"speak" Root Element

Description

The speak element is the root element of every Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) document.

Syntax

<speak
  version = "1.0"
  xml:lang = "locale"
  xml:base = "URI"
  xmlns = "URI"
  xsi:schemaLocation = "URI">
  child elements
</speak>

Attributes

AttributeDescription
versionSets the version of the SSML document. SSML 1.0 is the only version supported; any other values supplied are internally forced to and processed as "1.0". When using lexicons with TTS1, limited extended support exists for SSML 1.0 functionality, permitting a value of "1.1" for TTS1. Mandatory field.
xml:langSets the base language of the SSML document with inheritance down the document hierarchy. Language information nests, allowing inner attributes to overwrite outer attributes. Mandatory field.
xml:baseSets the base URI of the SSML document. Relative URIs resolve according to a base URI from various sources. Optional field.
xmlnsSpecifies the SSML namespace, which should be "http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis". Optional field.
xsi:schemaLocationIndicates the SSML schema location: "http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/synthesis.xsd". Optional field.

Parent

None.

Children

<audio>, <break>, <emphasis>, <lexicon>, <mark>, <meta>, <metadata>, <p>, <phoneme>, <prosody>, <say-as>, <sub>, <s>, <voice>, #TEXT, #CDATA-SECTION

Example

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<speak version="1.0"
     xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/10/synthesis
               http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/synthesis.xsd"
     xml:lang="en-US">

  ... the body ...
</speak>

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