Hi everyone. Just wanted to share this. I have been trying to find something for my home l;anguage (being from south africa originally) for some time now that doesnt cost an arm and a leg. I happen to stumble accross this site http://espeak.sourceforge.net/index.html and I just quickly downloaded and installed. Havent played with it to much just yet but be sure I will.
Hope someone finds this helpful
Good find. It sounds somewhat robotic but if that's your only option it is not bad at all for a free solution that supports many languages!
I will probably also be releasing a plugin that lets you use Microsoft TTS engines from their speech platform 11.
The following languages should be supported I think (sorry no Afrikaans):
Catalan - Spain
Danish - Denmark
German - Germany
English - Australia
English - Canada
English - Great Britain
English - Indian
English - United States
Spanish - Spain
Spanish - Mexico
Finnish - Finland
French - Canada
French - France
Italian - Italy
Japanese - Japan
Korean - Korea
Norwegian - Norway
Dutch - Netherlands
Polish - Poland
Portuguese - Brazil
Portuguese - Portugal
Russian - Russia
Swedish - Sweden
Chinese - China
Chinese - Hong Kong
Chinese - Taiwan
I may also be releasing a variation of VC that uses a different speech engine supporting any of these languages (but with some important differences from the current engine).
I do agree with you James... real robotic but alas the whole free thing is really good and I guess some people might like that "robotic touch" :biglaugh
I am still very dumb when it comes to TTS engines and stuff but the little sense I made from your post does sound really good though! Ill gladly help you test should you need something ;D