gsay
A simple shell script to fetch pronunciation of an English word from Google.
When you search for an Enlgish vocabulary, Google shows a pronunciation in an "answer box" at top of the page. This script fetches that hopefully human-made mp3 sound file.
Features
Query for 2020 and 2024 sound files
Support British and American accents
Cache to disk (enabled by default)
Dependencies
curl
ffplay | mpv | pw-play : A headless mp3 player, one is enough
In a Debian-like distro, these can be installed with:
sudo apt install curl ffmpeg # or mpv
Usage
Check gsay -h :
Usage: gsay [OPTIONS] QUERY DESCRIPTION A simple client to fetch/play pronounciation of words from Google ARGUMENTS QUERY Query string Note: Use "" or '' if query string contains special shell characters OPTIONS [--year | -y] Set desired database year: 2020 (default) | 2024 [--accent | -a] Set desired accent: gb (default) | us [--link | -l] Only print pronounciation link. Don't play their audio [--no-cache | -n] Disable cache mode: ignore cache and don't save to cache directory Default: cache mode is enabled. dir: /home/username/.cache/gsay [--debug | -v] Increase log verbosity to debug [--version | -V] Print version [--help | -h] Display the help message EXAMPLES gsay legend gsay -y 2024 -a us Leicester gsay -n -y 2020 -a gb Forte gsay Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis gsay -l perfect gsay carte blanche
Notes
I may be wrong but the 2024/04/19 pronounciations sound synthetic to me! Hence, 2020/04/29 is default despite being slower and less exhaustive. Caller scripts can run it like gsay -y 2020 || gsay -y 2024
pronounciations sound synthetic to me! Hence, is default despite being slower and less exhaustive. Caller scripts can run it like The HTTP URLs are faster, HTTPS ones are provided as comments too
Fun examples: echo Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Antidisestablishmentarianism Grandiloquent | xargs -n1 gsay
Oxford 3000 word list pronunciations, limited to first 1000 words, can be downloaded (cached) to disk like this:
curl -sL https://github.com/sapbmw/The-Oxford-3000/raw/refs/heads/master/The_Oxford_3000.txt \ | tr -d \r | head -1000 | xargs -I {} gsay -l " {} "
Development