say

From Mac Guides

say is a Terminal command used to render text into audible speech using the Speech Synthesis manager. The output may optionally be saved to a AIFF file.

Examples

To say "Hello, how are you today?" in the default voice

  say "Hello, how are you today?"

To say a phrase using the Hysterical voice

 say -v "Hysterical" "What?  You still use windows XP?"

To read the say man page in the default voice (ctrl-c will quit it)

 man say | say

Man Page Excerpt

This tool uses the Speech Synthesis manager to convert input text to audible speech and either play it through the sound output device cho- sen in System Preferences or save it to an AIFF file.