COMMAND OPTIONS
2.2.1 Examples
To use at the command line, type:
espeak "This is a test"
or
espeak -f <text file>
Or just type
espeak
followed by text on subsequent lines. Each line is spoken when RETURN is pressed.
Use espeak -x to see the corresponding phoneme codes.
2.2.2 The Command Line Options
espeak [options] ["text words"]
Text input can be taken either from a file, from a string in the command, or from stdin.
-f <text file>
Speaks a text file.
--stdin
Takes the text input from stdin.
If neither -f nor --stdin is given, then the text input is taken from "text words" (a text string within
double quotes).
If that is not present then text is taken from stdin, but each line is treated as a separate sentence.
-a <integer>
Sets amplitude (volume) in a range of 0 to 200. The default is 100.
-p <integer>
Adjusts the pitch in a range of 0 to 99. The default is 50.
-s <integer>
Sets the speed in words-per-minute (approximate values for the default English voice, others may
differ slightly). The default value is 175. I generally use a faster speed of 260. The lower limit is
80. There is no upper limit, but about 500 is probably a practical maximum.
-b <integer>
Input text character format.
1 UTF-8. This is the default.
2 The 8-bit character set which corresponds to the language (eg. Latin-2 for Polish).
4 16 bit Unicode.
Without this option, eSpeak assumes text is UTF-8, but will automatically switch to the 8-bit
character set if it finds an illegal UTF-8 sequence.
-g <integer>
Word gap. This option inserts a pause between words. The value is the length of the pause, in
units of 10 mS (at the default speed of 170 wpm).
-h or --help
The first line of output gives the eSpeak version number.
-k <integer>
Indicate words which begin with capital letters.
1 eSpeak uses a click sound to indicate when a word starts with a capital letter, or double click if
word is all capitals.
2 eSpeak speaks the word "capital" before a word which begins with a capital letter.
Other values: eSpeak increases the pitch for words which begin with a capital letter. The greater
the value, the greater the increase in pitch. Try -k20.
-l <integer>
Line-break length, default value 0. If set, then lines which are shorter than this are treated as
separate clauses and spoken separately with a break between them. This can be useful for some
text files, but bad for others.
-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. No sound is generated. This may be useful with options such as -x and --pho.
-v <voice filename>[+<variant>]
Sets a Voice for the speech, usually to select a language. eg:
espeak -vaf
To use the Afrikaans voice. A modifier after the voice name can be used to vary the tone of the
voice, eg:
espeak -vaf+3
The variants are +m1 +m2 +m3 +m4 +m5 +m6 +m7 for male voices and +f1 +f2 +f3
+f4 which simulate female voices by using higher pitches. Other variants include +croak and
+whisper.
<voice filename> is a file within the espeak-data/voices directory.
<variant> is a file within the espeak-data/voices/!v directory.
Voice files can specify a language, alternative pronunciations or phoneme sets, different pitches,
tonal qualities, and prosody for the voice. See the voices.html file.
Voice names which start with mb- are for use with Mbrola diphone voices, see mbrola.html
Some languages may need additional dictionary data, see languages.html
-w <wave file>
Writes the speech output to a file in WAV format, rather than speaking it.
-x
The phoneme mnemonics, into which the input text is translated, are written to stdout. If a
phoneme name contains more than one letter (eg. [tS]), the --sep or --tie option can be used to
distinguish this from separate phonemes.
-X
As -x, but in addition, details are shown of the pronunciation rule and dictionary list lookup. This
can be useful to see why a certain pronunciation is being produced. Each matching pronunciation
rule is listed, together with its score, the highest scoring rule being used in the translation.
"Found:" indicates the word was found in the dictionary lookup list, and "Flags:" means the word
was found with only properties and not a pronunciation. You can see when a word has been
retranslated after removing a prefix or suffix.
-z
The option removes the end-of-sentence pause which normally occurs at the end of the text.
--stdout
Writes the speech output to stdout as it is produced, rather than speaking it. The data starts with a
WAV file header which indicates the sample rate and format of the data. The length field is set to
zero because the length of the data is unknown when the header is produced.
--compile [=<voice name>]
Compile the pronunciation rule and dictionary lookup data from their source files in the current
directory. The Voice determines which language's files are compiled. For example, if it's an
English voice, then en_rules, en_list, and en_extra (if present), are compiled to replace en_dict in
the speak-data directory. If no Voice is specified then the default Voice is used.
--compile-debug [=<voice name>]
The same as --compile, but source line numbers from the *_rules file are included. These are
included in the rules trace when the -X option is used.
--ipa
Writes phonemes to stdout, using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).
If a phoneme name contains more than one letter (eg. [tS]), the --sep or --tie option can be used to
distinguish this from separate phonemes.
--path [="<directory path>"]
Specifies the directory which contains the espeak-data directory.
--pho
When used with an mbrola voice (eg. -v mb-en1), it writes mbrola phoneme data (.pho file
format) to stdout. This includes the mbrola phoneme names with duration and pitch information,
in a form which is suitable as input to this mbrola voice. The --phonout option can be used to
write this data to a file.
--phonout [="<filename>"]
If specified, the output from -x, -X, --ipa, and --pho options is written to this file, rather than to
stdout.
--punct [="<characters>"]
Speaks the names of punctuation characters when they are encountered in the text. If
<characters> are given, then only those listed punctuation characters are spoken, eg.
--punct=".,;?"
--sep [=<character>]
The character is used to separate individual phonemes in the output which is produced by the -x
or --ipa options. The default is a space character. The character z means use a ZWNJ character
(U+200c).
--split [=<minutes>]
Used with -w, it starts a new WAV file every <minutes> minutes, at the next sentence
boundary.
--tie [=<character>]
The character is used within multi-letter phonemes in the output which is produced by the -x or
--ipa options. The default is the tie character U+361. The character z means use a ZWJ
character (U+200d).
--voices [=<language code>]
Lists the available voices.
If =<language code> is present then only those voices which are suitable for that language are
listed.
--voices=mbrola lists the voices which use mbrola diphone voices. These are not included
in the default --voices list
--voices=variant lists the available voice variants (voice modifiers).
2.2.3 The Input Text
HTML Input
If the -m option is used to indicate marked-up text, then HTML can be spoken directly.
Phoneme Input
As well as plain text, phoneme mnemonics can be used in the text input to espeak. They are
enclosed within double square brackets. Spaces are used to separate words and all stressed
syllables must be marked explicitly.
eg: espeak -v en "[[D,Is Iz sVm f@n'EtIk t'Ekst 'InpUt]]"
This command will speak: "This is some phonetic text input".
Página oficial:
http://espeak.sourceforge.net/
Ayuda
man espeak
espeak -h
info espeak
espeak --voices
Ejemplos de su uso
Enviar un "Hello"
espeak "Hello"
En español
espeak -ves "Hola"
Voz de mujer
espeak -ves+f4 "Hola"
Volumen
espeak -a 40 "Hello"
espeak -a 200 "Hello"
Velocidad de lectura
espeak -s 120 "Speed in words per minute."
espeak -s 200 "Speed in words per minute."
Crear un WAV a partir de texto
espeak -w /tmp/espeak-prueba.wav "Hello everybody"
El audio se guardo en /tmp bajo el nombre de espeak-prueba.wav.
Nota.- Convertir un WAV a MP3: lame -h -m j prueba.wav prueba.mp3
Tono de la voz
espeak -p 0 "Ajuste del tono"
espeak -p 99 "Ajuste del tono"
Leer un archivo de texto
Creamos un TXT en /tmp o cualquier otra ubicación. Con la siguiente línea podemos hacerlo:
printf "Hello everybody" >> /tmp/prueba-texto-espeak.txt
Para escuchar el archivo:
espeak -f /tmp/prueba-texto-espeak.txt
Usar otros tipos de voces con mbrola
Vemos cuales tenemos con: ls /usr/share/mbrola. Si no contamos con alguna podemos instalar con
synaptic o desde la terminal.
Con esta linea instalamos mbrola y dos tipos de voces en español.
sudo apt-get install mbrola mbrola-es1 mbrola-es2
Probamos las voces:
espeak -v mb-es1 "Hola mundo, esta es una prueba."
espeak -v mb-es2 "Hola mundo, esta es una prueba."
Ahora, nos conectamos nuevamente y se ejecuta el siguiente comando para probar la funcionalidad
espeak -v es -s 130 -a 90 -k 20 " Bienvenidos a la Internet de las Cosas"
2>/dev/null
Veamos las opciones,
-v es, es la voz en español
-s 130, es la velocidad, por omisión es 175
-a 90, es la amplitud o volumen relativo, por omisión es 100
-k 20, es un aumento de agudos en letras mayúsculas
Voces instaladas.↑
Si nosotros hablaramos inglés, pues al diablo, todo sería más fácil, pero como hablamos «spanish»
(¿habrá alguna aplicación que se llame «eSpanish«? ? ) procedemos a buscar las voces en nuestro
idioma, mirad la figura:
espeak --voices | grep "spanish"
Acá vemos las dos letras claves son las del principio «es», investigando más a fondo listamos las voces
correspondientes al castellano:
Ya vemos las voces disponibles para nuestro idioma pero en la documentación advierten que muchos
idiomas son experimentales, así que solo esperad la perfección de Dios solamente, nosotros pobres
mortales somos imperfectos (pero buscando siempre la excelencia).
Usando «eSpeak».↑
La voz que vamos a utilizar entonces es «venezuala-mbrola-1» (para los angloparlantes el nombre de
nuestro país es difícil de pronunciar, por eso lo escriben mal allí arriba en la opción, para ellos es «vene
-pausa- zuuuuu-Ela») así que podemos, por ejemplo, dar la siguiente orden en un guion para que nos
avise que finalizó el proceso solicitado:
echo "Respaldo completado" | espeak -v es-vz
Así mismo podemos grabarlo en un archivo con la extensión .wav con el parámetro nemotécnico «-w«:
echo "Respaldo completado" | espeak -v es-vz -w respaldo_completado.wav
Otro uso es leer un archivo de texto que tengamos para ayudar a nuestros usuarios, pues «eSpeak» lo
lee por nostros con el parámetro «-f» seguido del nombre del fichero:
espeak -f archivo.txt -v es-vz
Por último, si queremos que cada minuto nos de la hora de nuestro sistema, en castellano, lanzad lo
siguiente:
while true; do date +%S | grep '00' && date +%H:%M | espeak -v es-vz; sleep 1; done
Si la voz «venezuala» está instalada, oiréis la hora en castellano y si es demasiado robotizada
podemos jugar con los parámetros de amplitud, tono, etcétera, acá un ejemplo, experimentad vosotros
mismos con otras cifras:
while true; do date +%S | grep '00' && date +%H:%M | espeak -v es-vz -s 160 -a 100
-g 4; sleep 1; done
Uso práctico.↑
Se nos ocurre que podemos agregar un trabajo por fecha «cron-job» para que revise un registro .log
(archivos de texto con la extension .log) para que revise las últimas 10 líneas (valor por defecto de tail)
y si encuentra un error nos advierta de manera auditiva:
tail -1F /tu/fichero/log | grep --line-buffered 'ERROR' | espeak -v es-vz
