Do not pronounce written character

[starrmark]

How do I prevent Textaloud 4 from pronouncing a specific character? I do not it to say 'slash' when it encounters either / or \.

How do I tell Textaloud to shift the stressed accent in a word from one syllable to another syllable?


MS

[Jim Bretti]

To prevent \ and / characters from being pronounced you can try using the TextAloud Speaking Rule that allows you to filter characters. From the TextAloud menu, click Control Center -> Settings. In the left panel of the Settings dialog, expand the item Speaking Rules, and underneath it, click Text Filters. At the bottom of the Text Filters panel there is a field labeled "Filter Characters in this list". Just update this field to include \ and / characters along with any other characters you want to filter. There should be no spaces between the characters. Then select the checkbox to the left of the field to enable the rule.

Let me know if this doesn't work.

Changing which syllable is stressed when a voice pronounces a word is more difficult, and depends on the voice you're using. Can you post a few examples of words you'd like to adjust, along with the voice(s) you're using. I'll take a look and see I can find a way to do it

[starrmark]

Regarding changing stressed accents, I use A Capella Peter. However, the wrong syllable stressed is a problem that I frequently encounter--especially regarding the pronunciation of names and foreign words now considered part of English. Have you considered letting the user choose which syllable to stress by using allcaps in the syllable he/she wants stressed?

[Jim Bretti]

The problem is that TextAloud does not actually control the way words are pronounced, pronunciation is handled by the voice software that is actually performing the text to audio conversion. So each company that distributes tts voices may or may not have a way to deal with this problem.

Unfortunately I don't know of a way to adjust stress placement for Acapela voices. Sorry I can't help here.

[PHenry1026]

The information given above is incorrect. Depending on which Acapela Phoneme dictionary (Lexicon Editor) is associated with your Acapela voice changing the stress of a word could be easy or challenging.

So the first thing you need to do is to find out from TextAloud where the Acapela Phoneme dictionary (Lexicon Editor) is located and how to access it (a user's guide for the Lexicon Editor would be useful).

You can change the stress for any word by adding a 1 or 2 to any vowel. 1 is a primary stress. 2 is a secondary stress. You may want to follow the stress pattern recommend by your preferred dictionary until you get proficient at it.

[Jim Bretti]

As far as I know the information I gave is accurate. The lexicon editor referred to in the previous post was available with older versions of Acapela voices. Acapela currently includes a pronunciation editor utility but it does not have all the features of the older lexicon editor. I don't believe there is a way to control stress in the current pronunciation editor utility from Acapela.

[PHenry1026]

The Phoneme Dictionary (Lexicon Editor) is the most important feature of any voice. Why would you take away the excellent Lexicon Editor that comes with Acapela voices. For example, the Lexicon Editor that comes with UK English voices allows you to use French phonemes.

Acapela voices has the worse pronunciation of all voices; only a fully functional Lexicon Editor makes Acapela voices usable.

This issue does not affect me because I still have the excellent Lexicon Editor that came with the earlier versions, but what possible reason could have for replacing the excellent Lexicon Editor with no Phoneme Dictionary or a non-functioning Lexicon Editor?

[Jim Bretti]

We have not had the lexicon editor available for several Acapela versions now, we only have Acapela's PronunciationEditor tool. I don't know for sure but it is possible that the Lexicon Editor utility may be available for Acapela's enterprise customers, or possibly resellers that offer professional / commercial licensing for Acapela voices. All I really know for sure is that we no longer have it.

[PHenry1026]

Depending on which Acapela Phoneme dictionary (Lexicon Editor) is associated with your Acapela voice changing the stress of a word could be easy or challenging.

Even with Acapela's PronunciationEditor tool, it is still possible to import a special-formatted-text file into PronunciationEditor with the corrected pronunciation(s) as described in my first post (this is the challenging and unnecessary way to do this).

The features you desire are available with Acapela voices. TextAloud has taken away your ability to access them by forcing you to use PronunciationEditor. Only TextAloud users are forced to use PronunciationEditor.

[Quantum]

How do I prevent Textaloud 4 from pronouncing a specific character? I do not it to say 'slash' when it encounters either / or \.

I had a simillar problem which I solved with a regex:
regular expession : \b([a-z]+)\/([a-z]+)\b
pronounce using respell : $1 or $2

This reads word1/word2 as 'word1 or word2'