ESpeak

eSpeakNG
Original author(s)Jonathan Duddington
Developer(s)Alexander Epaneshnikov et al.
Initial releaseFebruary 2006; 18 years ago (2006-02)
Stable release
1.51[1] Edit this on Wikidata / 2 April 2022; 2 years ago (2 April 2022)
Repositorygithub.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/
Written inC
Operating systemLinux
Windows
macOS
FreeBSD
TypeSpeech synthesizer
LicenseGPLv3
Websitegithub.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/

eSpeak is a free and open-source, cross-platform, compact, software speech synthesizer. It uses a formant synthesis method, providing many languages in a relatively small file size. eSpeakNG (Next Generation) is a continuation of the original developer's project with more feedback from native speakers.

Because of its small size and many languages, eSpeakNG is included in NVDA[2] open source screen reader for Windows, as well as Android,[3] Ubuntu[4] and other Linux distributions. Its predecessor eSpeak was recommended by Microsoft in 2016[5] and was used by Google Translate for 27 languages in 2010;[6] 17 of these were subsequently replaced by proprietary voices.[7]

The quality of the language voices varies greatly. In eSpeakNG's predecessor eSpeak, the initial versions of some languages were based on information found on Wikipedia.[8] Some languages have had more work or feedback from native speakers than others. Most of the people who have helped to improve the various languages are blind users of text-to-speech.

  1. ^ "Release 1.51".
  2. ^ "Switch to eSpeak NG in NVDA distribution · Issue #5651 · nvaccess/nvda". GitHub.
  3. ^ "eSpeak TTS for Android".
  4. ^ "espeak-ng package : Ubuntu". Launchpad. 21 December 2023.
  5. ^ "Download voices for Immersive Reader, Read Mode, and Read Aloud".
  6. ^ Google blog, Giving a voice to more languages on Google Translate, May 2010
  7. ^ Google blog, Listen to us now, December 2010.
  8. ^ "eSpeak Speech Synthesizer". espeak.sourceforge.net.