Incorrect pronunciation of French contractions with Chirp 3 HD voices

Google Cloud Build with AI AI APIs
,
1

Hi everyone,

We are using the following Chirp 3 HD voices in a conversational chatbot:

  • Charon

  • Schedar

  • Iapetus

  • Callirrhoe

  • Vindemiatrix

The text is dynamically generated by an LLM, so we don’t have direct control over the content except through the system prompt.

We are experiencing an issue with the pronunciation of French contractions: apostrophes are read as separate characters, for example:

  • “C’est” → pronounced “cé, est”

  • “n’est” → pronounced “n, est”

  • “l’endroit” → pronounced “l, endroit”

We have already tried:

  • Using typographic apostrophes (’) instead of straight apostrophes (')

  • Adjusting the system prompt to force the LLM to generate typographic apostrophes

Despite this, the problem persists.

We would like to know:

  1. Is there a recommended way to correct the pronunciation of contractions with Chirp 3 HD voices?

  2. Is there any workaround or feature (like custom pronunciation) that can be used in a chatbot context where the text is generated dynamically?

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!