How to enable alexa_tts support pause in speach

I have automation where one of actions is Alexa (media_player.alexa_tts) speaking. But she does it very quickly, without intonation and natural pauses.

I tried with Amazon Polly SSML tag break but no luck.

action:
    - service: script.alexa_speak
      data_template:
        message: "Very long text to speak. <break time="3s"/> Would expect slight pause between this sentence!"
        volume: 0.5

Any suggestions how I could achieve that?

If I’m not mistaken, currently all Alexa TTS support is not done through true TTS. They all use workarounds that utilize the “Simon Says” feature to mimic TTS.

I am unsure if they just pass the plain text to “Simon Says” or they convert to an audio file first, but if it’s the latter, it may be possible to modify the script you are using to modify the audio file before sending to “Simon Says”.

Unfortunately, that specific info is beyond my knowledge, so I can’t really help, but hopefully it can point you in the right direction, if it is at least possible or not.

the simon says function is activated the same way as that you activate a routine in the alexa app.
at the moment there is no option to change anything in the way alexa speaks the text.

the only way i can think of is to split up the text and send it as several textblocks.

Struggled with the same issue. Here is my workaround:

- alias: goodmorning
    initial_state: 'on'
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: input_boolean.morning
      to: "on"
    action:
      - service: notify.alexa_media
        data:
          target: media_player.echo
          data:
            type: tts
          message: "Good morning John. Did you sleep well? "
      - delay: '00:0:01'
      - service: notify.alexa_media
        data:
          target: media_player.echo
          data:
            type: tts
          message: "Have a great day!"