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bkopman's avatar
bkopman
Community Member
23 days ago
Solved

Help with SSML tags for pronunciation

Hello,

I'm having a difficult time getting an AI-generated voice to pronounce the word "ack" as a word rather than as an acronym.

Using examples from other posts, I've tried a few things including the following syntax:

<speak> <sub alias="æk">ACK</sub> </speak>

Is there something wrong with my syntax or does anyone have another idea?

Thanks in advance.

  • bkopman's avatar
    bkopman
    19 days ago

    StevenBenassi​ Thanks so much for your detailed response. I appreciate it.

    We are using Eric. I replaced ACK with a-ck as you suggested, but it still mispronounced it. 

    <speak> surrounding text  <sub alias="æk">a-ck</sub>surrounding text. </speak>

    Interestingly, the pronunciation is different if you isolate just the SSML portion as opposed to using it within a larger block of text.

    I was able to get it much closer though, by using "ack" rather than "a-ck". It sounds, perhaps, a little too close to NACK rather than ACK, so I inserted a comma after the word "an".

    <speak> surrounding text  an, <sub alias="æk">ack</sub>surrounding text. </speak>

    Thank you again for your assistance.

2 Replies

  • Hi bkopman​!

    Happy to help with this!

    Working with the syntax you shared, I was able to achieve the desired pronunciation by switching 'ACK' from upper-case lettering, to all lower-case. As well as adding a hyphen between 'a-ck'.

    I tested the Text-to-Speech playback with a few different voices, and found "Sarah's" pronunciation to be suitable. 

     

    I suggest testing different voices, to determine which fits your needs best.

    Please let me know if you need anything else!

    • bkopman's avatar
      bkopman
      Community Member

      StevenBenassi​ Thanks so much for your detailed response. I appreciate it.

      We are using Eric. I replaced ACK with a-ck as you suggested, but it still mispronounced it. 

      <speak> surrounding text  <sub alias="æk">a-ck</sub>surrounding text. </speak>

      Interestingly, the pronunciation is different if you isolate just the SSML portion as opposed to using it within a larger block of text.

      I was able to get it much closer though, by using "ack" rather than "a-ck". It sounds, perhaps, a little too close to NACK rather than ACK, so I inserted a comma after the word "an".

      <speak> surrounding text  an, <sub alias="æk">ack</sub>surrounding text. </speak>

      Thank you again for your assistance.