README.md

---
task_categories:
- automatic-speech-recognition
---
# WikIPA

## Dataset Description

**WikIPA** is a multilingual benchmark dataset designed for **speech-to-IPA (STIPA) transcription**, linking spoken audio with International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcriptions.

The dataset integrates two large-scale community-driven resources:

* **WikiPron** — human-curated IPA pronunciations extracted from Wiktionary
* **Lingua Libre** — crowdsourced recordings of spoken lexical items

By connecting these two resources, WikIPA provides a dataset that links **speech audio to phonetic representations**, enabling evaluation of models that transcribe speech directly into IPA.

The dataset supports both:

* **Broad (phonemic) IPA transcriptions**
* **Narrow (phonetic) IPA transcriptions**

WikIPA is introduced in the paper:

> **WikIPA: Integrating WikiPron and Lingua Libre for Multilingual IPA Transcription** 

The dataset contains **289,694 audio–IPA pairs across 78 languages**, making it one of the largest multilingual resources for speech-to-IPA evaluation. 


## Citation

If you use WikIPA or this repository, please cite:

```bibtex
@inproceedings{cassotti2026wikipa,
  title={WikIPA: Integrating WikiPron and Lingua Libre for Multilingual IPA Transcription},
  author={Cassotti, Pierluigi and Suchardt, Jacob Lee and De Cristofaro, Domenico},
  booktitle={Proceedings of LREC 2026},
  year={2026}
}
```

---

# Dataset Summary

| Property             | Value                      |
| -------------------- | -------------------------- |
| Languages            | 78                         |
| Total samples        | 289,694                    |
| Audio duration (avg) | 1.15 seconds               |
| Speakers             | 962                        |
| Task                 | Speech → IPA transcription |

Each entry corresponds to a **single spoken lexical item** recorded in Lingua Libre and linked to **IPA pronunciations from WikiPron**.

---

# Dataset Structure

The dataset consists of **audio recordings paired with IPA transcriptions and metadata**.

Typical fields include:

* **audio** – speech recording
* **lexical_item** – word or phrase spoken
* **ipa_broad** – phonemic transcription (when available)
* **ipa_narrow** – phonetic transcription (when available)
* **language** – language code
* **speaker** – identifier of the speaker
* **dialect** – dialect information when available

Example entry:

```json
{
  "audio": "...",
  "lexical_item": "domingo",
  "ipa_broad": "[d o m i N g o]",
  "ipa_narrow": "[d̪õmiŋgo]",
  "language": "spa",
  "speaker": "Eavqwiki"
}
```

A lexical item may have **multiple possible IPA transcriptions**, reflecting pronunciation variants or dialectal differences.

---

# Data Splits

The dataset is divided into **training and test splits**.

| Split | Examples |
| ----- | -------- |
| train | 231,755  |
| test  | 57,939   |
| total | 289,694  |

The **test split is stratified by language** to ensure balanced evaluation across languages. 

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# Languages

WikIPA covers **78 languages** from multiple language families.

The dataset includes languages with varying phonological complexity and different levels of phonetic annotation detail.

Both **broad and narrow IPA transcriptions** are available depending on the language and Wiktionary annotations.

---

# Usage

Load the dataset using `datasets`:

```python
from datasets import load_dataset

dataset = load_dataset("pierluigic/WikIPA")
```

Example:

```python
sample = dataset["train"][0]

print(sample["audio"])
print(sample["ipa_broad"])
print(sample["language"])
```

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# Tasks

The dataset is intended for:

* **Speech-to-IPA transcription (STIPA)**
* **Universal phone recognition**
* **Phonetic modeling**
* **Cross-lingual speech modeling**
* **Evaluation of multilingual phonetic transcription systems**

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