How to get Text to Speech to pronounce phonetics and all the individual letters sounds

Mar 12, 2018

Hello,

I am developing a course for English learners and I need some way of getting the text to speech to pronounce phonetics that are taught in phonics. By this, I mean short vowels such as ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ, combined vowels like 'ou' and consonant sounds such as sh, ch, th, ow, ck as well as all the individual alphabet letter sounds. Is this possible, and if so, what do I type?

Thanks,

Joshua

10 Replies
Alyssa Gomez

Hi Joshua,

The Text-to-Speech feature works best with full words, but it seems to also recognize partial words when a vowel is involved. 

For example, ă, ĕ, ĭ, ŏ, ŭ could be "ah, eh, ih, oh, ooh." However, "sh" doesn't work well because there's no vowel in the phonetic spelling. 

Have you considered recording a human voice pronouncing these phonetics using the narration tool?

Ren Gomez

Hi Christine,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you're also using Text-to-Speech and are running into issues getting certain sounds with the letter "A."

What language are you using? If you're using English (US), I had no issues with using the letter "A" or "Ay" to sound like the ending in way using Joanna's Voice.

Using "Ahh," I noticed that the sound was short, like "uh." Perhaps you can try "Auh" and see if that works for you!