Need API for custom pronunciation and pauses

If you mean text-to-speech / speech synthesis, there usually isn’t one universal API for “custom pronunciation and pauses” — it depends on the provider. Most TTS APIs support this through a mix of:

1. Pronunciation lexicons / custom dictionaries

   • Define how specific words should be spoken.
   • Often supports SSML or vendor-specific phoneme controls.

2. SSML pause tags

   • Standard way to insert pauses in speech.
   • Example: <break time="500ms"/>

3. Phoneme / alias support

   • Spell a word by sounds or substitute a custom spoken form.

Common options by provider

• Amazon Polly: supports SSML, custom pronunciation lexicons
• Google Cloud Text-to-Speech: supports SSML, some pronunciation control
• Microsoft Azure Speech: supports SSML, custom lexicons / pronunciation
• ElevenLabs: supports some pronunciation control and pauses, depending on feature set
• OpenAI TTS: supports text input, but custom pronunciation control is limited compared with SSML-heavy providers

Example SSML with pause

<speak>
  Welcome to our service.
  <break time="700ms"/>
  Your account is ready.
</speak>

Example custom pronunciation idea

For a name like “Nguyen,” some services let you define a pronunciation lexicon so it’s spoken correctly.

If you want, I can help you with one of these:

• pick the best API for your use case
• show sample code for custom pronunciation + pauses
• give you an SSML example for a specific word or sentence