Is it possible to change the speech rate in OS X say command?

Question

say -v Alex "Hello"

Is there a way to change the speed of speech like there is in the speech settings of System Preferences -> Date & Time -> Clock -> Customize Voice?

Solution 1

Yes, there is. The command

say -v Alex "Hello" -r 200

will cause the voice Alex say "Hello" at a rate of 200 words/minute.

Solution 2

There is also an embedded speech command for changing the rate:

say '[[rate 200]] hello'

Comments

[Benjamin Nolan]

Unfortunately, most of the new voices added by Apple since 10.6 will ignore embedded commands for speech rates and phoneme preferences. :( Really annoying, since I love the Fiona voice pack, but she occasionally mis-pronounces some words so horribly that they're unrecognisable. :(

[joeyhoer]

Interestingly, this works in HTML documents with Apple Speech Synthesis hotkey and the JS Speech Synthesis API.

[iwasrobbed]

Seems to work as of 10.12, even with the very realistic voices like Thomas. Super creepy at 40 wpm :D

[Pysis]

-r --rate= wasn't working for me on 10.13 for /usr/bin/say, but the embedded speech command below did. Was using -v Tom.

[riffraff]

doesn't seem work (nor does --rate with localized voices such as Luca and Alice) on 10.14

[wind2412]

It's okay with me to use say "[[rate +500]] hello" ;) As the document says.

[Felix Jassler]

What is the default rate?

[John Mark Mitchell]

@FelixJassler The default rate is 200

[Admin]

I'm on 11.5 and the + added by @wind2412 is the only thing that worked for me