SSML - change pronunciation of "conduct" so accent is on the second syllable.

Feb 13, 2024

Hi! I have a sentence where the AI voice is putting the emphasis on the 'con' instead of the 'duct' in the word conduct, e.g. "If you would like to conduct a survey." I'm assuming that I need to use the <phoneme> tag, but I am not familiar with how to use it. I was wondering if anyone has a good resource for shifting accents on words like this? (and particularly for the word "conduct.")

7 Replies
Will Findlay

It looks like if you need to look up pronunciations (without relying on the whims of AI search), a good source would be Pronunciation on Cambridge Dictionary. You can copy and paste the text that uses the international phonetic alphabet (e.g. kən'dʌkt) and put it in here:

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="pronunciation goes here">

 

Steven McAllister

Can I ask which voice you are using? I am using the Storyline x64 version and I only have Neural voices and don't have any Standard voices in "English (US)" anymore. The Storyling 360 help page is confusing, since it has a handful of SSML tags. No closing tags. Plus it shows that some tags are compatible with Neural voices and they are not. For instance, when I input Will's first comment, everything shows up properly colored with the SSML tags, but I can't update/save it and get an error. Also the page links to the Amazon SSML page, which includes a ton of SSML tags that aren't supported either.

Steven McAllister

Woops sorry, I replied to the wrong comment.

Can I ask which voice you are using? I am using the Storyline x64 version and I only have Neural voices and don't have any Standard voices in "English (US)" anymore. The Storyling 360 help page is confusing, since it has a handful of SSML tags. No closing tags. Plus it shows that some tags are compatible with Neural voices and they are not. For instance, when I input Will's first comment, everything shows up properly colored with the SSML tags, but I can't update/save it and get an error. Also the page links to the Amazon SSML page, which includes a ton of SSML tags that aren't supported either.

Will Findlay

Hi Steven,

Yeah, I noticed that as well, that only Neural voices are under the US heading now. There is one English speaker from Wales that is still "standard." I also encountered that the prosody tags don't work with Neural voices. I put together a demo of what I was able to get to work here:

Why SSML? | Review 360 (articulate.com)