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Conference hydra::amiga_v1

Title:	AMIGA NOTES
Notice:	Join us in the NEW conference - HYDRA::AMIGA_V2
Moderator:	HYDRA::MOORE

Created:	Sat Apr 26 1986
Last Modified:	Wed Feb 05 1992
Last Successful Update:	Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:	5378
Total number of notes:	38326

4406.0. "Talk to me" by AYOU27::JBECK (Jim Beck) Mon Jan 07 1991 11:51

Hello all,

I have written a VERY simple Amiga Basic program to help my daughter with her spelling.

It SAY's the words, and then she types it the word.

My problem is that it sounds like a dalek with adenoids, and I am wondering if
there is an easy way to translate the dictionary word so that it SAYs like it 
types.

I have been experimenting with various ways to pronounce the word

PRO-NOWNZE THI WOURD.  but it takes ages.

I would be grateful for any help in this area(so would my daughter!)

thanks,

Jim

T.R	Title	User	Personal Name	Date	Lines
4406.1	translate	VICE::JANZEN	Tom MLO21-4/E10 223-5140	`Mon Jan 07 1991 12:07`	3
	Are you using the TRANSLATE statement from AmigaBASIC? Are you sending some of the codes that can change pitch and pace? Tom
4406.2	SAY("heer wee gho agen")	AYOU27::JBECK	Jim Beck	`Tue Jan 08 1991 03:28`	16
	Hello Tom, I am currently doing the following:- text$="Here is my spelling word." SAY TRANSLATE$(text$) and out it comes. I tried to use the voice setup, as per the Amigabasic instruction, but I can't seem to get it to work. If you know of anything to help, then it would be appreciated. regards, Jim
4406.3	Fix the Phoneme string	MKODEV::OSBORNE	Blade Walker	`Tue Jan 08 1991 10:41`	16
	When I began work on a spelling tutor, driven by AmigaBasic, I found the same problem. The Amiga would say "Spell {mumble}", if you used direct English $TRANSLATE-tion. The solution, painful as it was, is to write a little routine that prints the TRANSLATEd phoneme string, given the English text as input, then make adjustments to the phoneme string to get a decent pronounciation. So your program ends up with two tables, one is the correct spelling, the other is a manually-adjusted phoneme string for the SAY command. This works, but it's tedious. It is, however, more likely and quicker to arrive at a recognizable spoken word than trying to "trick" the $TRANSLATE command with incorrectly spelled English. EHF YHUU CAEHN REED THIEZ, YHUU TUU CAEHN RYT AHMEE2GHA SPEHL PROGREHMZ. Of course, AmigaBasic TRANSLATE still sounds better than the old "Speak-n-Spell" toys
4406.4	Look for BetterSpeech	LODGE::LEN	David M. Len	`Tue Jan 08 1991 12:08`	8
	There is a utility program I got from CompuServe, called BetterSpeech. It has a file of exception words with related phonetic spellings that you can edit to make additions. An example is "michael - mikul". It is run as a background process and apparently processes the text before the speech device and replaces any words in the exception file with the related phonetic spelling. It is over 2 years old, so I expect it should be on one of the Fish disks. But if you can't it from the net I will locate it and upload it for you.