Instead of a simple ding sound, it’s possible to have Mail tell you a little more about incoming messages using speech synthesis. Create the following AppleScript in Script Editor:

using terms from application "Mail"
  on perform mail action with messages newMessages
    repeat with newMessage in newMessages
      tell application "Mail"
        set senderName to (extract name from sender of newMessage)
        say "You've just received an mail from " &

 senderName
      end tell
    end repeat
  end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

Save it to something like ~/Library/Scripts/Mail Reader.scpt. In Mail, create a new rule to run the script on every incoming note.

[robg adds: You may wish to tweak the settings in the rule to limit announcements of things like mailing list messages and spam…]

Orginal post by (author unknown)