cabaumle

Q: "say" terminal command - how to change emphasis

I have to use the german voice Markus to speak a text ending with a website domain and I do it with the "say" command in the terminal as following:

say -v "Markus" "Bitte besuchen Sie auch unsere Website unter www punkt apple punkt com."

 

"Markus" is pronouncing "com" perfect as a word but is not knowing it as a german one. The voice is ending in high tone like before a comma and not going down like in any other phrase end. "Die Website apple punkt ch." gets spoken perfectly.

 

I could not find any options to control the emphasis or ending a phrase. Any help?

Mac mini, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Dec 1, 2014 7:47 AM

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Q: "say" terminal command - how to change emphasis

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  • by Hiroto,

    Hiroto Hiroto Dec 3, 2014 1:43 AM in response to cabaumle
    Level 5 (7,281 points)
    Dec 3, 2014 1:43 AM in response to cabaumle

    Hello

     

    You may try using embedded speech commands in text, such as:

     

    say -v "Markus" "Bitte besuchen Sie auch unsere Website unter www punkt apple punkt [[emph -]]com."
    

     

    or

     

    say -v "Markus" "Bitte besuchen Sie auch unsere Website unter www punkt apple punkt [[pbas 30]]com."
    

     

     

    cf.

    Speech Synthesis Programming Guide

    https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/ SpeechSynthesisProgrammingGuide/

     

     

    Not tested, for I'm using OSX 10.6.8 where no voice named Markus is.

     

    Good luck,

    H

     

     

    PS. The following commands demonstrate some tuning of Ralph's speech under 10.6.8.

     

    say -v Ralph "dot com"
    say -v Ralph "dot [[emph -]]com"
    say -v Ralph "dot [[pbas 30]]com"
    
  • by cabaumle,

    cabaumle cabaumle Dec 3, 2014 3:56 AM in response to Hiroto
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 3, 2014 3:56 AM in response to Hiroto

    Thank you. [[emph]] and [[pbas]] have no effects with Markus voice. And Ralph voice is doing the speach correctly without.

    Maybe Markus voice can not understand the special commands?

  • by Hiroto,

    Hiroto Hiroto Dec 3, 2014 4:31 PM in response to cabaumle
    Level 5 (7,281 points)
    Dec 3, 2014 4:31 PM in response to cabaumle

    Hello

     

    I've read that some new voices do not honour some embedded speech commands. I'm afraid it may be the case for Markus.

     

    As an absurd workaround, you might try komm in lieu of com, like this:

     

    say -v "Markus" "Bitte besuchen Sie auch unsere Website unter www punkt apple punkt [[cmnt com]]komm."
    

     

     

    Good luck,

    H

  • by cabaumle,

    cabaumle cabaumle Dec 4, 2014 1:18 AM in response to Hiroto
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 4, 2014 1:18 AM in response to Hiroto

    Thank you for help.

    It looks like "Markus" is a voice which is not interpreting the commands. [[slnc n]] works fine. Others do not. And the trick with noting like human reading is not working either. It looks like "Markus" is pronouncing correctly only if the sentence is understandable by the (a) dictionary.

     

    At least I can change the positions in the sentence to avoid the .com at the end.