Voice output on a PC

[Graeme Dunbar <G.R.A.Dunbar@EEE.RGU.AC.UK>]

Santa kindly left a sound card and I have been playing with some
shareware versions of text to speech software (eg PC Wholeware clip
and talk).  Unfortunately they are all too clever and are designed to
cope with the peculiarities of english in the conversion.  I
understand that lojban pronunciation is a lot more straight forward
and regular.

Does anyone know of software to drive a "Soundblaster" compatable
card that would allow all the lojban letter/sounds to be mapped?

I think I am out of my (linguistic) depth here but will there be a
problem because such software is designed around english language
phonemes which do not match the lojban ones?  Do I need software that
deals with more fundamental speech components (allophones?) to create
a lojban phoneme set? Is each lojban letter a unique phoneme
(what about dipthongs?) or do the letter sounds depend on context?

Has anyone tried this sort of thing?

Best wishes for '97!

        Regards,
            Graeme

+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
|   Graeme Dunbar                                                   |
|   School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering                 |
|   The Robert Gordon University                                    |
|   Schoolhill                               Tel. +44 1224 262415   |
|   Aberdeen   AB10 1FR                      Fax  +44 1224 262444   |
|   Scotland   U.K.                 email  g.r.a.dunbar@rgu.ac.uk   |
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