Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!thad
From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Good for a chuckle
Message-ID: <23099@cup.portal.com>
Date: 14 Oct 89 11:39:54 GMT
References: <0453.AA0453@ami-cg> <20447@usc.edu> <15391@netnews.upenn.edu>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 20

I've given a lot of computer-speech demos at trade shows (as adjunct to
demo'ing OTHER things), and what really helps is a dictionary such as the
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, International Edition, which contains
the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) pronunciation for all words.

The IPA coding maps directly into, for example, Votrax phoneme codes (for
the English language ONLY), and the same technique can be used for input to
the Amiga's ``narrator'' (phoneme codes).

With proper selection of phoneme codes, duration, and accents, computer
speech using simple techniques (e.g. Votrax and Amiga narrator) CAN be
quite understandable and usable.  Blind usage of Votrax' "Text to Speech"
and the Amiga's Translator produces, in general, speech that sounds like
a drunken sot for whom English is not the native tongue!  :-)  :-)

It's kinda sad to experience a program for which it's evident that over
500 hours was spent on whiz-bang graphics and less than 5 minutes for the
audio.

Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]