Pronunciation coverage in the compiled lexicon

Published for direct use; search approval pending. Its mechanically validated result is available, but the page remains noindex and outside sitemaps while human editorial and source-rights review is incomplete.

By The Word Index Updated July 2026

Result

The pinned pronunciation artifact covers 14.96% of the safe compiled spelling inventory; 9.12% of covered records retain more than one pronunciation variant.

Analysis population
394,445
Compiled spelling records with retained CMUdict variants
14.96%
Covered records with multiple retained variants
9.12%
Covered records with variant syllable-count divergence
1.64%
Covered records with variant rhyme-key divergence
5.89%

The pinned pronunciation artifact covers 14.96% of the safe compiled spelling inventory; 9.12% of covered records retain more than one pronunciation variant.

Why retained variants matter

1.64% of covered records have retained variants with different derived syllable counts, and 5.89% have different derived rhyme keys.

Coverage is source-bounded

CMUdict is primarily North American and does not exhaust accents, speakers, names, or specialist vocabulary. These percentages describe an artifact intersection, not the share of English that can be pronounced.

Pronunciation-source coverage by spelling length

Exact counts and percentages appear in the adjacent table.

Read the accessible data table.

Population and exclusions

The exact population used by this version of the analysis.
Population stage Records (records)
Raw lexical ledger 394595
Excluded by product policy 150
Safe normalized-spelling records 394445
Records meeting this study's inclusion criteria 394445

Coverage and variant divergence

Every percentage names its exact denominator.
Measure Records (records) Denominator (records) Share (percent)
Records with at least one retained CMUdict variant 59003 394445 14.96
Covered records with multiple retained variants 5380 59003 9.12
Covered records whose variants have different syllable counts 966 59003 1.64
Covered records whose variants have different rhyme keys 3474 59003 5.89

Coverage by build-specific ranking tier

Tier is an ordering band, not a pronunciation or usage judgement.
Tier Compiled records (records) Covered records (records) Coverage (percent)
1 9943 9891 99.48
2 15100 14292 94.65
3 147637 26675 18.07
4 1744 1230 70.53
5 220021 6915 3.14

Coverage by normalized spelling length

Lengths count normalized ASCII characters.
Length Compiled records (records) Covered records (records) Coverage (percent)
1 26 26 100.00
2 498 202 40.56
3 2290 1156 50.48
4 7320 3688 50.38
5 16135 6072 37.63
6 30344 8383 27.63
7 42758 9190 21.49
8 52746 8641 16.38
9 54755 7368 13.46
10 49834 5682 11.40
11 41449 3767 9.09
12 32573 2358 7.24
13 23627 1338 5.66
14 16243 605 3.72
15 10335 317 3.07
16 6230 121 1.94
17 3610 60 1.66
18 1857 17 0.92
19 971 5 0.51
20 465 5 1.08
21 207 0 0.00
22 94 1 1.06
23 40 0 0.00
24 19 0 0.00
25 9 0 0.00
27 4 0 0.00
28 3 1 33.33
29 2 0 0.00
31 1 0 0.00

Methodology

Research question: How completely does the pinned CMUdict artifact cover the compiled spelling population, and how often do covered spellings have variant analyses?

Why it is useful: Coverage figures explain when rhyme and syllable tools can answer a query and where silence means missing source evidence.

Included

  • pronunciation.safe-compiled-record: Include each safe normalized spelling in the compiled release; mark coverage only when a retained CMUdict variant is present.

Excluded

  • pronunciation.product-policy: Exclude spellings matched by the exact first-party content-safety policy before aggregation.
  • pronunciation.unusable-variant: Exclude pronunciation records that fail the deterministic phoneme, syllable, or rhyme-key schema.

Transformations

  1. pronunciation.coverage-v1: Join retained normalized spellings to pinned CMUdict variants and derive aggregate coverage and variation groups.

Calculations

research.count-v1
Count retained spellings or pronunciation variants in a declared group. Formula: count(records).
research.share-v1
Calculate exact pronunciation coverage or variation shares. Formula: 100 * numerator / denominator.

Limitations

  • CMUdict primarily represents North American English and is not complete for every dialect, name, inflection, or specialist term.
  • Multiple entries can represent pronunciation alternatives without identifying their regional prevalence.
  • Syllable counts and rhyme keys are deterministic derivations from retained phonemes, not independent human judgments.
  • No coverage result establishes that an uncovered spelling lacks a pronunciation.

Versions, sources, and review

Study ID
study.pronunciation-coverage
Study version
1.0.0
Lexical data version
2026.07-lexical.3
Lexical build
b5dc0fb56b8de890
Study build
241856fd77db1503
Analysis contract
fd80205219dcc12b
Exact result digest
9a5866075f3e04f8
Factual review
machine validated
Editorial review
pending
Source-rights review
pending
Search eligibility
No — Coverage output remains noindex until source-rights and editorial limitations are reviewed.

dwyl-english-words git:8179fe68775df3f553ef19520db065228e65d1d3

source-membership; surface-spelling-as-listed.

Licence: Unlicense notice; upstream dataset rights unresolved. Legal review: pending. Redistribution review: pending.

  • The pinned repository licence is the Unlicense, but the pinned README says copyright in the extracted source list remains with Infochimps. Human legal review of the upstream rights chain is required.
  • Do not assert a redistribution right until the Infochimps-to-dwyl rights chain has been reviewed by a human.
  • Dialect or scope: unspecified

dwyl/english-words; the repository carries an Unlicense notice, while its pinned README attributes upstream copyright to Infochimps

enable artifact-sha256:d3fbe8485022088fcf527edcde2fbdc18b4bbc141ac58123c9adb462e086eaf7

source-membership; surface-spelling-as-listed.

Licence: Licence terms not stated by the source. Legal review: pending. Redistribution review: pending.

  • The downloaded artifact is content-pinned by SHA-256, but it contains no licence notice and the configured source page does not state reuse terms.
  • The artifact is reproducibly pinned but no affirmative reuse grant has been located; redistribution approval remains pending.
  • Dialect or scope: North-American-oriented; exact edition metadata unavailable

ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon); exact reuse terms are pending legal review

google-10000-english git:bdf4c221bc120b0b7f6c3f1eff1cc1abb975f8d8

source-membership; source-order.

Licence: No explicit licence grant in pinned repository metadata. Legal review: pending. Redistribution review: pending.

  • The exact pinned LICENSE.md describes provenance but contains no explicit public-domain dedication or licence grant. Human review is required.
  • The pinned repository documents provenance but does not supply an affirmative licence grant; do not describe it as public domain.
  • Dialect or scope: USA no-swears variant

first20hours/google-10000-english, derived from the Google Web Trillion Word Corpus and Peter Norvig's compilation

frequencywords-en-2018 git:525f9b560de45753a5ea01069454e72e9aa541c6; corpus-release:2018

source-token-observation; source-token-count.

Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0 (content). Legal review: pending. Redistribution review: pending.

  • The exact pinned README states MIT for code and CC BY-SA 4.0 for content. Human review is required for attribution and ShareAlike obligations on compiled and derived data.
  • Content is declared CC BY-SA 4.0. Attribution and ShareAlike treatment of the compiled frequency evidence and derived tiers require human approval.
  • Dialect or scope: unspecified

FrequencyWords content derived from OpenSubtitles, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

cmudict git:74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690

source-membership; arpabet-pronunciation-variant.

Licence: BSD-2-Clause. Legal review: pending. Redistribution review: pending.

  • The exact pinned commit includes BSD-2-Clause redistribution terms. Human approval of the production attribution and binary-distribution obligations is still required.
  • BSD-2-Clause terms are present at the pin; retain copyright and licence notices. Production approval remains a recorded human decision.
  • Dialect or scope: primarily North American English

CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Copyright 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University, BSD-2-Clause

offensive-term-policy 2026.07-review-pending.2

content_filter; search_results; result_counts.

Licence: Reuse terms not yet approved. Legal review: pending. Redistribution review: pending.

  • This bounded policy list cannot determine whether every usage is offensive or benign.

The Word Index first-party content-safety exclusion policy

Citations

  1. CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon Speech Group, version git:74790861f652b15e4ac49015a90074ad62a27690 (dataset).
  2. The Word Index pronunciation transformation, The Word Index, version cmudict-phonology-v3 (method).
  3. The Word Index content-safety exclusion policy, The Word Index, version 2026.07-review-pending.2 (policy).

Data and reproducibility

Source-rights review is pending. The available file contains aggregate computed measures, not a redistributed spelling list. Availability does not grant broader reuse rights; consult the source and licence register before reuse.

Download the canonical aggregate CSV

View the canonical JSON study bundle.

Reproduce this version from a clean checkout:

make studies_reproduce STUDY=pronunciation-coverage