espeak - Man Page

• Speak a phrase aloud: espeak "I like to ride my bike."
• Speak a file aloud: espeak -f path/to/file
• Save output to a WAV audio file, rather than speaking it directly: espeak -w filename.wav "It's GNU plus Linux"
• Use a different voice: espeak -v voice

tldr.sh

espeak [options] [words]

espeak is a software speech synthesizer for English, and some other languages.

-ffile

Text file to speak.

--stdin

Read text input from stdin instead of a file

If neither -f nor --stdin, words are spoken, or if none then text is spoken from stdin, each line separately.

-ainteger

Amplitude, 0 to 20, default is 10.

-ginteger

Word gap. Pause between words, units of 10 ms at the default speed.

-kinteger

Indicate capital letters with: 1=sound, 2=the word "capitals", higher values = a pitch increase (try -k20).

-linteger

Line length. If not zero (which is the default), consider lines less than this length as and-of-clause.

-pinteger

Pitch adjustment, 0 to 99, default is 50.

-sinteger

Speed in words per minute, default is 160.

-vvoicename

Use voice file of this name from espeak-data/voices.

-wfile

Write output to this WAV file, rather than speaking it directly.

-b

Input text is 8-bit encoding.

-m

Indicates that the text contains SSML (Speech Synthesis Markup Language) tags or other XML tags. Those SSML tags which are supported are interpreted. Other tags, including HTML, are ignored, except that some HTML tags such as <hr> <h2> and <li> ensure a break in the speech.

-q

Quiet, don't produce any speech (may be useful with -x).

-x

Write phoneme mnemonics to stdout.

-X

Write phonemes mnemonics and translation trace to stdout.

-z

No final sentence pause at the end of the text.

--compile[=voicename]

Compile the pronunciation rules and dictionary in the current directory. The voicename is optional and specifies which language to use.

--ipa[=ipa]

Write phonemes to stdout using International Phonetic Alphabet. If ipa is 1 use ties, if 2 use ZWJ, if 3 separate with "_".

--path=path

Specifies the directory containing the espeak-data directory.

--pho

Write mbrola phoneme data (.pho) to stdout or to the file in --phonout.

--phonout=filename

Write output from -x, -X commands and mbrola phoneme data to this file.

--punct[=characters]

Speak the names of punctuation characters during speaking. If characters is omitted, all punctuation is spoken.

--split=minutes

Starts a new WAV file every minutes. Used with -w.

--stdout

Write speech output to stdout.

--voices[=language]

Lists the available voices. If language is present then only those voices which are suitable for that language are listed.

-h,  --help

Show summary of options.

--version

Show version information.

eSpeak was written by Jonathan Duddington <jonsd@jsd.clara.co.uk>. The webpage for this package can be found at http://espeak.sourceforge.net/.

This manual page was written by Luke Yelavich <themuso@ubuntu.com>, for the Ubuntu project (but may be used by others). Several updates by Jaroslav Škarvada <jskarvad@redhat.com>.

kmouth(1).