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Overview

Voice agents may occasionally mispronounce certain words — especially proper nouns, brand names, or Hebrew words with ambiguous pronunciation (Hebrew is written without vowels, so one spelling can be read several ways). The pronunciation dictionary lets you define a per-word override for each agent.
Pronunciation overrides apply to every agent — both agent types run the chained Speech-to-Text → LLM → Text-to-Speech pipeline.

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Format

An override is niqqud-pointed Hebrew — the same vowel points used to disambiguate Hebrew in print. The dashboard asks for the Hebrew word, then its pointed form: Both Text-to-Speech engines (Soniox and Gemini) read this one format, so an override keeps working if you change the agent’s voice.

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How to Use

  1. Go to your agent’s settings in the dashboard
  2. Open the Pronunciation (Niqqud) accordion section
  3. Click Add to create a new entry
  4. Enter the Hebrew word, then its niqqud-pointed form
  5. Press Preview to hear it in the agent’s own voice before saving
  6. Save — the pronunciation takes effect on the next call

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Tips

  • Only add mispronounced words — most Hebrew words are pronounced correctly by default
  • Keep the list short — focus on the words that matter most
  • Test after adding — make a test call to verify the pronunciation improved
  • Iterate — if the first override doesn’t sound right, try a different one
  • Include meaning for homographs — if a word has multiple readings (like שקל), add separate entries with context in the word field (e.g., “שקל מטבע” and “שקל פועל”)

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Generating Overrides

If you’re unsure how to write the override: nakdan.dicta.org.il adds vowel points to plain Hebrew text. The dashboard links to it directly under the override field.

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How It Works

The word is replaced with its niqqud-pointed form before the text reaches the Text-to-Speech engine, which renders the vowel points. Because this is a deterministic text substitution (not a hint to a model), an override applies on every utterance where the word appears.

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Limitations

  • Works best for proper nouns, brand names, and uncommon words
  • Common Hebrew words are usually pronounced correctly without overrides
  • An override only applies when the word appears exactly as written in the word field, and as a separate word — a Hebrew prefix or suffix glued to it (בוויסי, וויסים) will not match
  • Niqqud cannot express stress, so a word whose only problem is which syllable is stressed cannot be fixed this way
  • Maximum 50 entries per agent