After some brief research it seems the issue you're seeing may be a known bug in at least some versions/release of espeak-ng. Here's some potentially related l

After some brief research it seems the issue you're seeing may be a known bug in at least some versions/release of espeak-ng. Here's some potentially related links if you'd like to dig deeper: * "questions about mandarin data packet #1044": https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/1044 https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/1044 * "ESpeak NJ-1.51’s Mandarin pronunciation is corrupted #12952": https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/12952 https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/12952 * "The pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese using ESpeak NJ in NVDA is not normal #1028": https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/1028 https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/1028 * "When espeak-ng translates Chinese (cmn), IPA tone symbols are not output correctly #305": https://github.com/rhasspy/piper/issues/305 https://github.com/rhasspy/piper/issues/305 * "Please default ESpeak NG's voice role to 'Chinese (Mandarin, latin as Pinyin)' for Chinese to fix #12952 #13572": https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/13572 https://github.com/nvaccess/nvda/issues/13572 * "Cmn voice not correctly translated #1370": https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/1370 https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/1370