Redefining a character pronunciation

[pj at pjb.com.au]

Greetings,

I'd like to have # pronounced as "hash", or even as "comment",
instead of as "number"; but when I edit 
  $ cd /sys/accessibility/speakup/i18n/
  $ vi characters
even as root, I get:
  "/sys/accessibility/speakup/i18n/characters" E667: Fsync failed

followed by lots of scary kernel messages like:
Apr 16 14:50:50 box8 kernel: [  977.007098]  updated 18 of 20 character descriptions with 2 rejects
Apr 16 14:50:50 box8 kernel: [  977.007114] character descriptions reset to defaults

even though file identifies it as a text file, and it's world-writeable:
  $ file characters
  characters: ASCII C program text
  $ ls -l characters
  -rw-rw-rw- 1 root root 4096 Apr 16 14:50 characters

Is there a way for me to get "#" pronounced as "hash" ?

and preferably configurable during run-time,
since mostly I might be editing a perl script,
but sometimes a form full of account numbers and membership numbers ?

Regards,  Peter Billam

http://www.pjb.com.au      pj at pjb.com.au     (03) 6278 9410
"Follow the charge, not the particle."  --  Richard Feynman
 from The Theory of Positrons, Physical Review, 1949