How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

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gtaus
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How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by gtaus »

I am now using TA 3.0 in Windows 8.1 with MS David voice. I wanted it so say "Tagalog" in one passage, but MS David (and all my other English voices) mispronounces it as "Tag a log" which is nowhere near close to the correct pronunciation. I tried to correct the word in the user TA dictionary using phonemes. I can get closer, but it still hurts my ear....

I looked up the word "Tagalog" at http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tagalog and it lists the phonetic spelling as such: Ta·ga·log (tə-gä′lôg, -ləg) I understand the phonetic spellings and representations much better than the phoneme list for the TA SAPI 5 voices. Back in college, I took 2 years of French pronunciation using IPA and had a good understanding of that system. trying to rewrite words in SAPI 5 phonemes is kicking my rear end.

So, I am wondering if anyone has attempted to translate phonetic spellings into SAPI 5 phonemes, or if there is any such cross reference list from phonetic to phonemes available to help speed up entry of words in TA when rewriting into the phoneme helper.

I also run across medical vocabulary in journals that I don't know how to pronounce. Again, it would be great to use the online dictionaries to get the phonetic spellings and then convert that to SAPI 5 phonemes.

If such a conversion is possible, would it have to be voice specific? I have noticed that different voices pronounce the same words differently, such as the American English pronunciation of vitamin is different in British English: vi•ta•min
(ˈvaɪ tə mɪn; Brit. also ˈvɪt ə-).

Finally, is there any basic guide to writing words in the phoneme helper, preferably with examples? I have not figured out the correct way to code 1 primary and 2 secondary stresses, they all sound the same to me. Do I have to close out TA and restart it to hear the changes I made? Perhaps I just need a "Phonemes For Dummies" guide to get started on the right path. Trial and error is not working very well for me. Thanks for any help.
PHenry1026
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Re: How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by PHenry1026 »

You can find the US English SAPI 5 Phoneme set here.

The mapping from IPA to SAPI 5 is very straightforward: For the word Tagalog

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictio ... olicy=true

/təˈɡɑː.lɒɡ/ (IPA)

t ax - g aa 1 l aa g (SAPI 5)

ɒ does not have a SAPI 5 equivalent so it is usually approximated by aa.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Tagalog?s=t

/tɑˈgɑ.lɔg/ (IPA)

t ax - g aa 1 l ao g (SAPI 5)

P.S. If you are serious about text-to-speech you need to upgrade to a better voice.
gtaus
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Re: How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by gtaus »

Thank you. That fixed it.

I was pretty close with: (t ah - g aa 1 - l ao g) but it did not sound quite right. Changing the ah to ax to (t ax - g aa 1 l ao g) was what I was looking for. You nailed it.

You stated that "The mapping from IPA to SAPI 5 is very straightforward." Is there such a "map" or did you just develop your own? I printed out the American English Phoneme Representation list from your link, thank you. I suppose I can transfer the phonetic symbols from one sheet to the other, as best I can. Is that how you do it?

I am only a casual user of TA 3.0 these days, but I thought MS David in MS Windows 8.1 was better than the voices we used in the past. Having said that, I have not looked at English commercial voices for about 5 years. Did you have any voices/company in mind when you suggested I might consider upgrading to a better voice?

From a previous post on a similar topic, I did reach out to a few companies about their products but I did not get very positive responses. I wanted to get a voice for Tagalog, or a voice that I could modify to speak Tagalog, and was told "not possible" by the companies that did respond. So I lost interest in buying any commercial voices at that time. But I can always reconsider if something looks better.

Again, thanks for the help.
PHenry1026
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Re: How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by PHenry1026 »

If you are happy with MS David that is what is important.

The easy way to learn how to do the mapping is to start with the simple examples given in the SAPI 5 charts like cat and type cat into a standard dictionary with IPA, very soon you will you will be able to do the mapping automatically.
gtaus
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Re: How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by gtaus »

Working on matching up the symbols from one system list to the other, to make a combined list. Should help with future pronunciation changes with the phoneme helper. Thanks for all the help and links.
Jim Bretti
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Re: How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by Jim Bretti »

I don't know if this is helpful at all but the phoneme helper dialog in TextAloud can be used to convert words/phonetic spellings to sapi5 phonemes. On this dialog, enter some text in the "Sounds Like" file field and press the "Generate" button. The phoneme helper will speak the text, capture the phonemes the voice used to speak the text, and display the output in the Phonemes field.
Jim Bretti
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gtaus
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Re: How to convert phonetic spelling into SAPI 5 Phonemes?

Post by gtaus »

Thanks for the suggestion of the phoneme helper dialog in TextAloud. I have not used it, yet. But it might come in handy. Currently, with Tagalog, I am having decent success with entering the phonemes directly. Over the past week, I have become aware of a number of patterns in the language and how to enter the words with phonemes directly. I have even had success using the stress markers. It's not as good as having an actual SAPI 5 voice in Tagalog, but my custom pronunciations are getting closer. And, really, for what I need, close enough.
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