Jan being expanded to January

[dml]

Anyone know how to turn this off? most of the other popular abbreviations for months are being expanded as well (and presumably other things).

While Jan may find being called January funny the first time, I doubt it would be as funny next time!.

[RussP]

Anyone know how to turn this off? most of the other popular abbreviations for months are being expanded as well (and presumably other things).

While Jan may find being called January funny the first time, I doubt it would be as funny next time!.

I've also been looking for a way to turn it off, but haven't found one, as such. However, if you set up lexicon entries, or use the <phoneme> tag, you should be able to make it pronounce it as "jan" instead of "january". See http://www.cepstral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12

Russ

[dml]

I've also been looking for a way to turn it off, but haven't found one, as such. However, if you set up lexicon entries, or use the <phoneme> tag, you should be able to make it pronounce it as "jan" instead of "january". See http://www.cepstral.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12

The official response from Cepstral was:

Swift itself does not expand abbreviated words. These pronunciations are in the voice's internal lexicon, to which the end user has no access. Therefore there is no other way to circumvent expansion when using Cepstral voices other than the correct manner which was previously pointed out with the link above. There are many instances in the English language where conflicting pronunciations, whether through abbreviations, heteronyms, punctuation, etc., present issues for TTS synthesis. In that light, pronunciation choices for our internal lexicons were made based on the highest probability of occurence and possible usage. Unfortunately, Jan's name did not rank as high as the abbreviation for the month of January. This is why we created our "userlex" as a tool for the end user to make adjustments. This tool, while very useful in making our voices even more robust and dynamic still does not solve all issues. These are instances which vividly point out the complexity of the English language and its use in TTS Synthesis.

In the case of heteronyms that's fine but, in my opinion, expanding abbreviations is wrong. If I wanted it to say January I'd have told it to say January. Since the internal lexicon doesn't appear to have a publicly available word list I've decided that Cepstral isn't the voice engine for us and we're looking for alternatives.

[kremesch]

I agree with this. Expanding abbreviated words is beginning to prove troublesome for me, as well, and the expansion simply shouldn't exist.

[AdamW]

I am bit late with this posting, but the simple insertion of the following entry in the user lexicon:

Code: Select all

jan 0 jh ae n

will force the engine to pronounce jan as jan without expansion.

[AdamW]

And another thing: I am rescinding the above "official response" from Cepstral. It is no longer official, it is only of interest to historians. While highly informative on generalities, it doesn't address this relatively minor issue, which it should have. We'll do better than that in the future, I can promise you...

[susanspy]

hello all,

susan here i am here just to read some informative posts & this is one of them for sure so thought to drop a few lines by the way, please do keep the good work flowing.

Cheers!!!