It’s that time of year. The wonderful time of year when we gather with friends and family, eat too much food, exchange some presents, have some fun and occasionally consume drinks with a larger than normal proportion of egg in them.
At NeoSpeech, we’re passionate about learning and linguistics, so we’ve gathered our team and put together a guide to saying “Merry Christmas” in 5 different languages – English, Spanish, French, Chinese and Japanese. To help us out, we’ve asked our top quality text-to-speech voices to pronounce Merry Christmas in each of the languages so you can really impress your friends, colleagues or barista with your perfect pronunciation.
For us, learning a new language is one of the best uses of text-to-speech technology, so let’s get into the holiday spirit and learn something new!
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English – Merry Christmas
A Bit of Culture
Christmas is celebrated widely throughout the English speaking world. It is a major holiday in large countries, such as the USA and the UK, as well as in smaller countries like New Zealand. Of course, Christmas is celebrated by Christians, but it is also widely celebrated by non-religious people who view the holiday as a nice reason to gather with the people they love. Families often put up a Christmas tree and decorate it with lights and hanging decorations and have a large family meal. Presents are then placed under the tree and opened on Christmas Day.
How to Pronounce Merry Christmas
This one is easy – if you’re reading this blog post, you can probably pronounce Merry Christmas just fine. But have you heard it in a British accent? How about an American one?
Listen to Hugh’s smooth British English voice wish you a Merry Christmas or let one of our most popular American English voices, Julie, show you how it is done on this side of the world.
Hugh – UK English
Julie – US English
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Mexican Spanish – Feliz Navidad
A Bit of Culture
In Mexico, Christmas is celebrated for almost a whole month from December 12th to January 6th. Nativity scenes, knows as ‘nacimiento’ are very popular in Mexico. Sometimes the figures in the nativity scene are life size and a whole room in the house will be dedicated to the nacimiento. Christmas trees are not as common in Mexico as in the USA and the UK, with the nacimeineto being much more popular. Christmas is celebrated on the 25th of December, but Mexicans also widely celebrate El Dia de los Reyes (The Day of the Kings) where the 3 kings leave presents or candy on the 6th of January.
How to Pronounce Feliz Navidad
While it is useful to see the phrase written on this page, we’re going to get Francisco, our male Mexican Spanish voice to pronounce the phrase out loud so you can hear exactly how to say it (and impress your friends and family).
Francisco – Mexican Spanish
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Canadian French – Joyeux Noël
A Bit of Culture
Canada is a large country, the 2nd largest in the world in fact, which makes it a melting pot of people from different cultures and countries. Because of this, there are many different ways in which Christmas is celebrated. Most families put up a Christmas tree, which is usually a fir or pine tree because the province of Nova Scotia is known world-wide for its pine and fir Christmas trees. Many Canadians open their presents on Christmas Eve and send Christmas cards to their friends and family. The Santa Claus Parade in Toronto is one of the oldest and largest of its kind in the world, having started in 1913.
How to Pronounce Joyeux Noël
If you’ve never spoken in French before, the phrase Joyeux Noël could look at little daunting. Even if you took French in high school, it may be a long time since you’ve spoken in French. So, we’ve asked Chloe, our female Canadian French synthesized voice, to pronounce the phrase for us.
Chloe – Canadian French
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Mandarin Chinese –圣诞节快乐 (Shèng dàn jié kuài lè)
A Bit of Culture
In China, only 2-4% of people are Christians so the majority of the population knows very little about the religious side of Christmas. This means that Christmas is primarily celebrated in major cities, where Christmas has been quite commercialized as it is in many other countries. In these cities, there are large Christmas Trees and stores are decorated with festive lights and decorations. Here, Santa Claus is referred to as ‘Shen Dan Lao Red’, which means Old Christmas Man. Most people only see a Christmas tree in shopping malls and very few people will have one in their homes.
How to Pronounce Shèng dàn jié kuài lè
Technically, the phrase Shèng dàn jié kuài lè translates to Christmas Happy, but it is the phrase used to say Merry Christmas in China. If you’re a native English speaker, this might be a hard one to pronounce, so sit back and listen to Liang, one of our male Chinese synthesized voices, say this festive phrase.
Liang – Mandarin Chinese
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Japanese –メリークリスマス(Merīkurisumasu)
A Bit of Culture
Like China, there are very few Christians in Japan meaning that Christmas is not widely seen as a religious holiday. Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan, meaning that businesses and schools are still open. Christmas has only recently become a celebrated event in the last few decades and is seen as a time to spread happiness rather than celebrate a religion. The Japanese people have recently starting taking on more USA and UK based traditions, such as the sending and receiving of gifts at Christmas time. Christmas Eve is viewed as a romantic day, where young couples exchanges gifts and go out for dinner; the day is similarly viewed in Japan as Valentine’s Day is in the USA. In terms of Christmas food, fried Chicken is the popular food of choice, with Christmas being the busiest time of year for local KFC restaurants.
How to Pronounce Merīkurisumasu
Like Mandarin Chinese, the Japanese phrase for Merry Christmas, Merīkurisumasu, can be rather hard to pronounce if English is your first language. Here is a clip of one of NeoSpeech’s female Japanese voices, Misaki, spelling out the phrase so you can bring a new element of culture to Christmas this year.
Misaki – Japanese
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How Do You Say Merry Christmas?
How do you celebrate Christmas? Did our text-to-speech voices help you learn something new? Let us know in the comments below or email us at marketing@neospeech.com.
Learn More about NeoSpeech Text-to-Speech
NeoSpeech’s text-to-speech technology is useful for all kinds of learning, including learning a new language as we did today or taking an e-learning course online. We have a full range of text-to-speech solutions with 30 voices and 7 languages, which you can find out more about by viewing our products page.
Alternatively, if you have any questions or you’d like to talk to someone about adding text-to-speech to your next product or e-learning platform, please fill out our Sales Inquiry form and one of our friendly sales team members will be happy to help. Or, if you’d like to learn more about Christmas traditions around the world, take a look this great resource, Why Christmas.
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Merry Christmas from the team at NeoSpeech!