Phoneme Problem
11 messages in this thread
I've been having trouble spelling out phonemes while using the Amiga's built-in
speech synthesizer – I can't get it to recognize numeric characters as stress
marks. When, for example, I type the number 4 after a vowel or dipthong, the
computer repeats the number itself, rather than accepting it as a phonetic
indicator. What am I doing wrong? I'm accessing the SAY utility via the
Workbench, not through BASIC, if that matters.
Steve,
I don't belive you can type in the phonetics (what appears in the upper
window), just plain text…it does the translation on it's own.
Don
You're probably right, Don. I tried to use the phonetic spelling through the
SAY command in Amiga Basic, but was unable to get the command to work properly.
I would type SAY "Hello" and the computer would respond with "Illegalunction
Call".
Stephen,
There are two parts to the Amiga speech functions. The first, and lowest
level is the "narrator". Tha narrator accepts phonemes and all the modifiers
for stress and inflection. The "translator" is what you are using when you use
the SAY command. It translates plain text into a form suitable for the
narrator. So if you have numeric modifiers, they will be translated as such.
Regards, Lar3ry (the 3 is silent)
Regards, Larry.
Hey Lar3ry,
Did you ever hear the original story about "Kei3th"?
Rick
No, was it similar to Hen3ry? Or perhaps more like Ronly Bonly Jones?
Regards, Larry.
Prolly the same as Hen3ry. Keith caught on to the ways of computers, and had
his first name legally changed to "Kei3th". He had a hard time getting it
across to people ("Nono, that's 'K – E – I – 3 – yes, the numeral three – no,
not the word SPELLED three, the numeral 3, as in the digit – T – H'"), but it
was worth it, as no self-respecting computer in the world would allow him to be
billed for services, as his name had a numeric digit in an alpha field.
When questioned about how to pronounce his unusual name, he uttered the
infamous reply you used: "'Keith'. The '3' is silent." This is probably
apocryphal, but I've always heard it told as really happening.
So, what's Hen3ry's story?
Rick
Hen3ry was the same story, again, probably apocryphal.
The other one I mentioned was R B Jones…. that was his complete, full name.
The R and B were not initials. Seems that when he joined the armed forces, (or
was drafted), he had quite a time explaining this, and the poor fellow was told
to put it down as R(only) B(only) Jones. When his ID card arrived, sure enough,
his name was Jones, Ronly Bonly.
Regards, Larry.
Hehe… probably on which was based the M*A*S*H episode where Hawkeye tries to
find out what B. J. Hunnicutt's (SP?) full name is.
"Who would name their kid just 'B' 'J' Hunnicutt???"
"My mother, 'Bea Hunnicutt', and my father, 'Jay Hunnicutt'."
Rick
P.S. I can relate to all this, because I've found it remarkable how many ways
a three-letter last name can be misspelled. 8) Of course there's one
advantage: I can put my entire last name in any arcade game ever known to man.
8)
Dig into your BASIC manual, Stephen. You pass the literal string to the
translator, and it returns a phonetic string, then you pass THAT to the
narrator. Both functions are there, somewhere… which is why I say dig in the
book. It's a two-step procedure in BASIC; the SAY command does both parts
automatically. Maybe this is where the confusion comes in?
Rick
The translator does the conversions from plaintext to phonemes. If you want to
feed it phonemes directly, you have two choices:
Feed fonetiklee spelld werds to the tranzlator — which can be tricky, as it
will try to apply it's translation rules to your input, or
send the phoneme codes, complete with stresses as you're trying to do, directly
to the narrator device, bypassing the translator completely.
Sorry I can't give you more practical information.
Rick