In the meantime, if anyone is trying to get around this.. Placing a repeater on the output of the observer,setting it to 2, and then adding redstone dust after it, will give you a single tick for water appearing and/or changing. (redstone dust optional of course 😉 )
Alex Summers
So I decided to take the advice of a few others, and attempt to remove the library from com.mojang:text2speech, and update the 1.12.2.json file.
Welp, seems Minecraft no longer checks for the library first, but instead, insists upon it. Ended up with a callback crash.
So there is literally no way to disable this most annoying feature.
Needs fixed, so many users use the baubles mod or journey map, and want their 'B' key BACK!