text to speech accent marks

I love that voki is multilingual, I use it in my elementary school french classes. However, when my students type in the speech, there is no option for them to type the necessary accent marks. Therefore they either 1) type the words correctly minus the accent marks and have their avatar mispronounce the words, or 2) type out the words phonetically to achieve a closer pronuciation, while sacrificing correct spelling of a language they're trying to learn. I don't really like having them spell incorectly to make it sound close but that's what i've had to do so far. I have typed my speeches into Word to get the accent marks then copy pasted into voki and that works. However its seems there should be an easier way for students. Could you please add a symbols feature? or even spellcheck one day perhaps?

Hi amesville,

We love that you love that Voki is multilingual!

We're happy to say that your students CAN include accent marks. It's very easy (we just tried it).

Simply have them type the message in the correct way (with symbols and all) in a Word file, or anywhere really. Then, simply have them copy and paste the correct text into the Voki message. We just tried pasting a message in Spanish that we copied from Google Translate, and it worked like a charm!

Hope this helps.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 01/03/2011 00:17:58

Another work-around is to provide your students with ALT-codes so they can type foreign characters directly into the text-to-speech window itself. When Num Lock is turned on, students can hold down the ALT key while typing a 4-digit number on the right-hand number pad (NOT the regular numbers which run straight across the top of the keyboard) and it will make the desired character. Examples:

ALT 0231 = ç (c cedilla)

ALT 0232 = è (e grave)

French ALT codes:
http://www.alt-codes.net/french_alt_codes/

Spanish ALT codes
http://www.alt-codes.net/spanish_alt_codes/