Before any other Macintalk commands can be issued, the Macintalk driver must first be initialized. This is done with the TurnSpeechOnΓÇá command. The format is
TurnSpeechOn [exceptionsFile]
The argument ΓÇÿexceptionsFile ΓÇÖ is the name of a file containing rules for pronouncing certain words. Macintalk already has over 400 rules for producing phonetics from English, but it still mispronounces many words. You can create an exceptions file with a utility called ExceptionEdit and put into that file the correct pronunciation of as many English words as you like. Further discussion of ExceptionEdit is beyond the scope of this stack; like Macintalk, ExceptionEdit is available from many computer clubs and bulletin board systems.
If this argument is omitted (the usual case), no exception file will be used. You can also specify "noReader" as the argument, in which case it is assumed no English-to-phonetic translation will be done (that is, you will use the command
ΓÇÿSayPhoneticΓÇÖ only, and never call ΓÇÿSayΓÇÖ or ΓÇÿPhonemesΓÇÖ).