Pronouncing the unpronounceable

Every product has words a voice gets wrong. Your company name, a medication, a street, the surname of your best customer. Getting them right is the difference between sounding trustworthy and sounding like spam.

Teach a word once

A pronunciation dictionary maps a word to how it should sound. Add an entry, attach the dictionary to your project, and every voice uses it from then on.

Spell it the way it sounds

You do not need phonetic alphabets. Write the word the way you would explain it on the phone, and listen back. Most entries take one try.

Watch the edge cases

• Acronyms: decide whether “SQL” is letters or “sequel”
• Names that change by language, like Jorge in Spanish and English
• Words that share a spelling but not a sound, like “lead”
• Product codes that should be read digit by digit

Keep it in version control

Dictionaries can be exported and imported as plain files. Store them next to your scripts so a new teammate does not rediscover every quirk.

A list of fifty words usually covers a whole product. It is the cheapest quality upgrade there is.