fix: use STRUT vowel (ʌ) instead of schwa (ə) in stressed syllables#12
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yocontra wants to merge 1 commit intohans00:mainfrom
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fix: use STRUT vowel (ʌ) instead of schwa (ə) in stressed syllables#12yocontra wants to merge 1 commit intohans00:mainfrom
yocontra wants to merge 1 commit intohans00:mainfrom
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The ipa-dict source uses ə (schwa) for the STRUT vowel in words like "but", "cut", "come", "love", "other", "mother", "nothing", etc. In standard IPA for English, STRUT is /ʌ/ — a distinct phoneme from schwa /ə/. This adds a post-processing step to the dictionary build that detects ə in stressed closed syllables and converts it to ʌ.
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Mar 15, 2026
Merges the following PRs into a single combined branch: - hans00#11: fix: prefer THOUGHT vowel (ɔ) variant in dictionary - hans00#12: fix: use STRUT vowel (ʌ) instead of schwa (ə) in stressed syllables - hans00#13: fix: distinguish NURSE vowel (ɜː) from unstressed ɚ, add linking ɹ - hans00#14: feat: add vowel length marks (ː) to IPA output - hans00#15: fix: British English pronunciation corrections
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Summary
The
ipa-dictsource data usesə(schwa) for the STRUT vowel in words like "but", "cut", "run", "come", "love", "other", "mother", "nothing", etc. In standard IPA for English, the STRUT vowel is/ʌ/— a distinct phoneme from schwa/ə/.These are different vowels:
The ARPABET mapping in
src/consts.tscorrectly mapsAH → ʌ, but the ipa-dict source data usesəwhereʌis expected, causing hundreds of common words to have incorrect transcriptions.What this PR does
Adds a
fixStrutVowel()post-processing step toscripts/build-dict.tsthat runs after merging dictionaries but before trimming. It detectsəin stressed closed syllables and converts it toʌ.The regex logic:
əthat is the first vowel after a stress mark (ˈorˌ), meaning it's in a stressed positionəto be followed by a consonant (closed syllable), which distinguishes STRUT from genuine schwaə(like "the" =ðə) is correctly preservedExamples of fixes
What is preserved (no false positives)