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### Talkback:155/lg_tips.html

[ In reference to "2-Cent Tips" in LG#155 ]

Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 01:01:08 +0100

[[[ This is specifically a followup to the thread http://linuxgazette.net/155/misc/lg/two_cent_tip__download_whole_directory_as_zip_file.html -- Kat ]]]

2008/9/16 Silas S. Brown <ssb22@cam.ac.uk>:

    >
    > You shuld be able to use Gradint as well if you
    > can find someone to record the words and
    > phrases for you.

I wanted to mention this at the time, but I couldn't find the link: http://shtooka.net/ is a project aimed at just this idea - of providing pronunciations of words in various languages.

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Rick Moen [rick at linuxmafia.com]

Thu, 9 Oct 2008 17:44:15 -0700

Quoting Jimmy O'Regan (joregan@gmail.com):

    > 2008/9/16 Silas S. Brown <ssb22@cam.ac.uk>:
    > >
    > > You shuld be able to use Gradint as well if you
    > > can find someone to record the words and
    > > phrases for you.
    >
    > I wanted to mention this at the time, but I couldn't find the link:
    > http://shtooka.net/ is a project aimed at just this idea - of
    > providing pronunciations of words in various languages.

I applaud the audacity of a project assuming that any given word has one pronunciation in (among other candidate examples) English. I'm tempted to refer to them, as an English-language spokesbeing, our favourite waitress from my family's 2005 sojourn in Glasgow. ;-> (The Glaswegian accent strikes many as a wee bit thick. But then, it's always other people who have "accents".)

Still, Shtooka's project is certainly is a good way of recording how some people pronounced various words as of 2008.

That somehow reminds me: Back when I lived in Victoria, Hong Kong, my family had occasion to visit the Norwegian consulate (later moved to Shanghai). We were somewhat mystified to find that, not only did the expatriate Norwegian staff speak English with a strong Norwegian accept, but so did the local Chinese employees! It turned out that the former had been tutoring the latter.

    --
    Cheers,                        When encryption is outlawed,
    Rick Moen                      only outlaws will xr2d3fsxd df#$%xx`
    rick@linuxmafia.com

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Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:03:27 +0100

2008/10/10 Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com>:

    > Quoting Jimmy O'Regan (joregan@gmail.com):
    >
    >> 2008/9/16 Silas S. Brown <ssb22@cam.ac.uk>:
    >> >
    >> > You shuld be able to use Gradint as well if you
    >> > can find someone to record the words and
    >> > phrases for you.
    >>
    >> I wanted to mention this at the time, but I couldn't find the link:
    >> http://shtooka.net/ is a project aimed at just this idea - of
    >> providing pronunciations of words in various languages.
    >
    > I applaud the audacity of a project assuming that any given word has
    > one pronunciation in (among other candidate examples) English.  I'm

Eh? Ok; to be fair, I haven't browsed the English samples, but I presume they only have a single pronunciation for English because only a single pronunciation was submitted - I've only browsed through Russian and Czech, and found a number of alternatives in both of those languages, annotated with the region of the speaker:

    http://swac-collections.org/index.php?page=snds&alphaidx=нормально&lang=rus
    Text            Speaker         	Origin          		Native Lang.	Collection
    нормально       Gulnara Streit  	KZ / Alma-Ata   		rus     	Base Audio Libre de Mots Russes
    нормально       Сергей Сахно    	RU / Свердловская область 	rus 		Base Audio Libre de Mots Russes

They provide open source tools for potential contributors, too.

    > tempted to refer to them, as an English-language spokesbeing, our
    > favourite waitress from my family's 2005 sojourn in Glasgow.  ;->

From my understanding of the project's goals, I'm sure they'd welcome that - as would Voxforge, who are compiling open speech corpora, from which to build acoustic models for use in open source speech recognition systems.

Librivox too have something along those lines, where multiple volunteers submit readings of the same piece of poetry or short prose.

    > (The Glaswegian accent strikes many as a wee bit thick.  But then, it's
    > always other people who have "accents".)
    >

Not always - I pronounce my 'th's, which means I've always been made aware of my 'accent'. Also, more amusingly at times, I've been on both sides of interpretation by repetition - including one Polish mother who couldn't understand a word I said until it was explained to her that I speak Polish - and then she instantly understood me perfectly (I guess my pronunciation needs more work

    > Still, Shtooka's project is certainly is a good way of recording how
    > some people pronounced various words as of 2008.
    >

I'm sure that, given more time and contributors, it can become a valuable resource. I know I found it useful o learn a few words of Czech before I went there - much more so than that 'proh seem' nonsense that phrasebooks insist on using.

    > That somehow reminds me:  Back when I lived in Victoria, Hong Kong, my
    > family had occasion to visit the Norwegian consulate (later moved to
    > Shanghai).  We were somewhat mystified to find that, not only did the
    > expatriate Norwegian staff speak English with a strong Norwegian accept,
    > but so did the local Chinese employees!  It turned out that the former
    > had been tutoring the latter.
    >

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Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:07:11 -0400

On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 01:01:08AM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:

    > 2008/9/16 Silas S. Brown <ssb22@cam.ac.uk>:
    > >
    > > You shuld be able to use Gradint as well if you
    > > can find someone to record the words and
    > > phrases for you.
    >
    > I wanted to mention this at the time, but I couldn't find the link:
    > http://shtooka.net/ is a project aimed at just this idea - of
    > providing pronunciations of words in various languages.

Awesome. Thanks, Jimmy! Kat's learning Russian, and it's handy to have a resource other than me - particularly with multiple speakers - for accent contrast.

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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Jimmy O'Regan [joregan at gmail.com]

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:08:57 +0100

2008/10/11 Ben Okopnik <ben@linuxgazette.net>:

    > On Fri, Oct 10, 2008 at 01:01:08AM +0100, Jimmy O'Regan wrote:
    >> 2008/9/16 Silas S. Brown <ssb22@cam.ac.uk>:
    >> >
    >> > You shuld be able to use Gradint as well if you
    >> > can find someone to record the words and
    >> > phrases for you.
    >>
    >> I wanted to mention this at the time, but I couldn't find the link:
    >> http://shtooka.net/ is a project aimed at just this idea - of
    >> providing pronunciations of words in various languages.
    >
    > Awesome. Thanks, Jimmy! Kat's learning Russian, and it's handy to have
    > a resource other than me - particularly with multiple speakers - for
    > accent contrast.
    >

Well, there's a Russian voice for the Fetival TTS system here: http://festlang.berlios.de/docu/doku.php?id=russianru which might be useful - I haven't used it recently, but IIRC the quality is quite good. There are also a handful of Russian books available at Librivox: http://librivox.org/newcatalog/search_advanced.php?title=&author=&cat=&genre=&status=all&type=&language=Russian&date=&reader=&bc=&mc=&action=Search

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