What is the best text to speech app with pronunciation correction?
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Text to speech is helpful for many purposes, including learning pronunciation. Read on to learn what is the best text to speech app with pronunciation correction.
What is the best text to speech app with pronunciation correction?
Text to speech engines are excellent tools for students, people with reading disabilities, and language learners. The technology can read aloud any text file, allowing users to listen rather than read. However, TTS technology still isn’t perfect—it has particular limitations that may cause inaccuracies in pronunciation.
This issue is critical when learning a new language with the help of TTS apps. Learners can miss particular pronunciation nuances or, worse yet, learn certain words and phrases incorrectly.
Fortunately, text to speech software depends on AI, allowing it to learn and employ pronunciation correction. This article will explain why pronunciation correction matters and provide an overview of the best TTS tools with this functionality.
Why is pronunciation accuracy important for language learning?
Pronunciation plays a vital role when learning different languages. Proper pronunciation promotes fluency and impacts overall language comprehension. In other words, learning how a word sounds helps students understand and use it better.
Pronunciation accuracy is essential throughout all education levels. Furthermore, it impacts how students adopt knowledge regardless of the subject.
Why is text to speech pronunciation sometimes inaccurate?
Unlike, for instance, an audiobook, which is a recording of a book read by humans, TTS uses speech synthesis to sound out a text. Issues in pronunciation arise when the AI can’t recognize the correct way to read a word, which may happen for various reasons.
Firstly, there are homographs—words that are spelled the same but sound different. Consider the word “live” and how it sounds in “We live at this address” versus “It was a live recording.”
Secondly, pronunciation may depend on the context, as is the case with the article “the.”
Finally, specific proper names have particular pronunciation rules, which the TTS engine can’t deduce based on the standard grammar rules. For these reasons, similar issues occur with the voice to text and speech-recognition software. In TTS tools, pronunciation correction exists to remove these problems and increase the accuracy of the speech output.
What is the best text to speech app with pronunciation correction?
If you Google pronunciation apps, you’ll come up with many options. To help you narrow down your search, we recommend using text to speech apps as your go-to word pronunciation apps. Text to speech resolves the pronunciation issue mainly through pronunciation editors and custom dictionaries.
Here are the best apps with pronunciation correction functionality:
Read Aloud
Read Aloud has a pronunciation editor where users can add specific word pronunciations. The app can read various text formats in a selection of languages. It functions similarly to Microsoft or Google text to speech APIs.
NaturalReader
NaturalReader features word substitution and a phonemic character editor. The former allows users to enter specific words or phrases and their pronunciation, while the latter can set international phonetic alphabet (IPA) rules for voices that don’t feature them.
GhostReader
While many TTS platforms are universal, GhostReader is a Mac and iOS-specific app. Users can customize word pronunciation through the in-app menu, where they can write the desired word phonetically. The app features powerful commands, allowing for detailed customization.
Voice Dream Reader
Voice Dream Reader can read text using different voices and reading speeds, which makes the narration more comprehensible. In addition, the app features a text editor, allowing users to change the text for pronunciation purposes. It also has a customizable dictionary.
Balabolka
Balabolka is a free, downloadable text to speech app that functions offline. Besides reading text, this TTS tool lets users save the narration in audio file formats like MP3, WAV, and others. Users can also substitute particular words in the app’s dictionary for more accurate pronunciation.
Speechify
Speechify is the best TTS and word pronunciation app on this list. With Speechify, users can choose between numerous human-like AI voice options with astoundingly accurate pronunciation in multiple different languages. The app uses advanced AI to provide natural-sounding narration for any on-screen text and even for pictures of text with the help of optical character recognition (OCR). Powerful customization options make Speechify user-friendly and convenient for various uses.
Speechify: The best text to speech app
If you want the best text to speech app with accurate pronunciation and natural-sounding voices, we recommend Speechify.
Speechify represents a versatile text to speech platform with particular advantages for language learners, such as realistic accents and voices, compared to other TTS software options. Hear realistic text to speech voices accurately pronounce words in more then 130 different voices, which come in more than 30 different languages and accents. Available languages include English, Spanish, French, German, Mandarin, Hindi, and many more.
The TTS engine is also available on all operating systems, including Android smartphones and tablets as wellas for Apple devices (iOS) like iPhone and iPad. There is even a Speechify Google Chrome extension for text to speech web browser functionality.
Users can download Speechify’s free app from Google Play or Apple’s App Store and take their e-learning on the go. Every app version supports custom voice selection and a range of voiceover options for a seamless listening experience.
Besides language learning, Speechify can be used for many other purposes. The TTS engine can read imported documents, web pages, transcriptions, text messages, and even your Amazon shopping list.
Speechify is designed to help people with reading disabilities like dyslexia master any text with ease. By adjusting the reading speed and narrator’s voice, users can employ the platform as a dictation tool or listen to texts instead of reading, effectively turning challenging pages into custom podcasts. Even the free version of Speechify has plenty of powerful features.
Try Speechify for free today for stellar text to speech and word pronunciation features.
FAQ
What is the most realistic text to speech app?
While the competition in the TTS market is harsh, Speechify stands out as the app with the most genuine-sounding voices and pronunciation.
What is the most accurate text to speech?
Due to its robust AI engine, Speechify provides exceptionally accurate readouts in different languages and dialects.
How do I calibrate text to speech?
TTS pronunciation is adjustable via custom dictionaries and editors. Although it may take some time to get the desired results, these tools can provide more accurate results.
What is the most advanced text to speech?
With industry-leading AI and algorithms, Speechify represents a TTS engine of the next generation. Natural pronunciation and voices that are almost indistinguishable from humans make the platform among the most advanced on the market.
What are the pros and cons of text to speech?
Text to speech provides convenience and assists people with reading difficulties. It also allows multitasking since the user has their hands and eyes free for other tasks. Weaker TTS engines have the downside of not sounding authentic, although advanced apps, like Speechify, don’t have this issue.
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.