Digital speech in Ubuntu 10.10 maverick

You can make your ubuntu terminal speak to to using spd
Open up a terminal window and type this command:
$ spd-say test
Your computer will then say “test”.
If you  want to make your computer speak in complete sentences as below.
$ spd-say “ hello how do you do ?" 

You can even feed system variables into the spd-say command. For instance, to get spd-say to speak your current working directory:
$ spd-say $PWD

man spd-say for more details