A voice file specifies a language (and possibly a language variant or dialect or just voice) together with various attributes that affect the characteristics of the voice quality and how the language is spoken.
Voice files are located in the espeak-ng-data/ folder, and:
Languages are grouped by the ISO 639-5 language family of the language being specified in the voice files. See also Wikipedia's List of language families for more details.
The default voice is used if none is specified in the speak command. You can copy your preferred voice to “default” so you can use the speak command without the need to specify a voice.
name <name>
A mandatory name given to this voice. Should be single word.
A mandatory identifier of the language or the voice. It can have one of two options:
language <language code> [<priority>]
or
language variant
NOTE: This attribute is mandatory and should appear before the other attributes which are listed below.
It selects the default behaviour and characteristics for the language, and sets default values for “phonemes”, “dictionary” and other attributes.
If value for lanuguage field is variant, then file describes only phonetic features of the voice and it can be used as a ...+variant option for any language.
If language identifies actual language, then <language code> should be a valid BCP 47 language tag. The list of valid tags originate from various standards and have been combined into the IANA Language Subtag Registry. For example:
de (German) -- The ISO 639-1 2-letter language code for the language.
NOTE: BCP 47 uses ISO 639-1 codes for languages that are allocated 2-letter codes (e.g. using en instead of eng).
yue (Cantonese) -- The ISO 639-3 3-letter language codes for the language.
ta-Arab (Tamil written in the Arabic alphabet) -- The ISO 15924 4-letter script code.
NOTE: Where the script is the primary script for the language, the script tag should be omitted.
es-419 (Spanish (Latin America)) -- The UN M.49 3-number region codes.
fr-CA (French (Canada)) -- Using the ISO 3166-2 2-letter region codes.
en-GB-scotland (English (Scotland)) -- This is using the BCP 47 variant tags.
en-GB-x-rp (English (Received Pronunciation)) -- This is using the bcp47-extensions language tags for accents that cannot be described using the available BCP 47 language tags.
NOTE: If the accent you are trying to describe cannot be specified using the above system, raise an issue in the bcp47-data project and a private use tag will be defined for that accent.
The optional <priority> value gives the preference of this voice compared with others for the specified language. A low value indicates a more preferred voice. The default value is 5.
More than one language line may be present. A voice may be selected for other related languages (variants which have the same initial 2 letter language code as the specified language), but it will be less preferred for these. Different language variants may be specified by additional language lines in order to indicate that this is a preferred voice for them also. E.g.
language en-GB-x-gbclan language en
indicates that this is voice is for the en-GB-x-gbclan dialect, but it is also a main choice when a general en language is specified. Without the second language line, it would be disfavoured from en for being a more specialised voice.
gender <gender> [<age>]
This attribute is only a label for use in voice selection. It doesn't change the sound of the voice.
maintainer <maintaner>
Specifies the person responsible for updating the voice and associated language files. If no maintainer is specified, the voice does not currently have an active maintainer.
status <status level>
Specifies how advanced the support for the language is:
testing -- Provides the basic level of support, with basic pronunciation rules. Requires feedback from a native speaker to help improve the voice.
mature -- The language is well supported. It has been improved by, or with support from, a native speaker.
pitch <base> <range>
Two integer values. The first gives a base pitch to the voice (value in Hz) The second controls the range of pitches used by the voice. Setting it equal to the base pitch will give a monotone. The default values are 82 118.
formant <number> <frequency> <strength> <width> <freq_add>
Systematically adjusts the frequency, strength, and width of the resonance peaks of the voice. Values are percentages of the default values. Changing these affects the tone/quality of the voice.
Adds a constant value (in Hz) to the frequency of the formant peak. The value may be negative.
echo <delay> <amplitude>
Parameter 1 gives the delay in mS (0 to 250mS).
Parameter 2 gives the echo amplitude (0 to 100).
Adding some echo can give a clearer or more interesting sound, especially when listening through a domestic stereo sound system, rather than small computer speakers.
Controls the tone of the sound.
tone is followed by up to 4 pairs of <frequency> <amplitude> which define a frequency response graph. Frequency is in Hz and amplitude is in the range 0 to 255 The default is:
tone 600 170 1200 135 2000 110
This means that from frequency 0Hz to 600Hz the amplitude is 170 From 600Hz to 1200Hz the amplitude decreases from 170 to 135, then decreases to 110 at 2000Hz and remains at 110 at higher frequencies. This adjustment applies only to voiced sounds such as vowels and sonorant consonants (such as [n] and [l]). Unvoiced sounds such as [s] are unaffected.
This tone statement can also appear in espeak-ng-data/config, in which case it applies to all voices which don't have their own tone statement.
flutter <value>
Default value: 100.
Adds pitch fluctuations to give a wavering or older-sounding voice. A large value (eg. 20) makes the voice sound “croaky”.
roughness <value>
Default value: Range 0 - 7
Reduces the amplitude of alternate waveform cycles in order to make the voice sound creaky.
voicing <value>
Default value: 100
Adjusts the strength of formant-synthesized sounds (vowels and sonorant consonants).
consonants <value> <value>
Default values: 100, 100
Adjusts the strength of noise sounds which are used in consonants. The first value is the strength of unvoiced consonants such as “s” and “t”.
The second value is the strength of the noise component of voiced consonants such as “z” and “d”.
breath <up to 8 integer values>
Default values: 0.
Adds noise which corresponds to the formant frequency peaks. The values give the strength of noise for each formant peak (formants 1 to 8).
Use together with a low or zero value of the voicing attribute to make a “wisper”. For example:
breath 75 75 60 40 15 10 breathw 150 150 200 200 400 400 voicing 18 flutter 20 formant 0 100 0 100 // remove formant 0
breathw <up to 8 integer values>
These values give bandwidths of the noise peaks of the breath attribute. If breathw values are not given, then suitable default values will be used.
speed <value>
Default value 100
Adjusts the speaking speed by a percentage of the default rate. This can be used if a language voice seems faster or slower compared to other voices.
words <integer value> <integer value>
The first parameter puts a pause between all words, the value can be between 0 and 4.
The second parameter adds a short pause if a word ends with a vowel and the next words starts with a vowel. Values may be:
0: no pause1: no pause, but the two vowels are kept separate2: short pauseFor example:
words 0 1
will put a short pause between two words where the first word end with a vowel and the next start with a vowel.
brackets <value>
Default value: 4
Increases the pause when reading brackets. Example: “Pause (with brackets)”.
bracketsAnnounced <value>
Default value: 2
Increases the pause when reading brackets when --punct is set to read bracket names. Example: “Pause (with brackets)”.
phonemes <name>
Specifies which set of phonemes to use from those contained in the phontab, phonindex, and phondata data files. This is a phonemetable name as given in the “phoneme” source file.
This parameter is usually not needed as it is set by default to the first two letters of the “language” parameter. However, different voices of the same language can use different phoneme sets, to give different accents.
dictionary <name>
Specifies which pair of dictionary files to use. For example, en indicates that speak-data/en_dict should be used to translate from words to phonemes. This parameter is usually not needed as it is set by default to the value of the “language” parameter.
dictrules <list of rule numbers>
Gives a list of conditional dictionary rules which are applied for this voice. Rule numbers are in the range 0 to 31 and are specific to a language dictionary. They apply to rules in the language's *_rules dictionary file and also its *_list exceptions list. See Text to Phoneme Translation.
lowercaseSentence <no arguments>
By default, a sentence end is detected if a period . is followed by an uppercase letter. When lowercaseSentence is set, a period followed by a lowercase letter is also handled as end of sentence.
Note that other conditions, such as abbreviations, might override this setting.
replace <flags> <phoneme> <replacement phoneme>
Replace a phoneme by another whenever it occurs.
<replacement phoneme> may be NULL.
Flags: bit 0: replacement only occurs on the final phoneme of a word.
Flags: bit 1: replacement doesn't occur in stressed syllables.
e.g.
replace 0 h NULL // drops h's
replace 0 V U // replaces vowel in 'strut' by that in 'foot'
// as occurs in northern British English
replace 3 N n // change 'fishing' to 'fishin' etc.
// (only the last phoneme of a word, only in unstressed syllables)
The phoneme mnemonics can be defined for each language, but some are listed in Phonemes.
spellingStress
When set, stress first letter when reading abbreviations.
stressOpt <list of rule numbers>
Gives a list of stress options which are applied for this language. (values are defined as bit numbers starting with “S_*” in translate.h)
stressRule <3 integer values>
Three integer parameters. These correspond to:
If a value is not given, it defaults to zero. For example: “stressRule 2” is equal to “stressRule 2 0 0 0”
stressLength <8 integer values>
Eight integer parameters. These control the relative lengths of the vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables.
% mark or without any stress mark).%%) within multisyllabic words. In other languages it is final unstressed syllable.,).').stressAdd <8 integer values>
Eight integer parameters. These are added to the voice's corresponding stressLength values. They are used in the voice variant files in espeak-ng-data/voices/!v to give some variety. Negative values may be used.
Note that setting stressLength after stressAdd will overwrite this value. stressLength must be set before stressAdd.
stressAmp <8 integer values>
Eight integer parameters. These control the relative amplitudes of the vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables (see stressLength above). The general default values are: 16, 16, 20, 20, 20, 24, 24, 22, although these defaults may be different for particular languages.
intonation <param1>
dictmin <value>
Used for some languages to detect if additional language data is installed. If the size of the compiled dictionary data for the language (the file espeak-ng-data/*_dict) is less than this size then a warning is given.