Two ways to correctly pronounce romaji with AI voice "Ondoku"
Sept. 1, 2023

When I read romaji with AI voice, it often doesn't pronounce it as expected.
In such a case, I will introduce how to make you pronounce it as you think.
There are two ways to correctly pronounce romaji and coined English.
- use Japanese voice
- use the phonics
1. Use Japanese voices
The easiest way is to use the Japanese voice.
When English voice is selected, unfortunately there is no function to read out some strings in English sentences as expected by "Romaji reading" or "coined words". I need to devise it.
but,
in language "Japanese"
- robot
- voice assistant
- Announcer A
- Announcer B
When you select , if there is a Roman character in the English sentence, it will read "Romaji reading".
At this time, please enter English sentences, not Japanese sentences.
Click the Generate Sound button.
Then, the text in romaji you entered will be read aloud with the specified voice.
In this way, if you input romaji with Ondoku's Japanese voice, you can easily read out romaji .
Instead, English sentences will be pronounced as "Japanese English".
2. use the phonics
Another way is to use phonics. Phonics is a method for understanding the pronunciation and spelling of English, and develops reading and writing skills by teaching the relationship between phonemes and the alphabet. Using this, it is possible to bring Japanese sounds closer to the English alphabet notation.
Here are some examples.
Example: I want Nagano to be pronounced as "Nagano"
"Nagano": In this case, the romanization is "Nagano".
Audio when reading the romaji "Nagano":
Using phonics you can write "Nah-gah-no". This makes it possible to generate English speech in a form close to Japanese pronunciation.
Audio when reading phonics "Nah-gah-no":
Example: I want to pronounce "Shinjuku" as "Shinjuku"
"Shinjuku": This is romanized as "Shinjuku".
Audio when reading the romaji "Shinjuku":
Using phonics you can write "Sheen-joo-koo". This makes it possible to generate English speech in a form close to Japanese pronunciation.
Audio when reading the phonics "Sheen-joo-koo":
Example: I want Tottori to be pronounced as "Tottori"
"Tottori": In this case, the romanization is "Tottori".
Audio when reading the romaji "Tottori":
Using phonics you can write "Toh-toh-ri". This makes it possible to generate English speech in a form close to Japanese pronunciation.
Audio when reading the phonics "Toh-toh-ri":
These examples are applicable in some cases, but not in all cases.
However, understanding phonics can be very helpful when pronouncing Japanese words using the English phonetic system.
Phonics using ChatGPT


If you are proficient in English, I think you can put the words you want to pronounce into phonics notation.
However, in many cases, most people say, "I can't write phonics."
In fact, so am I.
For those people, I recommend using AI.
With ChatGPT, you can easily convert specific romaji to phonics notation.
Prompt to tell ChatGPT
role:
You are a "romaji-to-phonics" converter.Example 1:
- Input Nagano
- Output Nah-gah-no
Example 2:
- Input Shinjuku
- Output Sheen-joo-koo
input:
◯◯
example:
I want to pronounce the Roman character "Neko" as "Neko". Let's use CgatGPT to write in phonics

Then, it will teach you the notation in phonics like this.
Audio when reading the romaji "Neko":
Audio when reading phonics "neh-koh":
In Roman alphabet notation, it was pronounced like "Niko", but in Phonics it is pronounced "Neko".
You can omit the h, replace koh with co, and do other things yourself to get the pronunciation closer to what you want.
With a little ingenuity, you can pronounce Roman letters
Romaji is unique to Japanese.
In the English-speaking world, it is quite difficult to get someone to read the Roman alphabet.
The same is true for AI voices. So, by making a little ingenuity with AI, people can get the desired results.
introduced this time
- use Japanese voice
- use the phonics
Please use these two methods to get Ondoku to pronounce the words you want.
Email: ondoku3.com@gmail.com
"Ondoku" is a Text-to-Speech service that anyone can use for free without installation. You can also use an extension ( Ondoku3-ChatGPT ) that allows you to talk with ChatGPT for free.