espeak-ng
next-generation formant-based speech synthesis
TLDR
SYNOPSIS
espeak-ng [options] [words]
DESCRIPTION
espeak-ng (eSpeak New Generation) is a fork of eSpeak with active development, additional features, and improved voice quality. It's a formant-based speech synthesizer supporting 100+ languages.The tool provides text-to-speech capabilities for accessibility, voice assistants, and applications. It includes improvements in pronunciation rules, language support, and phoneme handling over the original eSpeak.espeak-ng is the default TTS engine in many Linux distributions and speech synthesis frameworks.
PARAMETERS
WORDS
Text to speak.-v VOICE
Select voice/language.-f FILE
Read from file.-w FILE
Write to WAV file.-s SPEED
Words per minute.-p PITCH
Pitch adjustment.-p PITCH
Pitch adjustment (0 to 99, default 50).-a AMPLITUDE
Amplitude/volume (0 to 200, default 100).-g GAP
Word gap, in units of 10 ms.-x
Write the translated phoneme mnemonics to stdout instead of speaking.--ipa
Write phonemes using the International Phonetic Alphabet.--stdout
Write the audio as WAV data to standard output.--voices[=lang]
List available voices, optionally filtered by language.--help
Display help information.
INSTALL
CAVEATS
Still sounds robotic (formant synthesis). Some advanced SSML features unsupported. Voice quality varies by language. Output format options limited.
HISTORY
espeak-ng was forked from eSpeak by Reece H. Dunn to continue development after the original project became inactive. It's now the actively maintained version used in most Linux distributions.