[NFBJ] Reading Hebrew with VoiceOver

[Ryan L. Silveira]

Greeting and Blessing:

I use Voiceover on a Mac. The Hebrew voice does have some issues with pronunciation, but it’s mostly because generally Hebrew is written without nikudot, so Voiceover often gets confused. For example, the word “at” (spelled aleph tav) and meaning the feminine form of “you” can also be pronounced “et” which is the direct object indicator. Voiceover often pronounces the word “at”, especially when one is reading word by word. I have had the issue that you’re talking about and there are two reasons for it. Firstly, if you are reading simple text, like a website in Hebrew or a text message and  Voiceover says “Le-Hebrew-letter-aleph”, try going back to your English voice and then back to the Hebrew voice. That usually works for me. The other reason that this mispronunciation could happen is if you are reading texts like the Tanakh or a rabbinic source such as the mishna or Gemarah. In these texts, especially the Torah, certain letters are written bigger than others, such as the daled in the word “echad” in the shemah. Voiceover will pronounce that letter separately, simply because it looks different. As there is really no way to fix this issue as yet, other than reading in Braille on a display, if you are using speech only, I would probably stick to English if you can, unless you absolutely have to read in Hebrew. I obviously would prefer to read texts in the original Hebrew, like any good Yid, but with the formatting difficulty that I have just mentioned, it can be very cumbersome.

Please let me know if there is anything more I can do to help.

Ryan L. Silveira
Chaim Ben Avraham-Silveira

> On Jan 26, 2021, at 1:55 AM, Eric Harvey via NFBJ <nfbj at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> Does anyone on this list use a Mac with voiceOver to read Hebrew text? I
> would like to be able to use the text-to-speech when i don't have Braille
> available, but I am having major issues with pronunciation, and it is
> unusable. For example, every time an aleph appears it says "Hebrew Letter
> Aleph" instead of pronouncing it. So lo turns into
> "le-Hebrew-Letter-Aleph."
> 
> Any help or leads on other helpful resources would be appreciated!
> 
> Thank you,
> Eric
> 
> -- 
> ————————————
> Eric J. Harvey, Ph.D.
> Near Eastern and Judaic Studies
> Brandeis University
> 
> www.blindscholar.com
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