Pronunciation Dictionary

Teach your AI Avatar to pronounce brand names, technical terms, and foreign words correctly. Alias vs IPA, attachment to personas, and what to test.

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A Pronunciation Dictionary teaches your avatar's voice how to say specific words. Brand names, technical terms, foreign words, abbreviations — anything the default voice gets wrong out of the box.

When you need one

Listen to your avatar say your brand name and your top product names. If it sounds even slightly off, your visitors will notice. Common cases:

Brand names with unusual spelling — "Nike" (NY-key) not "Nick", "Adidas" depending on country.
Acronyms read as words vs letters — "NASA" as a word, "FBI" letter-by-letter, "API" depends on context.
Foreign words in an English flow — "déjà vu", "Hyundai", "Porsche".
Technical terms — "Kubernetes", "Postgres", "hyaluronic acid".
Product names you invented — anything coined by your team that doesn't follow obvious English phonetics.

How to define a rule

Each rule has three pieces:

The word — what your avatar will see in text (e.g. Nike).
The pronunciation — how it should be spoken (e.g. NY-key).
The type — either:
- Alias — a plain phonetic spelling. Easiest. Use this 95% of the time.
- IPA — formal phonetic notation. Use only if you know IPA and the alias version sounds off.

A worked example

For "Glow Skincare" let's say the brand pronounces "Glow" as "gloh" without emphasis on the W. The dictionary entry would be:

Word: Glow
Pronunciation: gloh
Type: Alias

Add similar entries for "hyaluronic" (hi-uh-LOO-ron-ick), product line names, and any founder names you mention.

How attachment works

Each persona can attach one Pronunciation Dictionary. Most users have just one dictionary per brand and attach it to every persona. If you have different brand voices (a US brand and an EU brand under one account), it's fine to have one dictionary each.

Pronunciation rules are immutable once created. To change a rule, delete the dictionary and recreate it with the corrected rules. Personas reusing it will need to be re-attached.

Tips

Test new rules by triggering them in a Share Link conversation. Some pronunciations sound right written but odd spoken.
Don't add rules for words your audience never hears. Adding 50 entries when 5 are enough makes the dictionary harder to maintain.
Use lowercase for the pronunciation — capitalization is for syllable emphasis, not formality.

If your founder's name is in your System Prompt, add a pronunciation rule for it. There's nothing more jarring than an avatar mispronouncing the company founder's name to a customer.