Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!AWITUW01.BITNET!Z3000PA
From: Z3000PA@AWITUW01.BITNET
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: voice interfaces and languages
Message-ID: <$850929432S0404D19900129T155050.0001.Mail-VE>
Date: 30 Jan 90 00:50:50 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 49


Recently, there has been some discussion about the keyboard being
replaced by voice input, and about voice output, too.

1. For which languages will voice systems become generally available
   within the next ten years? US-English? British English? Japanese?
   English spoken with scottish or german or japanese accent? Gaelic?
   French? Italian? German German, Austrian German, Swiss German?
   Castillian Spanish, Catalane Spanish, Latin American Spanish? ...
   All the European languages?
   All African and Asiatic languages?

   How many languages are there one earth, even if we consider only
   those parts of those countries where PCs are likely to be used?

2. One advantage of written e-mail over spoken voice-mail is that
   it's much easier to read and write foreign languages rather than
   to listen to them or to pronounce them.

Let's take myself as an example:

I am in regular e-mail connection with various people both within
and outside my home country (Austria). With people in Austria and
Germany, I use German. With people in other countries and with
international newsletters and mailing lists, I mostly use English,
but I am also subscribed to a french and a dutch mailing list, and
I have even happened to recieve portions of e-mail in Italian,
Swedish and Spanish.

With German, voice input and output would be no problem for me
(except with genuine Swiss German).

With spoken English, I would probably understand less than 60 % of the
texts, whereas I currently understand about 90 % of the written
English I recieve; and I doubt that any computer system would be able to
understand my near-English pronounciation and my strong german accent.
(On the other hand, I assume that all of you are able to understand
this written message, in spite of my spelling errors.)

With french, italian or dutch, I manage to understand about 60 % of
what I read, but I would not understand enough if I had to listen to
these languages spoken as fast as is usual for native speakers, and I
am unable to pronounce anything correctly in these languages.

So, what will voice input and output make better for me? Or for
other people who also face the existence of more than one language
on earth?

              Hubert Partl, Vienna, Austria <z3000pa@awituw01.bitnet>