As a beginner in French, I want to master the correct pronunciations of the French sentences. So in this post I’ll introduce some important tools for automating French pronunciation, and share a convenient script at the end.
We can divide this process into these steps:
get IPA by eSpeak NG First, install eSpeak NG to convert sentences into IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet).
On windows, we can easily download it by using winget
1 2 winget -v winget search espeak 
and install the latest version, and check it by using
1 2 espeak-ng --version espeak-ng -v fr --ipa -q "Je voudrais faire votre connaissance." 
synthesize Speech with Coqui TTS In python, we can use Coqui TTS to get the pronunciations. It’s a kind of neural network based tool with a lot of high quality pre-trained models.
Then we can get all the models and choose one, here we use css10/VITS.
1 2 3 4 5 tts --list_models | findstr /i "fr" tts --text "Ravi de faire votre connaissance." `     --model_name "tts_models/fr/css10/vits" `     --out_path "\coqui.wav" 
In our script, we use it to convert sentences into sounds and store the output in WAV format.
script: from sentence to IPA and sounds Finally, here is a convenient script that automates the entire process from text input to audio output and try to play it automatically.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 import  osimport  subprocessimport  sysfrom  pathlib import  Pathfrom  playsound import  playsoundplaysound = playsound if  playsound else  None  DEFAULT_MODEL = "tts_models/fr/css10/vits"  LANGUAGE_CODE = "fr"  OUTPUT_DIR = Path("outputs_audio" ) def  get_ipa_espeak (text: str  ) -> str :    """get IPA by using eSpeak NG CLI"""      try :         cmd = ["espeak-ng" , "-v" , "fr" , "--ipa" , "-q" , text]         encoding = 'utf-8'  if  sys.platform != 'win32'  else  'oem'          ipa = subprocess.check_output(cmd, encoding=encoding, stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)         return  ipa.strip()     except  (subprocess.CalledProcessError, FileNotFoundError):         return  "eSpeak NG not found."  def  generate_coqui_tts (text: str , model: str , lang_code: str , out_path: Path ) -> bool :    """generate sounds by using Coqui TTS CLI"""      try :         print (f"\ngenerate sounds by using Coqui TTS CLI model: ({model} )" )         cmd = [             "tts" ,             "--text" , text,             "--model_name" , model,             "--out_path" , str (out_path)         ]                  if  lang_code:             cmd.extend(["--language_idx" , lang_code])                           subprocess.check_call(cmd, stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL, stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL)         print (f"成功保存到: {out_path} " )         return  True       except  (subprocess.CalledProcessError, FileNotFoundError):         print ("Error 'tts' not found, check Coqui TTS installation" )         return  False       except  Exception as  e:         print (f"generate sounds error: {e} " )         return  False   def  play_audio (file_path: Path ):    """Play audio using playsound library."""      if  not  playsound:         print ("\ncannot play audio because 'playsound' library import failed." )         return      try :         print ("playing audio..." )         playsound(str (file_path))     except  Exception as  e:         print (f"\n error: cannot play audio, please open the file manually." )         print (f"details: {e} " ) def  main (text_to_pronounce: str  ):    """main"""      OUTPUT_DIR.mkdir(exist_ok=True )          print ("-"  * 40 )     print (f"text to pronounce: {text_to_pronounce} " )     print ("-"  * 40 )          ipa = get_ipa_espeak(text_to_pronounce)     print (f"IPA (from eSpeak NG):\n{ipa} " )          safe_filename = "" .join(c for  c in  text_to_pronounce if  c.isalnum()).rstrip()[:40 ]     coqui_out_path = OUTPUT_DIR / f"{safe_filename} .wav"           success = generate_coqui_tts(text_to_pronounce, DEFAULT_MODEL, LANGUAGE_CODE, coqui_out_path)          if  success:         play_audio(coqui_out_path)      if  __name__ == "__main__" :    if  len (sys.argv) > 1 :         input_text = " " .join(sys.argv[1 :])         main(input_text)     else :         print ("input sentence and press Enter to pronounce, input exit or empty line to quit." )         while  True :             input_text = input ("input:" )             if  not  input_text.strip() or  input_text.strip().lower() == "exit" :                 print ("exited" )                 break              main(input_text)