Ler_Grego_Antigo.app TTS app for MacOS

Read Ancient Greek — TTS with eSpeak-NG and AppleScript (macOS)

Overview

This macOS application (Read Ancient Greek.app => Ler_Grego_AntigoOK.app -name in Portuguese) is capable of:

• reading Ancient Greek (grc) texts with restored pronunciation;

• generating .wav audio files automatically;

• applying audio post-processing (tempo, volume, pitch);

• running fully offline, without web services.

The solution is based on eSpeak-NG (a rule-based articulatory TTS engine) integrated into a macOS AppleScript application. As of 2025, eSpeak-NG remains the only stable and reproducible solution for Ancient Greek TTS. 

Using the application

1. Launch Ler_Grego_AntigoOK.app

2. Enter Ancient Greek text (polytonic)

3. Wait a few seconds

4. The audio will be generated,  saved with date and time in wav. format. See example attached. 

Final notes

• The eSpeak-NG voice is mechanically sounding, but phonologically explicit and controllable. Unfortunately,  current neural TTS models (e.g., MMS-TTS-grc) are not suitable for Ancient Greek as of 2025.