Yep, that was it!!! I took gdm out of the gentoo rc-update default so it wouldn't run on reboot. I rebooted and without gnopernicus running the "say" command was fine. I'd had speech stop on me last time I logged in to gdm anyway and I bet that was it; those processes don't always seem to get killed cleanly. so now I suppose if I don't want those issues I use festival, which I don't really like. If I ever get braille working I'll forget speech anyway but obviously I'm not too happy about this turn of events. I guess I'd better post about this on gnome-accessibility too unless I find something in the archives that says they already know. -- Cheryl "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
