Vietnamese names are spelled out in speech.

[thwua90]

I am a teacher of English. At times, I built some dialogues with speakers from Vietnam. All the last names in Vietnamese were not pronounced correctly - they were SPELLED OUT in speech (such names as 'Nguyễn', 'Trần'', 'Văn',...) Please help me with this.

[Jim Bretti]

I'll need some additional information to help. First, please make sure you're running the current version of TextAloud, version 4.0.39. From the TextAloud menu click Help -> About, and if the version displayed is earlier than 4.0.39, update using the installer at https://nextup.com/files/ta4.exe.

Then, duplicate the problem in version 4.0.39, using a small article containing a few names. After speaking the text, submit a problem report by clicking Help -> Support -> Report A Problem from the TextAloud menu. Just mention this issue briefly in the problem report text.

And finally, go back to the TextAloud main window and save a copy of the article to a text file, using File -> Save Article as Text File. Attach the file to an email and send to me at jim@nextup.com

[PHenry1026]

IPA Pronunciations:

Nguyễn /nyˈen/

Trần /ˈdrɑːn/

Văn /ˈvɑːn/


It is easier to find these names in standard references if rendered without diacritics: Nguyễn as Nguyen.

[thwua90]

Thanks, Henry, but that was not what I meant. The fact is TextAloud reads aloud Vietnamese names as it reads the ALPHABET (= letter by letter), not as a single word. How to fix this - I'm no expert in phonetics or phonemics.

[PHenry1026]

I know exactly what you meant.

You need to get help from TextAloud on how to use the Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance to respell a word then you can use the IPA pronunciations I supplied to properly pronounce your Vietnamese names.

There is nothing wrong with TextAloud or with the way it is pronouncing these names; you have to respell them with the Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance or your Phoneme Dictionary.

It is important that you tell TextAloud what voice your are using.

[Jim Bretti]

If you could send the TextAloud problem report mentioned earlier I should be able to get more information on the voices you're using, and find what possibilities are available for these kinds of pronunciation corrections. From the TextAloud main menu, just click Help -> Support -> Report A Problem.

Just be sure you're running version 4.0.39 so you have the update required by recent changes to our problem reporting server. If you need to update, you can download a current installer from https://nextup.com/files/ta4.exe