Does your Macintosh totally mangle your daughter’s name when reading it aloud? Instead of spending time explaining to little Szchitt* why Mr. Mac can’t say her name right, why not just fix it?
The sample “Speech Dictionary” file is included to illustrate Tex-Edit’s ability to use a “word exception dictionary” to improve the quality of speech.
Show me how it works!
To illustrate, turn Speech ON, select the text below and choose “Read Selection” in the Sound menu:
When Wednesday finally gets here, I am going to take Felix to the vet, finish my report on the Roosevelt administration, watch the Redsox game, and get ready for the big Halloween party.
Now, turn Speech OFF, drag the “Speech Dictionary” file OUT of Tex-Edit’s folder, turn Speech back ON, and again choose “Read Selection.” See the difference? The boldface words have special dictionary pronunciations.
(Note: The word exception dictionary will only be used if it is named “Speech Dictionary” and resides in the same folder as Tex-Edit Plus.)
What’s going on here?
When you choose one of the “Read” commands in the Sound menu, Tex-Edit reads the text selection aloud. Sometimes words are mispronounced. The “Speech Dictionary” fixes this by overriding Speech Manager’s standard pronunciation rules with rules that you can make up yourself.
How do I create my own pronunciations?
Using a special tool, such as Simon Fraser’s DictionaryEdit program, you can add special pronunciation directions for any word. Basically, you open the “Speech Dictionary” file and then enter the word whose pronunciation you wish to override followed by a phonetic representation of the correct pronunciation. Get DictionaryEdit at:
It is also possible to use a resource creator such as Rez or Resorcerer.
Warning: technical info ahead!
I have enclosed the following information for programmers and for those who don’t wish to use DictionaryEdit for some reason.
The “Speech Dictionary” file consists of a single resource of type “dict”. Here is the Rez source code for the sample included with Tex-Edit Plus. The interesting portions are in bold:
Note that “secondCount” should be replaced with the current time (in Mac format). Each word is paired up with its phonetic pronunciation. No spaces are allowed within the words.
Here is the phonetic symbol dictionary. See how these symbols are combined to create the phonetic representations above (from Inside Macintosh: Sound, Apple Computer):
Symbol Example
% silence
@ inhalation
AE bat
EY bait
AO caught
AX about
IY beet
EH bet
IH bit
AY bite
IX roses
AA cot
UW boot
UH book
UX bud
OW boat
AW bout
OY boy
b bin
C chin
d din
D them
f fin
g gain
h hat
J jump
k kin
l limb
m mat
n nat
N tang
p pin
r ran
s sin
S shin
t tin
T thin
v van
w wet
y yet
z zen
Z measure
Here are prosodic control symbols. Note how the prosodic controls are combined with the phonetic symbols above (from Inside Macintosh: Sound, Apple Computer):
Type Symbol Symbol name Description or illustration of effect
Lexical stress: Marks stress within a word (optional)
Syllable breaks: Marks syllable breaks within a word (optional)
Syllable mark = (equal) AEn=t2IH=sIX=p1EY=SAXn (“an-ti-ci-pa-tion”)
Word prominence: Placed before the affected word
Destressed ~ (asciitilde) Used for words with minimal informational content
Normal stress _ (underscore) Used for information-bearing words
Emphatic stress + (plus) Used for words requiring special emphasis
Prosodic: Placed before the affected phoneme
Pitch rise / (slash) Pitch will rise on the following phoneme
Pitch fall \ (backslash) Pitch will fall on the following phoneme
Lengthen phoneme > (greater) Lengthens the duration of the following phoneme
Shorten phoneme < (less) Shortens the duration of the following phoneme
Have fun.
* I know of no person by this name, living or dead. I just combined random characters to illustrate a point. If this is your name, then I humbly apologize. If this is your child’s name, then I think you should be turned over to Child Protective Services. ;-)