sound - How to manipulate spoken text with Speak?

I need to vary the speed, pause, reverse and in general control aspects of the playback of Speak[] is this possible?

Answer

"   Update 2 !  
 
 Some examples of text-to-speech  xml  
 tags that you can inject into the string input for Speak 
 from  XML TTS  Tutorial. 
For example the following  url  is spelled out 
      https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms717077(v=vs \
.85).aspx. 

      
 and the following text is read backwards at 
  lower speed 
 
    by a female
       
        esrever ni nekops eb dluohs txet sihT
      
 
 and   higher speed 

        esrever ni nekops eb dluohs txet sihT
      
   
    " // Speak

See: XML TTS Tutorial (SAPI 5.3)

"
    This text should be spoken at rate five.
    
       This text should be spoken at rate negative five.

    
 
 " // Speak

"
 This text should be spoken at volume level fifty.
    
     This text should be spoken at volume level one hundred.
    
 " // Speak


"
     Next text should be spoken in reverse.
     
        esrever ni nekops eb dluohs txet sihT
     
  
  " // Speak

Update: You can insert XML tags into to string input to Speak to control voice gender, speed, volume, pitch etc.

Using few examples from sapisynth

"  the list  \
 1  comma  msec=\"100\"/> 2    3 \
comma    4  \"10\"/>  5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12  " //Speak

---

Original post:

To play with the speed, you can process the string expression output of SpokenString to change the length of silence elements.

SpokenString[Range[10], Options[Speak], "PostProcess" -> False]

For example:

StringReplace[SpokenString[Range[10], Options[Speak], "PostProcess" -> False], 
   {"100" -> "0", "comma" -> ""}] // Speak