Hi All, This is just my two cents on the issue. I tend to agree that either Speakup or the synthesizer should be responsible for pronounciation. If the synthesizer has pretty good default support I say that the "direct" option in speakup is a good thing. That being said, I'm curious what character set the default Speakup arrangement is pulled from? (It doesn't seem to be Latin 1.) Best, Zack.