Have you guys heard of eSpeak?

[RexScientiarum]

I downloaded eSpeak when I learned it did text to speech for lojban.  It seems nearly flawless (to me, but I am just learning), the only thing I can tell is wrong with it is that it doesn't put a stop in at {ni'o}... still it does with {.i}.  I assumed everyone knew about it but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere so I thought I'd mention it.  Is its pronunciation accurate?

[Jonathan Jones]

There is no stop in {ni'o}. If there were a stop, there would be a ".".

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 7:51 PM, RexScientiarum <amt...@gmail.com> wrote:

I downloaded eSpeak when I learned it did text to speech for lojban.  It seems nearly flawless (to me, but I am just learning), the only thing I can tell is wrong with it is that it doesn't put a stop in at {ni'o}... still it does with {.i}.  I assumed everyone knew about it but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere so I thought I'd mention it.  Is its pronunciation accurate?

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

[Jacob Errington]

Only words beginning with vowels, that aren't cmevla (which require pauses on both sides) require a pre-stop.

[.i] requires a pause because it is vowel-initial.

[ni'o] does not; it is consonant-initial.

[.djeikyb.] requires two pauses, one before, one after; it is a cmevla. (of course, that's if you adhere to dotside. If not, you can omit the pre-stop under certain circumstances: the word is preceded by [la] or [doi], which under non-dotside are forbidden to appear in the cmevla itself.)

By "pause", please understand that it's not necessarily the complete stopping of sound production. The "glottal stop" and the "no sound" sounds are valid for [.] in Lojban, and therefore [.] may have a sound.

If you're a fervent believer in audio-visual isomorphism, which according to some is already false for Lojban, you should write the period everywhere it would be spoken. If you're lazy, you can omit the period in all places where it may be unambiguously inferred: before a vowel-initial word and after a consonant-final word. It cannot be unambiguously inferred that there is a pause before a consonant-final word. In particular, the " " character can be a pause as well as it may not be, therefore in [la djeisyn], there are two interpretations: the sumti [la .djeisyn.] and the name [ladjeisyn]. Therefore, it is best to always begin cmevla with a pause, no matter the circumstances.

Of course, if you're all-around lazy like me, you can just never write the pauses: no one will try to kill you (at least I hope).

mu'o mi'e la tsani

[Jonathan Jones]

Die tsani, die!!!! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!! :D

[Jonathan Jones]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Jacob Errington <nict...@gmail.com> wrote:

Only words beginning with vowels, that aren't cmevla (which require pauses on both sides) require a pre-stop.

[.i] requires a pause because it is vowel-initial.

[ni'o] does not; it is consonant-initial.

[.djeikyb.] requires two pauses, one before, one after; it is a cmevla. (of course, that's if you adhere to dotside. If not, you can omit the pre-stop under certain circumstances: the word is preceded by [la] or [doi], which under non-dotside are forbidden to appear in the cmevla itself.)

By "pause", please understand that it's not necessarily the complete stopping of sound production. The "glottal stop" and the "no sound" sounds are valid for [.] in Lojban, and therefore [.] may have a sound.

If you're a fervent believer in audio-visual isomorphism, which according to some is already false for Lojban, you should write the period everywhere it would be spoken. If you're lazy, you can omit the period in all places where it may be unambiguously inferred: before a vowel-initial word and after a consonant-final word. It cannot be unambiguously inferred that there is a pause before a consonant-final word. In particular, the " " character can be a pause as well as it may not be, therefore in [la djeisyn], there are two interpretations: the sumti [la .djeisyn.] and the name [ladjeisyn]. Therefore, it is best to always begin cmevla with a pause, no matter the circumstances.

One of the very few advantages of not using Dot-Side is that {la djeisyn} can only be the sumti {la.djeisyn.}. The difference between Dot-Side and not side is simply that in Dot-Side all names must begin with denpabu (".") as well as end with it, but "la", "lai", and "doi" are allowed within names, whereas in nonDS, consonant-beginning names do not require a leading denpabu /when preceded by those cmavo/ (they are required at all other times, however, such as in {mi'e.kritcan.} or {coi.kristcan.}), but the aforementioned syllables are /not/ allowed within the name.

The reason behind the Dot-Side proposal, BTW, is that absolutely no jbopre have been able to follow the nonDS prohibited syllable rule- everyone at least once has accidentally used one of those syllables, usually "la", in a name.

Simply put, Dot-Side came around because completely forbidding those syllables in a name- a rule we can't even apparently follow anyway- doesn't seem worth the minor advantage of not needing to pause between the name and three cmavo, especially when one of those cmavo is a very common syllable in names.

If anyone's interested in the full argument regarding Dot-Side, you can read the proposal that started the whole Dot-Side thing here: http://www.lojban.org/tiki/The+Case+Against+LA
 

[Jacob Errington]

Er.. I know that, and I've already read the case against LA. Also, I did mention it in my post:

that's if you adhere to dotside. If not, you can omit the pre-stop under certain circumstances: the word is preceded by [la] or [doi], which under non-dotside are forbidden to appear in the cmevla itself. 

Dotside is great. Forbidding certain syllables is kind of silly, just to save a pause.

mu'o mi'e la tsani noi ca'edai co'a morsi zo'o

[Jonathan Jones]

I wasn't talking to you. I was responding to what you said, yes, but you weren't my intended audience.

[RexScientiarum]

lol, okay, I meant 'pause'.  Clearly I am a noob in linguistics, I find it endlessly fascinating though.  I just thought it would make it sound more natural to have a pause at the beginning of a paragraph.  Anyway, so is the eSpeak a pretty good text to speech program?  I have used it a few time to help with pronounciation.

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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mu'o mi'e .aionys.

.i.e'ucai ko cmima lo pilno be denpa bu .i doi.luk. mi patfu do zo'o
(Come to the Dot Side! Luke, I am your father. :D )

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[Jonathan Jones]

blah blah ni'o blah blah doesn't require a pause- that's why eSpeak doesn't. If you want it to, just replace "ni'o" with ".ni'o".

As to how good eSpeak is- I have no idea, I don't use TTS programs of any kind.

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[Álvaro Vallejo]

Hi, Rex,

Back to your question on eSpeak (instead of derived chat): I tried it
some time ago, did a few trials and desisted. However, if you "patch"
your Lojban text to accomodate eSpeak rules to existing language
engines, you can get a decent Lojban pronunciation, but not perfect.
Try the following:
- Select a eSpeak language engine (the best should be Italian or
Spanish probably German or Greek too, because of the vowels, but the
problem with greek could be the alphabet, I can't remember).
- Rewrite your text to trick eSpeak's engine. E.g. if using Spanish
engine, "xanto" becomes "janto" (but then, in Spanish, you will not
find the Lojban "y" sound, neither "z" nor "v", let's forget about
Spanish).

Italian will also have problems, because "c" has several pronunciation
rules, there is no the Lojban "x" sound ... Ok, let's try with German:

- Rewrite your text, replacing Lojban "x" by "ch", Lojban "y" by
"ü" (not a perfect, but acceptable replacement), "c" by "sch", vowels
will work fine, but "f" will be only approximate. hm... There is no
"z" sound in German, and the problem of ' pronunciation ... hm... now
I remember why I abandoned eSpeak for Lojban. It will always speak
Lojban as a foreigner, no matter which engine you try ... unless
someone is able to create a Lojban speech engine.

Álvaro

[ianek]

On Friday, March 23, 2012 9:00:38 PM UTC+1, Álvaro Vallejo wrote:

I remember why I abandoned eSpeak for Lojban. It will always speak
Lojban as a foreigner, no matter which engine you try ...

As opposed to speak Lojban as a native Lojbanistani?

mu'o mi'e ianek

[v4hn]

coi do

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 01:00:38PM -0700, Álvaro Vallejo wrote:
> Hi, Rex,
>
> Back to your question on eSpeak (instead of derived chat): I tried it
> some time ago, did a few trials and desisted. However, if you "patch"
> your Lojban text to accomodate eSpeak rules to existing language
> engines, you can get a decent Lojban pronunciation, but not perfect.
> Try the following:
> - Select a eSpeak language engine (the best should be Italian or
> Spanish probably German or Greek too, because of the vowels, but the
> problem with greek could be the alphabet, I can't remember).

I'm quite sure, the most decent language engine is 'jbo' - Lojban .u'i
That's what Rex realized.

mu'o mi'e la .van.