From nobody@digitalkingdom.org Tue Jan 15 17:31:32 2008 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list lojban-list); Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:31:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from nobody by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1JEx7s-0000bg-1B for lojban-list-real@lojban.org; Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:31:32 -0800 Received: from relay3.mail.uk.clara.net ([80.168.70.183]) by chain.digitalkingdom.org with esmtp (Exim 4.68) (envelope-from ) id 1JEx7m-0000bY-US for lojban-list@lojban.org; Tue, 15 Jan 2008 17:31:31 -0800 Received: from adsl-solo-80-168-224-43.claranet.co.uk ([80.168.224.43] helo=pcr) by relay3.mail.uk.clara.net with smtp (Exim 4.62) (envelope-from ) id 1JEx7k-0000Km-8y for lojban-list@lojban.org; Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:31:25 +0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Jonathan Duddington To: lojban-list@lojban.org Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:31:07 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [lojban] Text-to-speech Message-ID: <4f61d245b9jsd@clara.co.uk> User-Agent: Pluto/3.04e (RISC-OS/4.02) POPstar/2.02 Content-Type: text/plain X-Spam-Score: -1.0 X-Spam-Score-Int: -9 X-Spam-Bar: - X-archive-position: 14104 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: lojban-list-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: jsd@clara.co.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-to: lojban-list@lojban.org X-list: lojban-list I've added a Lojban voice to the development version of eSpeak speech synthesizer for Linux and Windows: http://espeak.sourceforge.net/test/latest.html The spelling-to-pronunciation rules are simple and regular, so that shouldn't be a problem, but I need advice on prosody. Lojban differs from other languages in its lack of punctuation. I recognise ".i" as a sentence marker, so I can break up a paragraph into sentences. But the sentences also need pauses and intonation within them in order to sound natural. In English, I would recognise commas and other punctuation as breaks. Also conjunction words such as "and". What lojban words should I look for to break a sentence into clauses (or their equivalent)? This is not a problem of meaning or intelligibility. It just sounds unnatural to speak a long sentence without using pause and intonation to indicate its structure (and to draw breath). Another question is which words to emphasize. In English eSpeak has a list of common function words which are unstressed ("is", "the", "my", "of" etc). For Lojban, I could make all one-syllable words (or even all cmavo) unstressed, but that's probably inappropriate. I note that the pronunciation rules say that stressed syllables are optional for cmavo. If you want to experiment, you can install eSpeak and use the "jbo" voice (that's the ISO 639-3 language code for Lojban). You can add commas into Lojban text to hear what would be the effect of a clause-break at that point. To unsubscribe from this list, send mail to lojban-list-request@lojban.org with the subject unsubscribe, or go to http://www.lojban.org/lsg2/, or if you're really stuck, send mail to secretary@lojban.org for help.