Line 3: Line 3:
  
  
==Introduction==
+
==Background==
  
 
*Digital Speech Generation, as the name suggests, is the process of making a computer "speak" a sequence of letters/words in a meaningful way.
 
*Digital Speech Generation, as the name suggests, is the process of making a computer "speak" a sequence of letters/words in a meaningful way.
Line 14: Line 14:
 
*What is done, is to use another type of alphabet, the phonetic alphabet, which basically assigns a sound to every alphabet within it, and in doing so, this set of alphabets can generate any sound in the human language (Or can they?). http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/pulmonic.html
 
*What is done, is to use another type of alphabet, the phonetic alphabet, which basically assigns a sound to every alphabet within it, and in doing so, this set of alphabets can generate any sound in the human language (Or can they?). http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/pulmonic.html
  
 +
==Motivation==
  
 +
*The above technique sounds great right? The question is, how easy is it to implement?
 +
*The following experiment will explore if this can indeed be done.
 +
*Unfortunately, IPA (the International Phonetic Association) does not give you these phonetic elements in a neat little zip file, nicely documented and ready to use.
 +
*What is gives you is a folder called American English, which has a bunch of words that you hear along with a $30 Handbook to know what each phoneme means.
 +
*However, if we ignore our desire to conform to standards for a minute, we can easily sieve out the syllables from these words that contain the phonemes that we need.
 +
*I named my own phonemes, and broke down my test word "ECE 438" into a composition of these phonemes. So, please don't take the names on these phonemes as standard IPA language. For example, if I say ee, I mean the ee in eel. The phonetic code for that is <math>i:</math>
  
 
*For example,
 
  
 
==Resources==
 
==Resources==

Revision as of 15:59, 25 October 2009

Digital Speech Generation

Page Under Construction


Background

  • Digital Speech Generation, as the name suggests, is the process of making a computer "speak" a sequence of letters/words in a meaningful way.
  • For English, this is especially hard, because it is a very un-mathematical language.
  • What I mean by unmathematical, is that the "a" in "apple" is not pronounced the same way as the "a" in "hate". In other words, letters do not sound the same way in different words.
  • Sure, this might be true for consonants, but vowels, not by a long shot.
  • Hindi for example, is a little more mathematical. The "आ" in "आप", meaning "you" with respect, will be the same as the "आ" in "आरंभ" which means "start", and this is true for all uses of आ.
  • If English were the same way, all we would have to do would be to assign a sound to every letter and then just play it.
  • Unfortunately, its not that simple.
  • What is done, is to use another type of alphabet, the phonetic alphabet, which basically assigns a sound to every alphabet within it, and in doing so, this set of alphabets can generate any sound in the human language (Or can they?). http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/pulmonic.html

Motivation

  • The above technique sounds great right? The question is, how easy is it to implement?
  • The following experiment will explore if this can indeed be done.
  • Unfortunately, IPA (the International Phonetic Association) does not give you these phonetic elements in a neat little zip file, nicely documented and ready to use.
  • What is gives you is a folder called American English, which has a bunch of words that you hear along with a $30 Handbook to know what each phoneme means.
  • However, if we ignore our desire to conform to standards for a minute, we can easily sieve out the syllables from these words that contain the phonemes that we need.
  • I named my own phonemes, and broke down my test word "ECE 438" into a composition of these phonemes. So, please don't take the names on these phonemes as standard IPA language. For example, if I say ee, I mean the ee in eel. The phonetic code for that is $ i: $


Resources



--Dlamba 20:00, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Alumni Liaison

Questions/answers with a recent ECE grad

Ryne Rayburn