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import Tabs from @theme/Tabs; import TabItem from @theme/TabItem; The verb reads the supplied text back to the caller. It is useful for text that is difficult to pre-record. The gender and language in which the text will be read is customizable. ## Verb Attributes | Attribute | | | --: | -- | | voice optional | The attribute voice supports: **man**, **woman**, **alice**, Amazon Polly voices by prefixing them with Polly., Amazon Polly Neural voices by prefixing them with Polly. and ending them with -Neural, Google Cloud voices by prefixing them with gcloud.. Polly Neural and Google Wavenet voices are charged a premium price compared to Polly Standard and Google Standard voices. Default is **woman** for most languages. **alice** is deprecated and provided for backward compatibility. See below for language specifications on each of these voices. | | loop optional | The attribute loop specifies the number of times a text is to be repeated. If loop is set to 0, the text will be continuously repeated until the call is terminated. Default behavior is one repetition. | | language optional | The attribute language allows you to specify the dialect (language and locale) of voice. See below for all language specifications. | ### Supported Voices and Languages The supported voices and languages can be found [here](/guides/voice-and-languages). ## Nouns The noun of a CXML verb is nested within the verb upon which the verb acts. has the following noun: | Noun | | | : | -- | | plain text limit: 4,096 unicode characters | The text that will be read to the caller. | ## Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) is an XML-based markup language that provides a standard way to mark up text for synthesized speech. SSML is usually wrapped within tags. But, when using SSML with the verb, you can ignore those tags. The rest of the SSML tags will be placed inside the verb. Below are the supported SSML tags. When using an Amazon Polly voice, please refer to https://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/supportedtags.html instead. | Tag | | | --: | | | | A pause in speech. Set the length of the pause with the time attribute. Maximum pause time is **10s**. Include the unit s or ms when setting a time. The strength attribute can also be used for pauses. See [below](#strength) for possible values. | | | Emphasize words or phrases. This tag changes the rate and volume of speech. More emphasis generates louder and slower speech while less emphasis generates quieter and faster speech. Emphasis can be modified with the level attribute. See [below](#level) for possible values. | | | Specify another language for specific words or phrases. Set the language with the xml:lang attribute. Possible languages are: en-US, en-GB, en-IN, en-AU, en-CA, de-DE, es-ES, it-IT, ja-JP, fr-FR (English, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, French). | |

| Add a pause between paragraphs. | | | Phonetic pronunciation for specified words or phrases. Set the phonetic alphabet to use with the alphabet attribute. See [below](#alphabet) for possible values. In addition, you can use the ph attribute to set the phonetic pronunciation to speak. See [here](https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#supported-symbols) for a list of supported symbols. | | | Modify the [volume](#volume), [pitch](#pitch), and [rate](#rate) of the tagged speech. | | | Add a pause between sentences. | | | Describe how text should be interpreted. See [below](#interpret) for all the possible values of the interpret-as attribute of the tag. | | _{| Pronounce the specified word or phrase as a different word or phrase. Specify the pronunciation to substitute with the alias attribute. |
#### strength attribute {#strength} The strength attribute has the following values. Default is medium. | Value | | | : | | | none | No pause. Can be used to remove a pause that would normally occur. | | x-weak | No pause. | | weak | Treat adjacent words as if separated by a single comma. | | medium | Treat adjacent words as if separated by a single comma. | | strong | Sentence break. | | x-strong | Paragraph break. |
#### level attribute {#level} The level attribute has the following values. Default is moderate. | Value | | | : | | | strong | Increase the volume and slow down the speaking rate. Speech is louder and slower. | | moderate | Increase the volume and slow down the speaking rate, but not as much as strong. | | reduced | Decrease the volume and speed up the speaking rate. Speech is softer and faster. |
#### alphabet attribute {#alphabet} The alphabet attribute has the following values. | Value | | | --: | - | | ipa | The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). | | x-sampa | The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA). |
#### volume attribute {#volume} The volume attribute has the following values. Set the volume with one of the values below. Then, you can specify a percentage to increase or decrease the volume of the speech. See [here](https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#prosody) for more information. | Value | | | -: | | | silent | No volume. | | x-soft | Lowest volume. | | soft | Lower volume. | | medium | Normal volume. | | loud | Louder volume. | | x-loud | Loudest volume. |
#### pitch attribute {#pitch} The pitch attribute has the following values. Set the pitch with one of the values below. Then, you can specify a percentage to increase or decrease the pitch of the speech. See [here](https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#prosody) for more information. | Value | | | -: | -- | | x-low | Lowest pitch. | | low | Lower pitch. | | medium | Normal pitch. | | high | Higher pitch. | | x-high | Highest pitch. |
#### rate attribute {#rate} The rate attribute has the following values. Set the rate with one of the values below. Then, you can specify a percentage to increase or decrease the speed of the speech. See [here](https://developer.amazon.com/docs/custom-skills/speech-synthesis-markup-language-ssml-reference.html#prosody) for more information. | Value | | | -: | - | | x-slow | Slowest rate. | | slow | Slower rate. | | medium | Normal rate. | | fast | Faster rate. | | x-fast | Fastest rate. |
#### interpret-as attribute {#interpret} The interpret-as attribute has the following values. | Value | | | -: | -- | | characters | Spell out each letter. | | spell-out | Spell out each letter. | | cardinal | Interpret value as cardinal number. | | number | Interpret value as cardinal number. | | ordinal | Interpret value as ordinal number. | | digits | Spell each digit separately. | | fraction | Interpret value as fraction. | | unit | Interpret value as measurement. | | date | Interpret value as a date. Use format attribute to indicate format of date: mdy, dmy, ymd, md, dm, ym, my, d, m, y. | | time | Interpret as a duration of minutes and seconds. | | telephone | Interpret as telephone number. | | address | Interpret as part of a street address. | | interjection | Interpret as an interjection. | | expletive | Bleep out content in tag. | ### Example xml Welcome to SignalWire Emphasized words}

~~Words in a paragraph~~

Phonetic pronunciation Words to speak ~~Words in a sentence.~~ Words _{Words to be substituted} Here is an example of how to use some of the SSML tags within the Say verb. ## Nesting No other verbs can be nested within . However, can be nested within . ## Examples ### A Simple Message to be Read xml Hello World. javascript const { RestClient } = require(@signalwire/compatibility-api); const response = new RestClient.LaML.VoiceResponse(); response.say(Hello World.); console.log(response.toString()); csharp using Twilio.TwiML; using System; class Example { static void Main() { var response = new VoiceResponse(); response.Say(Hello World.); Console.WriteLine(response.ToString());; } } python from signalwire.voice_response import VoiceResponse, Say response = VoiceResponse() response.say(Hello World.) print(response) ruby require signalwire/sdk response = Signalwire::Sdk::VoiceResponse.new do |response| response.say(message: Hello World.) end puts response.to_s Hello World will be read once in a male voice. ### A Simple Message to be Read using Amazon Polly voice xml Hello World. javascript const { RestClient } = require(@signalwire/compatibility-api); const response = new RestClient.LaML.VoiceResponse(); response.say({ voice: Polly.Joanna }, Hello World.); console.log(response.toString()); csharp using Twilio.TwiML; using System; class Example { static void Main() { var response = new VoiceResponse(); response.Say(Hello World., voice: Polly.Joanna); Console.WriteLine(response.ToString());; } } python from signalwire.voice_response import VoiceResponse, Say response = VoiceResponse() response.say(Hello World., voice=Polly.Joanna) print(response) ruby require signalwire/sdk response = Signalwire::Sdk::VoiceResponse.new do |response| response.say(voice: Polly.Joanna, message: Hello World.) end puts response.to_s Hello World will be read once using the Amazon Polly Joanna voice. ### A Simple Message to be Read using Amazon Polly Neural voice xml Hello World. javascript const { RestClient } = require(@signalwire/compatibility-api); const response = new RestClient.LaML.VoiceResponse(); response.say({ voice: Polly.Joanna-Neural }, Hello World.); console.log(response.toString()); csharp using Twilio.TwiML; using System; class Example { static void Main() { var response = new VoiceResponse(); response.Say(Hello World., voice: Polly.Joanna-Neural); Console.WriteLine(response.ToString());; } } python from signalwire.voice_response import VoiceResponse, Say response = VoiceResponse() response.say(Hello World., voice=Polly.Joanna-Neural) print(response) ruby require signalwire/sdk response = Signalwire::Sdk::VoiceResponse.new do |response| response.say(voice: Polly.Joanna-Neural, message: Hello World.) end puts response.to_s Hello World will be read once using the Amazon Polly Joanna Neural voice. Amazon Polly Neural voices are charged a premium price compared to Amazon Polly Standard voices. ### A Simple Message to be Read using Google Cloud text-to-speech voice xml Hello World. javascript const { RestClient } = require(@signalwire/compatibility-api); const response = new RestClient.LaML.VoiceResponse(); response.say({ voice: gcloud.en-US-Standard-A }, Hello World.); console.log(response.toString()); csharp using Twilio.TwiML; using System; class Example { static void Main() { var response = new VoiceResponse(); response.Say(Hello World., voice: gcloud.en-US-Standard-A); Console.WriteLine(response.ToString());; } } python from signalwire.voice_response import VoiceResponse, Say response = VoiceResponse() response.say(Hello World., voice=gcloud.en-US-Standard-A) print(response) ruby require signalwire/sdk response = Signalwire::Sdk::VoiceResponse.new do |response| response.say(voice: gcloud.en-US-Standard-A, message: Hello World.) end puts response.to_s Hello World will be read once using the Google Cloud text-to-speech en-US-Standard-A voice. ### Repetition of a Message in a Foreign Language xml Bonjour. javascript const { RestClient } = require(@signalwire/compatibility-api); const response = new RestClient.LaML.VoiceResponse(); response.say({ voice: alice, language: fr-CA, loop: 5 }, Bonjour.); console.log(response.toString()); csharp using Twilio.TwiML; using System; class Example { static void Main() { var response = new VoiceResponse(); response.Say(Bonjour., voice: alice, language: fr-CA, loop: 5); Console.WriteLine(response.ToString());; } } python from signalwire.voice_response import VoiceResponse, Say response = VoiceResponse() response.say(Bonjour., voice=alice, language=fr-CA, loop=5) print(response) ruby require signalwire/sdk response = Signalwire::Sdk::VoiceResponse.new do |response| response.say(message: Bonjour., voice: alice, language: fr-CA, loop: 5) end puts response.to_s Hello will be repeated 5 times in Canadian French. ## Notes on Usage - There is a 4,096 Unicode character limit on the text - Numbers are spoken, or read, based on context. For example, 234 is read as two hundred thirty-four, whereas 2 3 4 is read as two three four. - Short pauses in spoken text are accomplished by inserting punctuations, i.e. commas and periods, in the written text. For longer pauses, place text in a separate verbs and place a verb in between them. - Dates, times, money amounts, and abbreviations may not follow intuitive pronunciations. Test these situations to ensure they are pronounced to your liking.