TTS Pronunciation in Czech

Question

Hey,
I have problem with text-to-speech, when I want to pronounce "Čadca" (its Slovak town, but CZ and SK are very close languages) in Czech language. It's pronounced wrong - the "ca" part of the word. Can you please fix it? Thx.

Answer 1

Hello @Michal Dobeš

Update from product team - they are working on this issue, if they can provide any ETA to fix this issue, I will let you know.

Moreover, for a quick workaround in case you need immediately fix, you can use phonemes to improve pronunciation, you have SIPA, UPS and IPA for your selection:

What is phonemes?
Specifies the phonetic alphabet to use when you synthesize the pronunciation of the string in the ph attribute. The string that specifies the alphabet must be specified in lowercase letters. The following options are the possible alphabets that you can specify:
ipa – See SSML phonetic alphabets https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/speech-ssml-phonetic-sets
sapi – See SSML phonetic alphabets https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/speech-ssml-phonetic-sets
ups – See Universal Phone Set https://documentation.help/Microsoft-Speech-Platform-SDK-11/17509a49-cae7-41f5-b61d-07beaae872ea.htm

If you have never used SSML pronunciation alphabets before, I would try UPS first. It is like IPA, but all the letters are human readable and type on a standard keyboard. IPA, is more widely used by linguists, but takes some time to learn how to use.

How to use phonemes -
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/speech-service/speech-synthesis-markup#use-phonemes-to-improve-pronunciation

Please have a try above for workaround and I will let you know bug fixing status if I get any news.

Regards,
Yutong

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