iRun

A web app to help with the pronunciation of Turkish words and phrases

Website: irun.fyi

Scripts

• Install dependencies : yarn install
• Lint source code : yarn lint
• Preprocess data : yarn preprocess
• Start development server : yarn dev
• Build and generate the app page to the /out directory : yarn export
• Serve the generated page in the /out directory : yarn serve

How does it work?

Preprocessing steps - /preprocessing

1. The words which do not exist in the standard English dictionary are filtered from CMUdict. generate-filtered-dict.js
2. From the filtered CMUdict entries, a reverse mapping (from one pronunciation to possibly multiple words) is generated. generate-reverse-multimap.js
3. The raw English word frequency data file is parsed. generate-frequency-map.js
4. The words with the same pronunciation but lower usage frequency are eliminated from the reverse mapping. generate-reverse-map.js

Pronunciation algorithm - /pronunciation

1. All possible syllable combinations are generated from the input Turkish word. hyphenate-all.js
2. The letters in the syllables are written using the alternatives in CMUdict phonetic alphabet. phonetic-map.json
3. The result is searched in the reverse mapping file. reverse-map.json
4. If no match is found for a syllable, simple translations are applied to each letter. letter-pronunciation-map.json
5. The results are sorted prioritizing:
   • the ones with the most English word matches
   • the one which fits the Turkish natural hyphenation
6. The first 10 of the best results are returned.

Example input: bahadır

• (1). ['bah', 'ad', 'ır'], ['ba', 'had', 'ır'], ['bah', 'a', 'dır'], ['ba', 'ha', 'dır']
• (2). [[['B', 'AA', 'HH'], ['AA', 'D'], ['AH0', 'R']], ... (all combinations) ... ]
• (3, 4). ['baah-odd-er', 'bah-hud-er', 'baah-uh-derr', 'bah-huh-derr']
• (5). ['bah-hud-er', 'bah-huh-derr', 'baah-odd-er', 'baah-uh-derr']

User interface - /app

1. Consists of a single Next.js statically-generated page with no back-end.
2. The reverse mapping file is loaded to the client app, so the algorithm runs on the browser.

References

• Pronunciation dictionary data source: Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary
• Word frequency data source: English Word Frequency dataset on Kaggle
• Text-to-speech API: Voice RSS
• Icons: Freepik on Flaticons
• NPM packages: Next.js, React, Blueprint