From lojbanlists@wonderclown.com Wed Jan 02 10:34:36 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: randy@wonderclown.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 2 Jan 2002 18:34:35 -0000 Received: (qmail 54348 invoked from network); 2 Jan 2002 18:34:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.172) by m10.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 2 Jan 2002 18:34:33 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mail5.nc.rr.com) (24.93.67.52) by mta2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Jan 2002 18:34:35 -0000 Received: from aerosol ([66.57.85.122]) by mail5.nc.rr.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.5.1877.687.68); Wed, 2 Jan 2002 13:34:34 -0500 Received: from rnortman by aerosol with local (Exim 3.33 #1 (Debian)) id 16LqDh-0000SQ-00 for ; Wed, 02 Jan 2002 13:34:33 -0500 Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 13:34:33 -0500 To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] a beginner's questions Message-ID: <20020102183433.GB517@aerosol> References: <016B38C3-FF78-11D5-84A2-000393074A5A@urbanium.tv> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <016B38C3-FF78-11D5-84A2-000393074A5A@urbanium.tv> User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.24i Sender: Randall Nortman Return-Path: randy@wonderclown.com From: "randl.nortmn." X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=91794573 X-Yahoo-Profile: uyndrklaun X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 12736 On Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 12:58:16PM +0100, Candide Kemmler wrote: [...] > That being said, I'm very curious about what drives other lojbanists' > motivation. [...] I've started studying it because it's just remarkably cool, in a geeky sort of way. (I'm using the positive connotation of "geek" here.) If it helps me think more clearly and logically, I'll call that a bonus. If in a few years I can use it to control my PDA/wearable, awesome. If it becomes a practical international language, I'll be happy, though all those pigs flying about might be a bit of a nuisance. ;-P But simply learning the language is enough motivation for me. > - build a lojban voice synthesizer (there's an open source C and Java > implementation of a voice synthesizer that seems low-level enough to > build what they call "voices" for new languages: > -> http://freetts.sourceforge.net/docs/index.html). I looked into this myself a few months ago. It should be fairly straightforward; from what I can tell, two things need to be done to get any of the several freely-available TTS (text to speech) engines to speak Lojban: 1) Write some code that converts written text to phonetic representation (diphones or phenomes, including stress and pause markers). For many languages this is very challenging, but for Lojban it should be trivial. 2) Record and process lots of voice samples containing all the basic sounds of the language in all their possible 2-sound combinations. (The combinations are necessary in order to get the transitions.) This is the time-consuming part. It should be done entirely by one speaker. Alternatively, find a voice recorded for another language that has all the same sounds as Lojban. English won't work (doesn't have Lojban's 'x'). The resulting voice will sound a lot like the language the voice was originally prepared for. I would be interested in helping out on such a project. Specifically, I'll handle the first part (the easy part) if somebody will get the recordings together for the second part. > - build a lojban voice recognition framework (there's a sourceforge > project on voice recognition (not much yet though): > -> http://sourceforge.net/projects/cmusphinx/). I don't know much about this, but it should also be fairly easy; much easier than for most natural languages. In fact, most of the effort would probably be wading through all the unneccessary parts of cmusphinx to get to the parts that are needed. If both of these were available (TTS and voice recognition), it would become possible to create some very nice Lojban teaching software that drilled on verbal skills as well as written, which would be marvellously helpful, given that most students of Lojban rarely or never have verbal contact with other speakers. And #lojban IRC chats could be spoken aloud as well. Anybody that goes to the effort of completing step #2 above with their own voice would even have the honor of having his own voice used for speaking his IRC statements to other channel members. ;-) mu'omi'e randl.