I wanted a simple way to turn IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) into audio.

Most tools either don’t support IPA directly, or are hard to integrate into scripts.

Here’s a minimal setup using espeak-ng and Python.

What This Does

• Convert text → speech
• Convert text → IPA
• Convert IPA → speech (with a small workaround)

1. Install espeak-ng

Download or install from:

• https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng

On Linux:

apt-get install espeak-ng

2. Basic Usage

Speak text

espeak-ng "hello"

Save to file

espeak-ng "hello" -w hello.wav

3. Convert Text to IPA

espeak-ng -x --ipa "hello"

4. IPA → Speech (Important)

espeak-ng doesn’t accept raw IPA directly.

It uses its own phoneme format.

Example:

espeak-ng "[[ h@l'oU ]]"

So you need a conversion step.

Text → Audio

import subprocess

def text_to_audio(text, filename):
    subprocess.run(["espeak-ng", text, "-w", filename])

6. Converting IPA to espeak Format

Use:

pip install gruut-ipa

IPA → Audio (Python)

import gruut_ipa
import subprocess

def ipa_to_audio(ipa_text, filename):
    espeak_text = gruut_ipa.ipa_to_espeak(ipa_text)
    subprocess.run([
        "espeak-ng",
        f"[[ {espeak_text} ]]",
        "-w",
        filename
    ])

Notes

• IPA support is indirect (conversion required)
• Output quality depends on voice configuration
• Works well for simple phonetic experiments

Why This Is Useful

• Generate pronunciation datasets
• Build language learning tools
• Experiment with phonetics programmatically

This setup is simple, scriptable, and works entirely offline.