Add your own English words
Dutch text at work is full of English terms. This is how you stop a local voice from mangling the ones it does not know.
A Dutch Piper voice reads English words the Dutch way. Without help, request comes out as "rayk-vest" and deadline as "day-ahd-lee-nuh". Speakybara ships with a list of common English words and looks up their sounds in the English rule book instead, then hands both to the same voice.
You keep one speaker and one natural sentence melody; only the pronunciation of those words changes. This works with the Natural (Piper) voices on Windows; the Mac version does not do it yet. The Studio, OpenRouter and Edge voices read English words correctly by themselves, so they do not use the list.
Adding a word
Step 1
Open the list from settings
In Settings › Pronunciation and own words, under Own word lists, press Open english-words.txt. The file opens in your default text editor.
The switch for the whole feature, Say English words in Dutch text the English way, is under Settings › Language and recognition. It is on after installing.
Step 2
Add your terms, one per line
Write each word on a line of its own, spelled the way it appears in the text; capitals do not matter. Product names, tooling, jargon from your field: anything a Dutch voice would otherwise read the Dutch way. Lines that start with # are skipped.
Step 3
Save the file
Speakybara notices the change and reloads the list by itself. There is no restart, no reload button and nothing to confirm.
Step 4
Listen to the same text again
Press Ctrl+Alt+R to read the last text again, or shoot the same frame once more. The word now comes out with English sounds, spoken by the same Dutch voice.
Worth knowing
- Eleven English sounds do not exist in Dutch, so the voice never learned them. They are replaced by the nearest Dutch sound: the English r becomes a Dutch r, th becomes t or d. Roughly what a Dutch speaker does when reading an English word aloud.
- Dutch words that look English are left alone: brand, post, model, test, band, camera and export stay Dutch.
- For a word any voice gets wrong, such as an abbreviation or a name, use Add rule… on the same page: what is written, and how it should be pronounced. A rule works with every voice, on Windows and on the Mac, and only changes what you hear.
- eigen-woorden.txt, the other list on that page, is for names and jargon Speakybara must never correct in the recognised text. It does not change how anything sounds.
- The file lives in the Speakybara folder next to your settings, so it is easy to back up or copy to another PC.
If something goes wrong
No, and it does not need to. Those voices already pronounce English words correctly inside a Dutch sentence; the list only affects the Natural (Piper) voices. For anything else a voice says wrong, add a pronunciation rule.
No. The file is watched and reloaded automatically. If the word still sounds wrong, check that it is on its own line and spelled the way it appears in the text.
Remove that word from english-words.txt and save. The built-in list deliberately leaves Dutch look-alikes such as brand, post, model and export in Dutch, so anything unexpected is usually a line you added. To have everything read the Dutch way, switch off Say English words in Dutch text the English way.