documentation and usage guides will be expanded to Arabic, English, Urdu, Indonesian, Turkish, and French across all platforms (GitHub, Hugging Face, PyPI).
• Acoustic model integration example (wav2vec2 / Whisper fine-tune)
• Extension hooks for Shâtibî / Tayyibe rules

See docs/v1-backlog.md for the complete backlog.

---

License

MIT. Free for commercial and personal use, attribution required.

---

Citation

@software{tilavet_phonemizer_2026,
  title  = {Tilavet Phonemizer: Open-source Quran phonemizer for Hafs an Asim},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://github.com/tialkan/tilavet-phonemizer}
}

---

Acknowledgments

Built with the guidance of multiple hafız reviewers who took the time to read every output sample and challenge every architectural decision. May Allah accept their effort.