"Yessss", "Shhhh", "Arggh", &q

[Mitchell2567]

I've run into troubles with words such as this and, surprisingly, thought others would, too, but couldn't seem to find a message on the boards re this.

How do we get sounds, as opposed to words, to be correctly spoken out rather than have the letters spelled? i.e., instead of "Yess" (or any variation of it: yessssss, yessss, etc., to be spoken out as a long drawn-out "yessssss"?

Also, instead of "Hmmmm...", we get "H. M. M. M. M" spelled out <g>.

I've tried everything but not luck yet.

Thanks! :)



[p.s., there was a way to put words in the pronunciation editor so that variations of it would also fall under the pronunciation for one word. i.e., instead of having

YESS
YESSS
YESSSS
YESSSSS

there was something like YESS? I can't find the symbol or syntax although I saw it the other day. Can someone point me to the right word so I can look it up in the help file? thx :)]

[RicochetRita]

I can't help a whole lot, but I've run into those two myself. I haven't found any reliable way to extend an "sssss" sound.

And the best I've gotten for various lengths of "Hmm" is: "whom"
which unfortunately reads to quickly for longer thoughts like, "Hmmmm"

Also, I have "Hmmpf" as: "hoomf" which is a bit longer.

Maybe you can find something in there.

-R³

[D.Leikin]

My guess is proprietary lexicon editors might help on that. For example, creating the following translations in DicoEdit should make Acapela Heather pronounce these words very close to what is supposedly expected

Word: hm
Translation: # h m m

Word: yess
Translation: # j E1 s s s s

to just prolong s , or

Word: yess
Translation: # j E1 s s s s h

to both prolong and emphasize s.

Word: shh
Translation: # S S S S S

Also, if not mistaken, adding something like this

Word: {{re=yess+}}
Pronunciation: yess

to TextAloud Pronunciation Editor should replace strings of the form

yess
yesss
.....
yesssssssss
.....
with just 'yess'. Similar regex should work for hmmmm, shhhhh, etc.

[Mitchell2567]

Hi, thanks! Yes, some of that worked.

This did a good job of catching any drawn-out "yes":

Word: {{re=yess+}}
Pronunciation: yess

so it seems to be catching yes, yess, yesssss, etc. The effect is lost, but at least the word is pronounced correctly. All forms of yes+ are pronounced as a simple "yes", in other words. Much better than the alterative! <g>

This format worked so well that I tried it to tackle another issue. I'm reading some books (where the cats say variants of "yesss" alot since they're telephathic ... okay, stop smirking ... ) that have a lot of names that begin with "T'".

I tried using a variation of your regex above to catch all those names. I'd been doing them manually before, so now it's pretty neat:
{{re=T'+}} catches T'Reed, T'Rowan, etc., etc., so that instead of really weird-sounding results, we get must more understandable "tee reed", tee rowan", etc.

The trouble I ran into is that it now transforms "it's", too! Not good <g>.

I'm terrible at regex, does anyoine know how to modify {{re=T'+}} so that it only changes t's when it's at the very beginning of words?

Thanks! Your help is much appreciated.

[Mitchell2567]

[quote="D.Leikin"]My guess is proprietary lexicon editors might help on that. For example, creating the following translations in DicoEdit should make Acapela Heather pronounce these words very close to what is supposedly expected

Word: hm
Translation: # h m m

Word: yess
Translation: # j E1 s s s s[/quote]
Hmmm, "proprietary lexicon editors" ... never heard of this before.

Will it work on NeoSpeech Paul, for example, or is it only for "Acapela Heather"?

Lastly, how do these work? Does this lexicon editor affect the voice itself, or something else?

Thanks! :)

[D.Leikin]

A regex of the form

Word: {{re=\bt'}}

(or {{re=\bt\x27}}, where 27 is apostrophe’s ansi code)

Pronunciation: tee<s>

or just the substitution

Word: t’&
Pronunciation: tee<s>

should translate phrases like “It’s T’anything.” into “ Its tee anything.”

If it doesn’t work, be sure to copy the apostrophe from your text and paste it into the expression used in pronunciation editor. (The problem is apostrophe’s code may not be unique. You can check the code in TextAloud by highlighting a character, right-clicking on it, and selecting “Display Character Codes” from the dropdown menu. So you might need to use a couple of edits simultaneously, e.g., {{re=\bt\x27}} -> tee<s> and {{re=\bt\x92}} -> tee<s>, where 92 is another ansi code of the apostrophe.)

*****

DicoEdit works only for acapela voices, but neospeech voices have their own proprietary lexicons, too.

Neospeech Paul lexicon file is

...\Program Files\NeoSpeech\Paul16\data-common\userdict\userdict_eng.csv

If you open this file with WordPad (be sure to first make a backup copy of the file and don’t use Word or Excel to edit the file!), add the following line

"yess","IY0 EH0 S S S S S S ","p","iFssssss"

followed by carriage return, and then save the file, Paul would start pronouncing “yess” as “yesssssss” (with prolonged s).

It should work for yessss’s with any number of s greater than one, since TextAloud would automatically translate them into ‘yess’ by using the regex from the previous post ( {{re=yess+}} -> yess )

Also, you can use neospeech proprietary phoneme editor

...\Program Files\NeoSpeech\Paul16\lib\UserDicEng.exe

to edit the lexicon file to try to get other interjections to work.

******

Proprietary lexicon files are voice-specific and any pronunciation edits therein take effect AFTER TextAloud sends text to the voice engine.

******

P.S. If you need the hmm interjection ONLY for Neospeech Paul, you can introduce the following edit with Basic Pronunciation editor in TextAloud:

Word: hmm
Pronunciation: <replace_this_text_with_the_line_below>;

pron sym="h m m "/

(Forum software breaks expressions inside the <_> braces.)

Please note, that semicolon after ">" is required! (Comma and full stop can also be used in this expression after the ">" sign.)

Also, please note that the above edit may not work properly with any other non-neospeech and non-us-english voices.

[Mitchell2567]

[quote="D.Leikin"]A regex of the form

Word: {{re=\bt'}}

(or {{re=\bt\x27}}, where 27 is apostrophe’s ansi code)

Pronunciation: tee<s>

or just the substitution

Word: t’&
Pronunciation: tee<s>

should translate phrases like “It’s T’anything.” into “ Its tee anything.”[/quote]

The first worked without the different codes. I know what you mean re apostrophes, though. But since I'm building some macros in my text editor to take care of stuff like that when I run through text output from TA pdf conversions (yeah, eventually I'll learn TA's way, it's just that I'm so used to my own text editor that I'm sticking with it for now <g>), I'll change that if it becomes an issue. So far, apostrophes seem to be okay and NeoSpeech Paul is handling them so far.

Thanks!

[Mitchell2567]

[quote="D.Leikin"]...

P.S. If you need the hmm interjection ONLY for Neospeech Paul, you can introduce the following edit with Basic Pronunciation editor in TextAloud:

Word: hmm
Pronunciation: <replace_this_text_with_the_line_below>;

pron sym="h m m "/

(Forum software breaks expressions inside the <_> braces.)

Please note, that semicolon after ">" is required! (Comma and full stop can also be used in this expression after the ">" sign.)

Also, please note that the above edit may not work properly with any other non-neospeech and non-us-english voices.[/quote]
***********************************************

Yes, I noticed that Natural Voices Audrey doesn't like this. I probably will be using NSPaul for most and any British publications with AT&TAudrey so will have to figure this out eventually. Good to know that there's a solution.

I read the forum for a few days before posting for first time and did find the reference to the dict file for NSPaul but what I found is that TA's pronunciation editor took precedence so no matter what I did, changes to the file didn't amount to anything in the end unless I seriously did something wrong. Since I needed the editor to work for both voices, stopped NS's option. It seems from forum messages that AT&T voices don't have a specific means to edit it as NS ones do. Did I understand correctly?

If AT&TAudrey's did, then I could edit both in those cases when the sounds diverge. I always test for both voices whenever I make a change in the PronunEd.

Thanks! :)

[D.Leikin]

There are two neospeech lexicon files, one for Paul, and another for Kate. When the engine starts, only one of these files seems to be loaded. So the two files must be kept in sync for new edits to work.

Also, don't forget to restart TextAloud after creating new entries in neospeech lexicon file.

Simple test: If you change hi->hey in TextAloud pronunciation editor, and hey->hello in neospeech lexicon, Paul should read hi as hello in TextAloud window.

*********

AT&T dictionary editor is

...\Program Files\ATTNaturalVoices\TTS1.4\Desktop\bin\WinDictEdit.exe

and the us-english AT&T dictionary is

...\Program Files\ATTNaturalVoices\TTS1.4\Desktop\data\en_us\en_us.dict

[RicochetRita]

[quote="D.Leikin"]Also, don't forget to restart TextAloud after creating new entries in neospeech lexicon file.[/quote]

For quick changes, you should just be able to select, "Reload Voices" from the 'Voice & File Options' dialog box.

Although, restarting TextAloud probably updates some internal stuff, as well. I've noticed that too many Voice Reloads usually cause the app to become unstable (which then eventually results in an *unplanned* restart...).

R³

[D.Leikin]

You are right about that, and you should even be able to do that by just changing voices using the Voice drop-down list on the main program dialog. But still, restarting the program seems to be both easy (requiring fewer mouse clicks) and reliable way to reload voices.

It seems to me that additional Exit and Restart buttons on the toolbar might have even been handy in some regular situations, since such controls could provide easy access to these functions.

[Mitchell2567]

Just a note, I had put the changes in for "mm+" in the pronunciation editor for those instances where "mm" is used instead of "hm" only to run into weird stuff in double-m'd words such as "communication".

So here's what I changed the text to in the editor for cases of "mmm", "mmmm", etc.:


Word:
{{re=mmm+}}
Pronunciation:
<pron sym="m m m m m m m m m m m"/ >;


Which brings me to what I was trying to do just now. since the mmm's can get extended, thought the extra s' in "yesss..." might, too, but this DIDN'T work:

{{re=yess+}}
<pron sym="ye s s s s s s s"/ >;
I get a parameter error, contact Nextup ...
I realize it was a shot in the dark, but since the mmm and hmm can be modified to give a drawn-out sound as above, was wondering if the drawn out s' in yess+ could be, too.

Is there a way? :)

[Mitchell2567]

2nd question today re sounds, here's one I consistently can't get with NeoSpeech Paul unless I luck out with preceding and following combination of letters around the problem vowel ... when I need to pronouce "wind" as mint, AT+TAudrey takes "wihnd" very well to get the right "i" sound. But NSPaul doesn't. I can't figure out how to get the same type of "i" for him as in fit or mitt.

NSPaul wants to pronounce this wind as in "kind".

Thanks for the help. Wouldn't have gotten this far without everyone's kindness here. :)

[D.Leikin]

1. Something to try is changing 'wind' to 'winned'

2. You are getting an error on yes because the phoneme “e” does not exist. You may find the list of phonemes under the Advanced Editing tab.

yes -> pron sym="y eh s s s s s s "/

3. The regex

{{re=\bmm+\b}} -> pron sym="h m m"/

should workaround the mm thing. The \b stands for word boundary so this regex shouldn’t catch anything except mm mmm mmmm .... (Sorry about millimeters)

PS Hope you won't forget to enclose pron tags in <> braces which I had to omit to make tags visible

[RicochetRita]

"Wind" is one of those word which I always have to change. The pronunciation seems to be inconsistent. So, I change it to either: "winned" or "wynd" (to ensure a long 'i')

Here are some of the others, that I search for & conditionally replace:
bow <--> bough
live <--> liv
read <--> red
lead <--> led
minit <--> my-nute
secreted <--> seekreted

I don't have my most up-to-date replacement list, here, but you get the idea!


Another thing which trips it up are accents for noun/verb homonyms. The engine (or voice?) attempts to guess correct pronunciation, based on the sentence, but this works better with some authors, than others.

The following words are only a (very) partial listing and they require custom entries for the verbal accents (on the 2nd syllable):

NOUN <---> VERB
pre-sent <--> prezent
project <--> proJect
object <--> obJect
subject <--> subJect
suspect <--> suSpect
content <--> conTent
etc...

[Mnurlan]

[quote="Mitchell2567"]

Also, instead of "Hmmmm...", we get "H. M. M. M. M" spelled out <g>.

The only voice that pronounces "Hmmmm.." correctly is Audrey by AT&T although she has her own glitch - she sometimes pronounces "apostrophe" when it is not needed at all

[kremesch]

In many cases, I find the only way to get satisfactory sounds is to use the vendor’s phoneme editor (dictionary). It can be a pain to have to make an entry for each word like “hmmm,” “hm,” “hmmmm,” etc… But it works exceptionally well.