I ran across the EPUB3.3 specs today.
Seems like latest draft was released a few days ago (January 22, 2022):
In the EPUB3 TTS document, they discuss using SSML + CSS Speech.
And, perfectly in line with this thread's initial question, they describe:
"How to get TTS to pronounce certain things?"
By using "Pronunciation Lexicons".
You'd use
<lexicon> + optionally supply a separate PLS file:
Quote:
EXAMPLE 5. The following example shows a pronunciation lexicon for Japanese.
Code:
<lexicon
version="1.0"
alphabet="ipa"
xml:lang="en"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/01/pronunciation-lexicon">
<lexeme>
<grapheme>EPUB</grapheme>
<phoneme>ipʌb</phoneme>
</lexeme>
…
</lexicon>
|
Quote:
Example 6
The following example shows two pronunciation lexicons (one for Mandarin and one for Mongolian) associated with an XHTML Content Document.
Code:
<html … >
<head>
…
<link rel="pronunciation" type="application/pls+xml" hreflang="cmn" href="../speech/cmn.pls"/>
<link rel="pronunciation" type="application/pls+xml" hreflang="mn" href="../speech/mn.pls"/>
</head>
…
</html>
|
More technical info on PLS files can be found here:
Now, how likely it'll be that actually trickles down into actual ebooks + ereaders??? That remains to be seen...