Word level emphasis in synthesis SSML

Question

I was trying to use word level emphasis, but noticed that the emphasis is only working for en-US-GuyNeural, en-US-DavisNeural, and en-US-JaneNeural.

Are there plans to extend this to other languages?

Are there any alternatives that i could use to replicate the behavior for single words, like e.g. contour? (But contour also is only supposed to be used with sentences)

Answer 1

Hi @DWinkler,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A forum!

Azure's word-level emphasis feature is currently supported only for specific voices like en-US-GuyNeural, en-US-DavisNeural, and en-US-JaneNeural. There is no official information regarding plans to extend this feature to more languages or voices, but it's possible that future updates could include additional support. However, you can keep an eye on the Azure Speech Service release notes for updates on What's new in Azure AI Speech? page will be updated accordingly with more details.

As alternatives for emphasizing words in other voices or languages, you can try adjusting the pitch, rate, and volume using the <prosody> tag to subtly highlight certain words. Another option is adding a short pause before or after the word with the <break> tag to create emphasis through timing. Although <contour> is designed for sentence-level use, you could apply it to short phrases to achieve a similar effect, but it won't provide the same level of precision as word-level emphasis. Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

---

If this answers your query, do click Accept Answer and Yes for was this answer helpful.