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This feature only works with English agents using 11Labs voices that selected the eleven flash v2 (English only) voice model.
Pronunciation dictionary
You can also control how certain words are pronounced. This is useful when you want to make sure certain uncommon words are pronounced correctly. To use the feature, you set a pronunciation dictionary on the agent. The dictionary is a list of entries, and each entry has:
  • Word or phrase to be annotated. For example, actually.
  • Phonetic alphabet to use. ipa and cmu are supported.
  • Phoneme — the pronunciation of the word in the chosen alphabet. For example, æktʃuəli.

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How many entries can I add?

The pronunciation dictionary is a list on the agent — you can add multiple entries and there is no fixed cap enforced by the API. In practice:
  • Add one entry per word or short phrase you want to override. Each entry needs its own word, alphabet, and phoneme.
  • Keep the dictionary focused on words the model actually mispronounces (uncommon proper nouns, brand names, technical terms, foreign words). Overriding common words can produce unnatural speech.
  • Avoid duplicate word values with conflicting phonemes — behavior when the same word appears twice is not guaranteed.
  • Very large dictionaries can push the agent payload close to request size limits when calling update-agent. If you hit that, split entries across agents or trim rarely used words.

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Finding the phonetic pronunciation

You can search online to find the phonetic pronunciation of a word, or use tools like: