Mixed Languages

[starrmark]

Here is a pipe-dream suggestion for a new feature.

Everyday English is often full of foreign words and expressions, not to mention foreign names. One of my pet-peeves is the way TextAlound, using many English voices, mangles the pronunciation of foreign words and foreign names, when speaking English documents.

Services like Google Translate can usually recognize instantly which language a word or expression belongs to, with a fair degree of accuracy.

What would be great: if TextAloud could spot foreign words, phrases and names in a document, and apply foreign rules of pronunciation to the English voices. Life is too short to correct manually the pronunciation of every instance.

Well, I said it was a pipe-dream. Perhaps it could done at least for foreign words and names that are commonly used in everyday English or are marked in italics. For example, an American would not say "ran-dezz-vouse" or "Don Quicks-oat" or "Rich-chard Wagg-ner."

MS

[PHenry1026]

MS,

For example, an American would not say "ran-dezz-vouse" or "Don Quicks-oat" or "Rich-chard Wagg-ner."

The above quote only has meaning to you. I suspect you are asking what is correct way to pronounce the name of the German composer Richard Wagner.

In order to get help with pronunciation of Richard Wagner, you would have to indicate which Text-To-Speech voice(s) you want the pronunciation for.

[starrmark]

MS,

For example, an American would not say "ran-dezz-vouse" or "Don Quicks-oat" or "Rich-chard Wagg-ner."

The above quote only has meaning to you. I suspect you are asking what is correct way to pronounce the name of the German composer Richard Wagner.

In order to get help with pronunciation of Richard Wagner, you would have to indicate which Text-To-Speech voice(s) you want the pronunciation for.

Not quite. I was suggesting that, with some foreign words and names, Americans usually pronounce in the same way as do native speakers. They do not follow American/English rules of pronunciation. They follow foreign rules of pronunciation while speaking foreign words often found in everyday American speech. TextAloud plus any English voice cannot pronounce these foreign words as Americans commonly do without switching to a different foreign-language voice for a particular word or name. If the user could add a tag to identify the language of a foreign word or name in a document, perhaps one day TextAloud could pronounce that word or name following rules for that foreign language without having to change the English voice to the foreign voice.

MS

MS

[PHenry1026]

MS,

This is why it is important to specify which Text to Speech (TTS) Voice you are using. Some English voices will pronounce Richard Wagner using the German pronunciation.

Most American English voices will pronounce Richard Wagner using standard American English. Since most educated people are aware of the German pronunciation for Richard Wagner, it is very easy to use the voice's Phoneme Dictionary to substitute the German pronunciation for Richard Wagner when using an American English voice.

[PHenry1026]

MS,

I am guessing that "ran-dezz-vouse" is your representation of how the voice you are using pronounces the French word rendezvous and "Don Quicks-oat" is your representation of how your voice pronounces the Spanish name Don Quixote.

Since both rendezvous and Don Quixote have established anglicizations, if the voice you are using does not pronounce them correctly [that is, using the established anglicizations], you can use the voice's Phoneme Dictionary to define and use the established anglicizations or the French and Spanish pronunciations.

[Jim Bretti]

Another option with words like rendezvous and Quixote is you may be able to be able to get by with alternate spellings. For example, create a pronunciation dictionary entry to respell rendezvous as either ron day voo or ron duh voo. Depending on the voice(s) you're using, kee otee might work as a respelling for Quixote.