Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!peterk From: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: For all you who want more advertizing Message-ID: <545@cbmger.UUCP> Date: 31 Oct 90 08:01:12 GMT References: <1990Oct24.030917.18454@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <693@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> Reply-To: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY) Organization: Commodore Bueromaschinen GmbH, West Germany Lines: 37 In article <693@macuni.mqcc.mq.oz> ifarqhar@sunc.mqcc.mq.oz.au (Ian Farquhar) writes: >In article sutela@polaris.utu.fi (Kari Sutela) writes: >>I'd say that hardcoding a language into a chip wouldn't be too wise. Please, >>keep in mind that there are other languages besides english (and a significant >>portion of Amiga sales comes from non-english-speaking countries). > >Do phonems vary greatly from language to language? YES, definitely. All non-English speaking countries suffer hard from the American-only translator and narrator of Amiga. Many guys of different countries (including me) have made attempts to build their own translator programs to output their own language using the provided phonemes. You can get it to a stage where it is quite understandable German, IF you take an hour or two to get accustomed to this voice. But it sure does have an extreme American accent and is not able to produce some of viably needed sounds. Worst thing in these American phonemes are the vowels. They are not plain, steady or clear. You know, in other languages the vowels are rather straight, constant sounds, whereas in American they always end in a transition to i or something else. Yes, and some vowels used here are plainly not existing in the current phoneme set. You know we Germans have those "umlauts". But also the normal 'a' or 'e' like we pronounce them are not available. Generally, German is pronounced rather in the front of your mouth while American is pronounced way back in your throat, the 'r' being an extreme example. And things have gotten worse with the new narrator of OS 2.0, it's even more specialized for American and less usable for other languages. Adapting this speech system to other languages is told to be a $120,000 thing per language, no other country did it until now. (Well, it's also an American company offering this, it is to be suspected whether they can twist their speech science to the way other languages need.) -- Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel // E-Mail to \\ Only my personal opinions... Commodore Frankfurt, Germany \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk