Syllastack Hover
Hover over any English word on a web page or in a PDF to see its stacked syllables. Click the card to look up the meaning and nuance in your own language. Scanned PDFs are read with on-device OCR.
Linguistics-based English learning
English pronunciation, made visible.
Spelling hides how English sounds. Syllastack shows every word as stacked syllables, split into onset, nucleus and coda, so learners see the sound structure instead of guessing from the letters.
- 141,000+words with syllable maps
- 37English phonemes typeable
- 0accounts, trackers or uploads
The word pronunciation shown as five stacked syllables.
Products
Two browser extensions, one idea
Both run entirely in your browser. They are free to download today and are packaged for Chrome.
P2G Phonetic IME
Type English by sound. Enter phonemes on your keyboard and get real words and whole phrases back, ranked by a language model, in any text field on any site.
Live demo: Hover
Hover over a word
Dotted words are live. This demo uses the same pronunciation database as the extension. On a phone, tap a word.
Pronunciation is the way a language sounds. Linguistics shows how every syllable stacks into onset, nucleus and coda. Hover over any word: necessary, vocabulary, comfortable, rhythm.
Spelling lies, but sound does not: though, through, tough, cough, thought.
The notation
How to read a stack
Each syllable has a large onset on the baseline. The vowel (nucleus) sits at the top right and any closing consonants (coda) sit beneath it.
- Large: onset
- Raised: nucleus
- Lowered: coda
- Blue bold: stressed syllable
| # | Onset | Nucleus | Coda |
|---|
Live demo: P2G Phonetic IME
Type by sound
Instead of spelling a word, enter the sounds you hear. Try it with the symbols below, or click the box and type on your keyboard: ; s , d gives h ə l oʊ.
Phonemes
Approach
Built on phonology, not respelling
Respelling schemes such as "nes-uh-sair-ee" ask learners to read English a second time in English. We start from the sounds themselves and apply established phonological analysis.
Start from a real pronunciation dictionary
We build on the Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary and add mathematical, computing and everyday terms it lacks. The result covers more than 141,000 words.
Convert to IPA with stress
Each entry becomes IPA with its primary stress marked.
Syllabify by the Maximum Onset Principle
Consonants join the following syllable for as long as English allows a legal onset, so necessary is parsed as ne.sə.se.ri by sound, not as the printed nec-es-sar-y.
Store onset, nucleus and coda
Every syllable is kept as three parts, which is what lets the stack render the same way everywhere.
Connected-speech rules, applied as you read
- Palatalization
- t, d, s, z before "you" merge into ʧ, ʤ, ʃ, ʒ. ɡɑt yu → ɡɑʧu
- Assimilation
- After a nasal, a following word-initial ð becomes n. ɪn ðə → ɪn nə
- Coronal stop deletion
- t and d drop after n. ənd → ən
- G-dropping
- -ing is read as -in' when the text says so. lɪvɪŋ → lɪvɪn
- Glide insertion
- Two vowels meeting inside a word get a linking y or w. flu.ənt → flu.wənt
- Homograph choice
- The preceding word decides noun or verb stress and sound. yus (noun) / yuz (verb)
Principles
How we build
Private by design
No accounts, no analytics, no servers of ours. The databases ship inside the extension and run on your device. Read the privacy policy.
Works where you read
Web pages, PDFs and scanned PDFs, plus any text field for typing. Learners do not have to move their material into a new app.
Open about the data
Syllabification and sound rules are explained on this page. Pronunciation data derives from CMUdict, and the fonts and OCR components carry their own open-source licenses.
Next
In development
In development
P2G keyboard for iOS
The phoneme keyboard as a system keyboard, fully offline and without "Full Access".
In development
Syllastack notebook
A vocabulary notebook with stacked IPA and notes side by side.
In development
PDF notes
Highlights, pins and notes on PDFs, stored only in your browser.