strange dectalk behavior

[jacobs at surferie.net]

Hi
Well, the subject says it, I guess. I've got some odd behavior here with my
dec express. It doesn't seem to be speakup related, emacspeak does this too,
as does my windows screen reader.
Anyway, dectalk seems to be having trouble with words that include letters
and numbers together. For example, the word 3D comes out as D, and the
command ps2ascii, for example, comes out as ps ascii. This only happens with
words including 1 number. What I mean is that if there are is more than 1
number together, the word will be spoken normally. However, any single
numbers, no matter where they are placed, are being skipped over. They
simply aren't being spoken. I can go back with the review keys and tell that
they're there, but dectalk doesn't speak them. This started, as near as I
can tell, 2 days ago. What the heck did I do and is there a way to fix it?
I've never seen this behavior before. Powering off the dectalk does not
clear this up. Should I reload my 4.2cd firmware?