IPA2TIPA

ipa2tipa is a script to convert International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) into TeX IPA (TIPA), an IPA notation for $\LaTeX$.

Usage

Simple Usage

from ipa2tipa import IPA

# Create IPA string and convert to TIPA
ipa = IPA("ˈtʰiː")
tipa = ipa.to_tipa()
print(tipa)  # "t\super{h}i:

# IPA and TIPA are str subclasses
print(isinstance(ipa, str))    # True
print(isinstance(tipa, str))   # True
print(len(ipa))                # 4 (Unicode character count)

Examples

from ipa2tipa import IPA

# Aspiration and length
ipa = IPA("tʰiː")
print(ipa.to_tipa())  # t\super{h}i:

# Nasalization
ipa = IPA("nãɪ̃")
print(ipa.to_tipa())  # n\~{a}\~{I}

# Tone marks
ipa = IPA("tʰjɛn˧˥")
print(ipa.to_tipa())  # t\super{h}jEn\tone{35}

# String operations work as expected
ipa = IPA("ko̞ko̞")
print(ipa.upper())           # KO̞KO̞
print(ipa + " test")         # ko̞ko̞ test

Architecture

The library provides two main classes:

IPA(str) → .to_tipa() → TIPA(str)

Both IPA and TIPA are subclasses of str, representing actual IPA and TIPA strings respectively.

Components

Component	Description
IPA	IPA string class with .to_tipa() method
TIPA	TIPA string class (str subclass)
UnicodeUnit	Internal representation of a Unicode character with base and modifiers

UnicodeUnit Structure

UnicodeUnit is used internally to represent the structure of Unicode characters:

• base: The base character codepoint (e.g., '0074' for 't')
• modifiers: List of modifier codepoints (e.g., aspiration, nasalization)

Conversion Process

Internally, the conversion follows these steps:

1. Decompose IPA string into Unicode codepoints
2. Group codepoints into base + modifiers (UnicodeUnit)
3. Convert to TIPA notation

Files

Name	Content
README.md	what you are reading right now
LICENSE.md	this script is distributed under MIT License
ipa2tipa.py	main script
ipa2tipa_test.py	brief unittests implemented with a standard library unittest
uni2tipa/uni2tipa-supsub.csv	data in the format of UTF-8 (hex), tipa macro denoting next super/subscript
uni2tipa/uni2tipa-tone.csv	data in the format of UTF-8 (hex), tipa macro of tone letters
uni2tipa/uni2tipa0.csv	data in the format of UTF-8 (hex), tipa macro taking 0 args
uni2tipa/uni2tipa1.csv	data in the format of UTF-8 (hex), tipa macro taking 1 arg
uni2tipa/uni2tipa2.csv	data in the format of UTF-8 (hex), tipa macro taking 2 args