Pronunciation dictionaries
Learn how to control how your AI agent pronounces specific words and phrases.
Pronunciation dictionaries allow you to customize how your AI agent pronounces specific words or phrases. This is particularly useful for:
Phoneme tags only work with the eleven_flash_v2 model. When used with
other models, the tags are silently skipped and the default pronunciation is used.
Phoneme tags (IPA or CMU) only work for English. For other languages, use alias tags instead to substitute spellings or phrases that produce the pronunciation you need.
Open your agent in the dashboard, navigate to Voice Settings, and add a pronunciation dictionary. Save your changes.
Pronunciation dictionaries use XML-based .pls files. Here’s an example structure:
We support two types of pronunciation notation:
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)
/ˈɛndʒɪnˈɛks/CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) Dictionary format
You can use AI tools like Claude or ChatGPT to help generate IPA or CMU notations for specific words.
Phoneme tags are supported on eleven_flash_v2. All other models skip the phoneme entry and
fall back to their normal pronunciation. For non-English languages, rely on alias tags because
phoneme tags only cover English pronunciations.
Yes, you can upload multiple dictionary files to handle different sets of pronunciations.
The model will use its default pronunciation rules for any words not specified in the dictionary.