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A phoneme is a short distinctive sound. Every word we speak is made up of phonemes, roughly fourty are represented in the table below.

A viseme is the shape the mouth makes to create a phoneme. Fortunately for animators the same viseme mouth shape can be used to represent multiple phonemes

If you haven't got one, go and buy a small mirror (i have a small collection now of various different sizes..). It's really the most useful thing you can own for doing facial animation.

A short search with google and you will find a verity of different phoneme tables all of which are slightly different. Here I've tried to collate information from various useful sources into one table

  • the book "Animating facial features"
  • the IPA and OGIbet definitions
  • Nivdias Phoneme to Viseme mapping.

The Capitals in the example word show the location of the phoneme.

Articulation Phoneme Example 14 Viseme Set 9 Viseme Set
Vowels IY bEAt 2 1
IH bIt 1 1
EH bEt 2 1
AE bAt 2 1
AX Above 2 1
AA hOt 3 2
UW bOOt 4 2
AH bUt 2 2
UH hOOd 4 2
AO cAUght 3 2
ER bIRd 5 2
Diphthongs EY bAy,Ate 2 3
AY bUY,hIde 2 3
OY bOY 4 3
AW hOW,cOW 2 3
OW bOAt 4 3
Glides Y Yes 6 4
W Wow 4 4
Liquids L Lull 10 4
R Roar 8 5
Nasals M Me 9 6
N KNee 10 7
NG piNG 15 7
Fricatives F Fee 11 6
TH THin 12 8
S Sign 13 9
SH SHoe 14 9
HH He 2 1
V Valve 11 6
DH THen 12 8
Z Zoo,reSign 13 9
ZH meaSure,seiZure 14 9
Plosives(Stops) P Pop 9 6
T Top 7 4
K Kick 15 7
B Bib 9 6
D Did 7 4
G Gig 15 7
Affricatives CH CHurch 14 9
JH Judge,Gee 14 9
AA AX

AA in hOt is used as AA in fAther in the Worldbet Reference Sheet, and as both hOt and fAther in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary

Glides and Liquids Are listed as "Glides (approximants)" in Worldbet

AX in Above is not used in 'CMU dictionary' but appears as AH. In the 'CMU' confusingly AH is also used in hUt and abOve. Thus in the 'CMU' 'above' becomes 'AH B AH V'