Using text-to-speech on the Mac: two challenges

Cool Workflows
1

Hi MPUs,
I’m looking for a way to adjust the speech rate beyond what the slider offers. I found this video that explains one way, but it doesn’t work with Monterey running an M1 chip (my tech security source says it’s legit): OLD: Change default text-to-speech rate for Mac (not the slider) – 720 words per minute - YouTube. I’d appreciate any help since Mac’s hare on the slider feels like my tortoise (I want it to be reading about twice as fast)

And if you happen to know a lot about text-to-speech functionality, do you know if there’s a way to make sure the speech doesn’t change to a foreign language after it encounters a non-English phrase. For example, it’s speaking English until it comes to a word or two in Spanish, then it continues pronouncing the English after like it’s Spanish, which obviously makes it gibberish.

Thanks,
-P

2

There used to be lots of ways to work it text-to-speech with AppleScript.

This seems to work better in Monterey…

AppleScript…

say “It looks like this is working with an updated term called speaking rate” using “Alex” speaking rate 250 pitch 42 modulation 60

say “It looks like this is working with an updated term called speaking rate” using “Alex” speaking rate 150 pitch 42 modulation 60

this was the old way I think
you can try something like this (it used to work)…

say [[rate 225]] “hello world”

I found this old link you can mess with…

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050824185609205

here is more from macscripter

https://macscripter.net/search.php?action=search&keywords=text+to+speech&author=&forum=-1&sort_by=5&sort_dir=DESC&show_as=topics&search=Submit

3

Thanks! I’ll give these a go. (I used to use the [[rate 360]]. I works on Monterey, but is wonky, doesn’t work on all text, and you have to keep typing it each time you use speech.