Pronunciation

You can use smart suggestions, create a custom pronunciation with IPA or alternative spelling, save pronunciations to your library, or change the locale for words and phrases spoken in another language or accent.

In this article, we will cover the following topics

• Accessing the Pronunciation Menu
• Smart suggestions
• • Custom IPA
  • Alternative SpellingCustom Pronunciations
• Pronunciation of Non-Native Words
  • Changing the Pronunciation of a Single Word
  • Changing the Pronunciation of Multiple Words
• Manage Pronunciation
• Pronunciation Library- Enterpirse Only

Accessing the pronunciation menu

• Double-click or drag and highlight any word.
• The pronunciation menu can be opened even without a mouse via keyboard text selection using Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + ⬅️ & ➡️ key and using the ⬆️ key to focus.
• Then press Enter to open the pronunciation popup and Esc to exit.
• If you press the ⬇️ key after the text selection menu, the sub-block will become active again.
  
  

Within the pronunciation menu, there are 2 ways to alter the pronunciation: 

1. Smart Suggestions
2. Custom Pronunciation

Smart Suggestions

With Murf Studio, changing the pronunciation of any word is effortless with the assistance of smart suggestions. Our team has extensively trained our AI model on various pronunciations for different words.

When accessing the pronunciation menu, you would first see a list of smart suggestions along with the IPA of each word. 

From here, you can preview various smart suggestions and apply the one that meets your needs. Here are some smart suggestions for the word "wound."

Custom Pronunciation

If the available smart suggestions do not match what you need, you can create a custom pronunciation. This is especially useful for names, email addresses, acronyms, and other words that need a more specific reading.

Two types of custom pronunciations can be applied

1. Custom IPA
2. Alternative Spelling

Custom IPA

You can use IPA characters to make the sounds underlying the word more accurate.

A reliable source to search for IPAs would be - Cambridge Online Dictionary.

Here you can find the US and UK pronunciations for words and the different forms of the words (i.e., noun, verb, etc.).

Simply copy the IPA and paste it within the Custom IPA text field. 

Alternative Spelling

Alternative spelling is a simpler way to guide pronunciation by writing the word the way it should sound. This works well for names, acronyms, and words that do not need full IPA notation.

For example: 

• Live(verb) - livv

• Live(adjective) - laiv

• MBC - em-bee-see

For words or short phrases from another language, use Change Locale to get a more natural pronunciation in the correct accent or language. This is especially helpful for multilingual scripts and short code-switching phrases.

Pronunciation of Non-Native Words

Gen2 voices allow users to customize the pronunciation, tone, and style of particular words or sentence fragments to align with specific regional nuances. This feature is helpful for voiceovers containing brief sections in a different language or accent, ensuring a more accurate and natural delivery.

Changing the Pronunciation of a Single Word

1. Highlight or double-click the word you want to adjust.
2. Click Pronunciation and choose a locale from the dropdown 
3. Preview the pronunciation (use Smart Suggestions or customize if needed).
4. Click Apply to update the selected block, or Apply to Project to apply it across the entire project.
   
   
   

Changing the Pronunciation of Multiple Words

1. Highlight the text you want to change the locale for.
2. Click “Change Locale” from the prompt.
3. Select the desired language from the dropdown.
4. The selected text will be highlighted to indicate the change.
5. Render and preview the sentence to make sure it’s correct.

In this example, we have a Mandarin sentence with a Spanish phrase:

这个地方真的很漂亮，简直是 muy bonito!

Translation: ‘This place is really beautiful, it’s simply muy bonito!'

Here, muy bonito means beautiful.

Let’s look at the interactive tutorial to see how the pronunciation of the Spanish words in the sentence can be changed to Spanish. 

Manage Pronunciation

We recommend adding the pronunciation to your pronunciation library if you are working with a script where a modified word is repeated across blocks and projects. This can be done for both smart suggestions and custom pronunciations that have been set.

Let's look at this interactive tutorial on using a smart suggestion and managing it in our pronunciation library.

Pronunciation Library-Enterprise Only

The Pronunciation Library lets you save, organize, and apply multiple pronunciations within a root folder, ensuring they are automatically applied across all existing projects in that folder for consistent and accurate voice output. Users can also apply a single pronunciation across all folders, setting it as the default for both new and existing projects.

What this offers:

• Centralized control: Manage access with role-based permissions, defining who can view or edit each pronunciation list.

• Automatic folder-based usage: Any project created within an assigned folder automatically uses the correct pronunciation list.

• Efficient updates: When a pronunciation list is updated, you’ll be prompted to re-render only the impacted blocks or sub-blocks, ensuring accuracy without reprocessing the entire project.