Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!ucsd!ucbvax!ucdavis!iris!zerkle From: zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu (Dan Zerkle) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Internationalism and phonemes (was Re: For all...advertizing Message-ID: <7902@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu> Date: 31 Oct 90 20:16:59 GMT References: <1990Oct24.030917.18454@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <693@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> Sender: usenet@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu Reply-To: zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu (Dan Zerkle) Organization: U.C. Davis - Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Lines: 32 In article sutela@polaris.utu.fi (Kari Sutela) writes: >ifarqhar@sunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Ian Farquhar) writes: > >>In article sutela@polaris.utu.fi (Kari Sutela) writes: >[I wrote about hardcoding a language on a chip] > >>Do phonems vary greatly from language to language? > >I'm not a linguist, but I'd think that they do (at least, a bit). I, for >example, have had difficulties in producing reasonably sounding Finnish >speech. On the other hand, this might be a problem with all languages --- This is a really big problem. My former workplace has mostly developed and English text-to-speech interpreter (available RSN from Panasonic!). However, there was also a large amount of work done to get the thing to speak Japanese and Chinese. This is not simply a matter of getting it to understand the input. Rather, a tremendous amount of the work was "tuning" the various sounds to be more comprehensible and natural. As a side note, we started off from the MITtalk system, which in turn was developed from a system developed by the late great Dennis Klatt. After I showed off my Amiga and they listened to the voice, the folks at work were very sure that the Amiga text-to-speech was a derivative of one of these. So, if you hear a box with Panasonic on the outside talking in a manner similar to your Amiga (only much, much better), you'll know why they sound alike. -Dan Dan Zerkle zerkle@iris.ucdavis.edu (916) 754-0240 Amiga... Because life is too short for boring computers.