Phonetic help

[molitar]

I have a few problems.

1. currently ... is being read as DOT DOT DOT making it hard to follow along in my audio books. How do I change that to be a pause instead?

2. How can I drag out a sound? For example Hm is so short it sounds like a blip than the sound hmmmm. So how does one use lexicon to make the hm sound come out correctly?

3. how do I do a long vowel sound? Example for example Ojiisan sounds like Ojee sahn and Obāsan the ā sound is the ahh sound twice as long. like ahhh. How do I do this phonetically?

4. How do I do a short vowel? For example Ue sounds like oo long vowel oo like boot and eh sounds like the e in elegant but when I try to do a oo eh I get the sound oo aye. It pronounciates it like the letter a.

[Jim Bretti]

For the DOT DOT DOT problem, you can create a TextAloud pronunciation dictionary entry that converts 3 dots to a pause. Under the TextAloud main menu, click Tools -> Text Processing -> Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance. Click the New Entry button, and create dictionary entry with these settings:

Text Matching: Simple Text
...

Pronounce Using: Respell
{{Pause=1}}

Word Boundary Condition: No Word Boundary Required

You can try the pronunciation editor for the remaining problems as well. For example, in the word Obasan, if you need the first 'a' to be a long a, you could try creating a dictionary entry that respells Obasan as Obeysan. You may need to experiment with different respellings to get something close to what you're looking for.

Some of the TextAloud voices (AT&T US English and Nuance Voices) support phoneme level pronunciations, you may want to experiment with this as well. The requirement to using phoneme based pronunciation corrections is that you need to create separate dictionaries for each combination of language / dialect. When you create a dictionary in TextAloud pronunciation dictionary maintenance, you have the option of assigning 'Associations' with a dictionary. If you're using US English voices, set the Language association to "English", and the dialect to "United States". With these associations assigned to the dictionary, you can create phoneme based corrections for the dictionary.

To create a phoneme correction, create a dictionary entry in your new dictionary. Set the Pronounce Using dropdown to "Phonemes". This will enable the Phoneme Helper button, on the right side of the dialog. You can use the phoneme helper dialog to help with selecting the phonemes you want to use. Best thing is to give it a try and post any questions you have. If you have questions related to phoneme pronunciations include which voice(s) you're using in your question so we know the voice vendor, language and dialect.

[PHenry1026]

Greetings,

A good way to deal with interjections like hmm, is to record the sound from a online dictionary and use regular expression, the Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance and the audio tag to play the recording whenever it comes across the interjection (hmm, in this case).

You can find very good recordings of this interjection here:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hmm?s=t

or

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... ritish/hmm

P.S. when seeking phonetic help about a foreign word you should indicate what language the word comes from and if you know what the word means in that language.

[molitar]

Greetings,

A good way to deal with interjections like hmm, is to record the sound from a online dictionary and use regular expression, the Pronunciation Dictionary Maintenance and the audio tag to play the recording whenever it comes across the interjection (hmm, in this case).

You can find very good recordings of this interjection here:

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hmm?s=t

or

http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dict ... ritish/hmm

P.S. when seeking phonetic help about a foreign word you should indicate what language the word comes from and if you know what the word means in that language.

Thanks for that tip on interjection and using that in the pronunciation dictionary. I see you had a great PLS for my Ivona Voice. I purchased the Salli voice and use it for my audio books.

Language Japanese.

Ue (上?) literally means "above", and denotes a high level of respect. While its use is no longer very common, it is still seen in constructions like chichi-ue (父上?) and haha-ue (母上?), reverent terms for "father" and "mother" respectively. Receipts that do not require specification of the payer's name are often filled in with ue-sam (pronounced as 'oo eh'. The oo as in boot. )

Obāsan (お祖母さん／御祖母さん／御婆さん／お婆さん): grandmother, or also "female senior-citizen". (the ā means that the sound is twice as long.. Japanese literraly will repeat vowel sounds. Like the word neesan the double ee is like saying naay-san make the ay sound twice as long as normal)

[PHenry1026]

Greetings,

I tried all the forms of Obāsan (in Japanese) that you provided using the following web sites:


https://translate.google.com/

http://www.acapela-group.com/

http://www.nuance.com/vocalizer5/flash/index.html

The problem is that the pronunciation of Obāsan varies significantly with all three. If you give me the form of Obāsan (in Japanese) and the pronunciation which you think best authenticates Obāsan, I could derive a rough IPA pronunciation of Obāsan for you (even though I do not speak Japanese).

A great place to help with your Japanese is http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

You can even ask the native speakers at wordreference.com to provide you with an IPA approximation of the Japanese word you are interested in pronouncing.

P.S. this is very important: what English voice(s) are you using to get the pronunciation of Obāsan?

[molitar]

Greetings,

I tried all the forms of Obāsan (in Japanese) that you provided using the following web sites:


https://translate.google.com/

http://www.acapela-group.com/

http://www.nuance.com/vocalizer5/flash/index.html

The problem is that the pronunciation of Obāsan varies significantly with all three. If you give me the form of Obāsan (in Japanese) and the pronunciation which you think best authenticates Obāsan, I could derive a rough IPA pronunciation of Obāsan for you (even though I do not speak Japanese).

A great place to help with your Japanese is http://forum.wordreference.com/forumdisplay.php?f=54

You can even ask the native speakers at wordreference.com to provide you with an IPA approximation of the Japanese word you are interested in pronouncing.

P.S. this is very important: what English voice(s) are you using to get the pronunciation of Obāsan?

Thanks ok nuance using the Japanese female voice with it typed as obaasan shows the correct sound.. the ā symbolizes a double vowel.

[PHenry1026]

For お祖母さん

ˈoʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (US English)

ˈəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (UK English)

You can verify the pronunciation at the following web site:

http://www.ivona.com/us/

Choose British English, Amy and enter the following:

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="ˈəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ"></phoneme>

then press Play.


For 御祖母さん

ˈoʊˈsoʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (US English)

ˈəʊˈsəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (UK English)

P.S. You should also test without the stress marks; I think əʊsəʊbɑsæŋ sounds closer to the Japanese pronunciation than ˈəʊˈsəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ.

[molitar]

For お祖母さん

ˈoʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (US English)

ˈəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (UK English)

You can verify the pronunciation at the following web site:

http://www.ivona.com/us/

Choose British English, Amy and enter the following:

<phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="ˈəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ"></phoneme>

then press Play.


For 御祖母さん

ˈoʊˈsoʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (US English)

ˈəʊˈsəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ (UK English)

P.S. You should also test without the stress marks; I think əʊsəʊbɑsæŋ sounds closer to the Japanese pronunciation than ˈəʊˈsəʊˈbɑˈsæŋ.

Thanks much for your example of the phoneme as now I understand how you did that. I also found a great chart for respelling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronunciat ... or_English.

Ivona's example had too much other junk in it that I could not follow what was going on.. the example they sent me.

(?<=^|[[:punct:][:space:]])WYSIWYG(?=[[:punct:][:space:]]|$) "<speak><phoneme alphabet='x-sampa' ph='"wI.zi%wIg'/></speak>"

With your example I see that all they should of sent me for an example should of been the small phoneme part.. Now I understand how to use IPA and X-Sampa in the lexicon. I really appreciate your patience and help with this.

I finally got a correct sounding ue for japanese.. Now that I understand how it works I came up with <phoneme alphabet="ipa" ph="u/e/"></phoneme> for the ue in japanese.. Pulled the IPA from Japanese Pronunciation site. I'll go back through my honorifics and redo them with this new understanding.

[molitar]

Wow.. with your assistance and Ivona I now am able to do long vowels.

<speak><phoneme alphabet='X-SAMPA' ph='"U "E'/></speak>

the &qote; makes it a long vowel. Now I just will have to spend some major time re-doing the Japanese honorifics for my audio book to sound the most natural.. That will take me some time but will definitely be worth it.

[PHenry1026]

Greetings,

Thanks for this information; it also seems to work when using 'ipa' instead of 'x-sampa' though you would have to change U to ʊ and E to ɛ (which are the IPA equivalent)

[molitar]

Greetings,

Thanks for this information; it also seems to work when using 'ipa' instead of 'x-sampa' though you would have to change U to ʊ and E to ɛ (which are the IPA equivalent)

Thanks for that. Yeah I am using IPA for my actual phonetics. I am now wondering if it's possible to replace like all for example i with the way it's pronounced in Japanese.

Currently it's a lot of work to fix some vowels and consonants to get them to sound right like the name Miyuki is done as <speak><phoneme alphabet='IPA' ph='Mi[j]uki'/></speak>. It would be nice if there is a way to replace all y with the [j] sound instead. I'm asking Ivona if it's possible or not.

[molitar]

Thanks for the help before.. Now I am working on some Japanese names got the names sounding pretty good but they are spoken too slow. Is there a command in the speech to accelerate the speech for that name?

Suzune
<speak><phoneme alphabet='IPA' ph='S uzune'/></speak>

Ichihara
<speak><phoneme alphabet='IPA' ph=' ʨꜜ-ha ɽa'/></speak>

Miyuki
<speak><phoneme alphabet='IPA' ph='Mi[j]uki'/></speak>

The names if I accelerate them by +2 speed the names do not sound bad. Is it possible in the speak command to give command to accelerate the voice for these names?

[PHenry1026]

For SAPI 5:


The Rate tag controls the rate of a voice. The tag can be empty, in which case it applies to all subsequent text, or it can have content, in which case it only applies to that content.
The Rate tag has two attributes, Speed and AbsSpeed, one of which must be present. The value of both of these attributes should be an integer between negative ten and ten. Values outside of this range may be truncated by the engine (but are not truncated by SAPI). The AbsSpeed attribute controls the absolute rate of the voice, so a value of ten always corresponds to a value of ten, a value of five always corresponds to a value of five. (Source: Acapela TTS 8.250 for Windows SAPI 5 Reference Manual Reference: AcaMul-Sapi5)


<rate speed="5">
This text should be spoken at rate five.
<rate speed="-5">
This text should be spoken at rate zero.
</rate>
</rate>



<rate absspeed="5">
This text should be spoken at rate five.
<rate absspeed="-5">
This text should be spoken at rate negative five.
</rate>
</rate>
<rate absspeed="10"/>




For SSML: (Source: Acapela SSML support Manual)


<prosody rate=5> ... </prosody>


I have never used the SSML command since I don't have IVONA reader. I believe <speak><phoneme alphabet='IPA' ph='S uzune'/></speak> is a SSML tag so you could try


<prosody rate=5><speak><phoneme alphabet='IPA' ph='S uzune'/></speak></prosody>

and adjust the rate to your liking.

[molitar]

Thanks much for that explanation and example.. I will try that.. thanks