Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!spool.mu.edu!uunet!cbmvax!cbmehq!cbmger!peterk
From: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.introduction
Subject: Re: why can't the Amiga talk properly
Message-ID: <1182@cbmger.UUCP>
Date: 30 Apr 91 12:06:30 GMT
References: <1991Apr28.195319.3987@daimi.aau.dk> <91119.165012UH2@psuvm.psu.edu>
Reply-To: peterk@cbmger.UUCP (Peter Kittel GERMANY)
Organization: Commodore Bueromaschinen GmbH, West Germany
Lines: 26

In article <91119.165012UH2@psuvm.psu.edu> UH2@psuvm.psu.edu (Lee Sailer) writes:
>
>Probably, the routines that translate text "How are you?" into
>the ARPABET "/HAW AAR YEW" is probably tuned to American English.

Yes, they are, definitely. (Though I don't whether you only mean the
difference between American and British English.) You need totally
different routines to convert other languages. Though again, for many
other languages it should be easier to write such routines than for
American, because other languages are more phonetic, so they have a
more direct correlation between spelling and pronouncing than English,
without so many exceptions.

>The synthesis routines shouldn't be, but might be by ommission if the
>code was developed in the US.

And they are too tuned tightly to American. The phonemes are all
spoken with the tongue stuffed way back in the throat, whereas e.g.
German in contrast is pronounced with the tongue more stretched
flat. (I'm no linguist, but this way it appears to me when speaking
both.) So to pronounce other languages correctly with *their* normal
accent, also this stuff should normally be adapted.

-- 
Best regards, Dr. Peter Kittel  // E-Mail to  \\  Only my personal opinions... 
Commodore Frankfurt, Germany  \X/ {uunet|pyramid|rutgers}!cbmvax!cbmger!peterk