Phonikud

Hebrew Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion
for Real-Time Text-to-Speech

Yakov Kolani1 Maxim Melichov2 Cobi Calev1 Morris Alper3
1Independent Researcher 2Reichman University 3Tel Aviv University
Paper Code Data Demo arXiv arXiv
Model Architecture

Introduction

Real-time text-to-speech for Modern Hebrew is challenging due to its complex writing system and underspecified phonetic features. Phonikud is a lightweight, open-source grapheme-to-phoneme system that produces fully-specified IPA transcriptions with minimal latency. Alongside it, we release ILSpeech, an expert-annotated Hebrew speech dataset for benchmarking and training.

What Makes Us Different

Real-Time Inference

Works with real-time TTS like Piper using IPA phonemes.

Edge Deployment

Runs locally on Raspberry Pi and edge devices.

Data-Efficient Training

Fine-tunes TTS with as little as 2 hours of data.

Hebrew Phonetics

Handles stress and vocal shva missed by others.

Assistive Tech

Low-latency screen reader support, even offline.

Open TTS Dataset

Studio-quality Hebrew speech with IPA annotations.

Open Models & Training

Weights, TTS models, and training code included.

Fine-Grained Phonetic Control

Edit phonemes directly or let G2P handle it.

From Text to Speech

See how Phonikud transforms Hebrew text through each stage.

1
Text
השפה העברית נשמעת יפה כשמבטאים אותה נכון
Input: Regular Hebrew text without vowel markings
2
Diacritics
הַשָּׂפָה הָעִבְרִית נִשְׁמַ֫עַת יָפָה כְּשֶׁמְּֽבַטְּאִים אוֹתָהּ נָכוֹן
Enhanced diacritics with stress markers and vocal shva
3
Phonemes
hasafˈa haʔivʁˈit niʃmˈaʔat jafˈa kʃemevatʔˈim ʔotˈa naχˈon.
Phonikud converts to precise IPA phonetic transcription
4
Audio
Real-time TTS synthesis from phonemes - listen to the result
💡
Flexible Input
Pro tip: You can input at any stage! Whether you want the model to add diacritics, add them yourself, or directly input phonemes. Try it in the demo!
Full control over the pipeline - input text, diacritics, or phonemes

Method Comparison

Comparative evaluation of Phonikud against existing Hebrew TTS approaches

Text Sample ElevenLabs
Eleven v3
 Google
Gemini v2.5
 RoboShaul
1st place
 Phonikud (Ours)
Ours v1 (alpha)
הוא צפה בס֫רט וראה חיה שצ֫פה במ֫ים 🐸
הוא רצה את זה גם אבל היא ר֫צה מהר והקד֫ימה אותו 🏃‍♀️
בוא תרד לאכול יש בור֫קס עם ת֫רד 🥬

Explore More

See more resources, demos, and tools to explore Phonikud

Citation

@misc{kolani2025phonikud,
  title={Phonikud: Hebrew Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion for Real-Time Text-to-Speech},
  author={Yakov Kolani and Maxim Melichov and Cobi Calev and Morris Alper},
  year={2025},
  eprint={2506.12311},
  archivePrefix={arXiv},
  primaryClass={cs.CL},
  url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12311},
}