---
title: "Text-to-speech (TTS) — what it means · NoaLingua"
description: "Text-to-speech reads written text aloud in a synthetic voice. What it is genuinely good for, and where a real recording is still worth more."
url: "https://noalingua.com/glossary/tts/"
language: "en"
modified: "2026-08-17"
license: "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---
Glossary

# Text-to-speech (TTS) — the NoaLingua glossary

Text-to-speech is software that reads written text aloud in a synthetic voice.

Modern browser voices are good enough for checking word stress and syllable count, and consistently wrong about the prosody of a full sentence — the rhythm and intonation that make speech sound native.

For that reason a real recording of a human saying the sentence is far more valuable than a synthesised one, when you can get it.

In NoaLingua Every word card has a pronounce button using the browser voice, slightly slowed. Where a sentence was captured from a video and its true end point was known, the card also carries the speaker's own audio — and the listening game plays that rather than the synthetic voice.

## Related terms

[Speech recognition (ASR) Automatic speech recognition converts spoken audio into text.](https://noalingua.com/glossary/asr/)[IPA The International Phonetic Alphabet is a notation in which every symbol stands for exactly one sound, regardless of language or spelling.](https://noalingua.com/glossary/ipa/)[Shadowing Shadowing is repeating speech aloud immediately after hearing it, in the same rhythm and intonation as the speaker.](https://noalingua.com/glossary/shadowing/)

## Try NoaLingua on the next video you were going to watch anyway.

Free, with every feature. No account, nothing to cancel, and your deck stays on your machine.

[Add to Chrome — Free Add to Chrome](https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ocimolffhgpeeoifjpjhgikgfbnmlkdh) Opens the Chrome Web Store listing **NoaLingua — beyond dual subs: video, web, PDF** — free, no account, Chrome 138 or newer.

- [Free, and not a trial Every feature on the free plan — both PDF modes, shadowing, all 30 practice formats.](https://noalingua.com/pricing/)
- [No account, no email Nothing to sign up for and nothing to cancel. There is no login screen at all.](https://noalingua.com/privacy/)
- [Two dropdowns to set up Pick what you are learning and what you want translations in. That is the whole setup.](https://noalingua.com/getting-started/)
- [Your words stay yours Export to Anki, CSV, a spreadsheet or a full JSON profile — free on every plan.](https://noalingua.com/docs/export-import/)

[What happens after you install](https://noalingua.com/getting-started/) · [Pricing](https://noalingua.com/pricing/) · [What it cannot do](https://noalingua.com/limits/)