Tagalog/Filipino SAPI5 Voice

[gtaus]

I am looking for a SAPI5 voice for the Tagalog/Filipino language of the Philippines to use in TextAloud. I cannot find any commercial Tagalog voice for sale. Does anybody know if such a voice exists? That would be my first choice.

My second choice is to work with an existing non-Tagalog voice and correct the pronunciation. I have tried modifying single Tagalog words by correcting the pronunciation in Anna's US English voice, but my results are largely less than satisfactory. I have even used a general list of English Phonemes to pronounce words syllable by syllable, but again, the results are not always as expected and fall short of what I know to be the correct Tagalog pronunciation. Does anybody know the exact Phonemes list that is used by the MS Anna voice? And/or, is there a tutorial written on how to best use Phonemes to get the results you need? My challenge is that the phoneme list I am using does not always give me the results I expect in Anna's voice, and I have yet to fully understand how to put the stress on the correct syllable. This is also important as many will understand that the same spelling of some words in a language will have a different meaning depending on what syllable is stressed.

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

[PHenry1026]

It is very doubtful that you will find a Tagalog/Filipino SAPI 5 Voice.

There are SAPI 5 Phoneme sets for the major languages like US English, UK English, French, German and so on. You can find the US English SAPI 5 Phoneme set here.

As you can see, US English has one of poorest phoneme sets. UK English has a better phoneme set and using the Acapela UK English phoneme set, I am able to approximate almost any foreign word.

If you are a purist, you best bet is to find a language (such as Thai?) which is close phonetically to Tagalog/Filipino and for which a text-to-speech voice is already developed. The downside of this approach is that you would have to speak that language.

[gtaus]

Thanks for the response.

Yes, I was trying to use the same US English phoneme set as in your link. Results were not very good. As you mentioned, the US English phoneme set is limited.

Do you have a link to the Acapela UK English phoneme set you use so I can compare that list to the US English phoneme set before I purchase anything? Would you recommend any particular Acapela UK voice with the idea that I would mainly be using it to phonetically speak foreign words? I went to the Acapela website, but could not find those answers. Any help appreciated.

[PHenry1026]

I have a hard copy of Acapela's UK English Phoneme Set that I printed out from an Acapela manual but I don't have the manual available. Perhaps Jim Bretti might be able to provide you with a PDF of Acapela's UK English Phoneme set.

In any case, if you purchase an Acapela UK voice, the Phoneme dictionary has a list of the phoneme set.

My favorite Acapela voice is Acapela UK English Graham voice.

[gtaus]

Thanks for the help. I'll be looking more online about that phoneme list for Graham. Take care.

[PHenry1026]

Greetings,

I need your Tagalog expertise: Can you tell me whether the forvo.com pronunciation at http://www.forvo.com/word/hagupit/#tl for Hagupit is correct? (You may have to turn the sound up very high).

In terms of IPA pronunciation, I am hearing /hɑːˈgu.pɪt/ for the pronunciation of Hagupit.

[gtaus]

I am hardly an expert in Tagalog, just learning the language on my own. Having said that, many words in Tagalog are pronounced exactly as spelled. So, Hagupit in that link sounds correct to me - with my limited knowledge of Tagalog.

The reason I was looking for a Tagalog voice was because I was spending too much time to correct the pronunciation of Tagalog words with an English speaking voice; which uses our American-English rules for pronunciation. Also, there are a few sounds in Tagalog that we don't really have in English, such as the "ng" sound in Tagalog, which, to my ear, sounds most like "na" - but not exactly. I have some Tagalog language learning resources with audio files, and that is what I was using to change the pronunciation of words I was learning into Tagalog. For example, American English voices pronounce "Tagalog" as "tag a log" which I have to correct as "ta gaah log" and place the stress on the second syllable. I was looking to just write all words using some standardized phoneme list.

FYI, I contacted Acapela about the either a voice in Tagalog, or using the Graham voice with the phenom list to make my own "Tagalog voice." I got a short response back from them stating that they do not have a Tagalog voice and that it would not work to use the Graham voice with the phenom list to change the pronunciation of words in Tagalog. They would not share their phenom list that comes with the Graham voice. So, I really have no way of looking at the list to see if I could make it work despite their lack of interest in my project. I understand that it might not be commercially viable to make a voice in Tagalog, but I was disappointed to receive a note where they would not even share what phenom list is used by their Graham voice.

Are these phoneme lists available anywhere to look at before one buys a voice?

[PHenry1026]

Thanks.

Just ask Jim Bretti /ˌdʒɪm ˈbrɛt.t̬i/ for a PDF copy Acapela's UK English Guide which has a list of the UK phoneme set.