
Why I use non-American English voices in my text to speech - phenylene
http://johnmarshall4.tumblr.com/post/79184171773/why-i-use-non-american-english-voices-in-my-text-to
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mdip
I am glad to see I'm not the only one who has done this!

Ever since my first Garmin GPS, I have always switched to the Australian
accented English because it 'felt the most accurate'. But thinking about it
now, it's clear the reason was that US and British English is so common to my
ears that I noticed every flaw. Australian was just unfamiliar enough to have
me focusing on decoding the street names rather than noticing the unnatural
gap between two phenomes.

~~~
FigBug
I switched my Garmin to Australian as well. Now it calls onramps 'sliproads'.
Does know what the abbreviation HWY means. A few others as well. Not sure why
that's encoded in the accent and not the location.

~~~
jfoster
I am an Australian. Seems they got it wrong. I am familiar with onramps, but
haven't heard of sliproads until now. We use the Hwy abbreviation in
Australia, too.

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NamTaf
As per the parent, we refer to them as onramps in Australia, though that may
be an Americanisation of our language with exposure to US-centric TV. I am
also familiar with the term 'sliproads' and although I don't use it naturally,
something in the back of my mind says it is in fact the 'traditional' name for
them. it might in fact be the British version.

~~~
GunlogAlm
_> it might in fact be the British version._

Correct, we call them sliproads in Britain, and I believe in Ireland too.

~~~
mnw21cam
Except that a sliproad can be either an on-ramp or an off-ramp.

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kibibu
This is the second time I've seen "chock it up" instead of "chalk it up" in
the last 2 days. Is this a regional thing?

~~~
ngokevin
Should be "chalk" for all intensive purposes.

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elwell
I see it as a mute point though.

~~~
mendelk
This thread is getting complicating to follow.

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noir_lord
It is literally impossible.

~~~
elwell
That's the way it is in a doggy-dog world!

~~~
louthy
This whole thread is a damp squid. I'm going out to get an expresso.

~~~
billforsternz
Run to the coffee shop at full tit.

~~~
jmadsen
This hole thread's beyond my apprehension.

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melloclello
Alternatively - use the OS X 'Fred' voice (or even 'Zarvox'). It's been around
since 1990, and it sounds like a robot should, not like a robot trying to
sound like a human.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk)

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jasonkester
I've noticed while traveling that American English is actually rather
difficult to understand. My slurmumbling west coast accent with no consonants
or spaces between words is basically undecipherable in a lot of places.

So I pull out my Cheesy Irish Accent. That thing works wonders. Words all
start with a capital letter, and have gaps between them. You speak louder and
more decisively. It's really the perfect form of speech, apart from the
embarrassment of having other native English speakers (or god forbid Irishmen)
hear you do it. And you get to talk like a Pirate. What's not to love?

Give it a try next time you're abroad!

~~~
tehwalrus
...pirates talk with[1] a west country accent, not an Irish one. Not that this
detracts from the story, it's a good hack (and I'd love to hear you do it so I
can try and work out where _I_ think you're speaking from!)

Certainly when speaking foreign languages, I always do my most over the top
accent, which seems to go down very well.

[1] EDIT: _stereotypically_...

~~~
jasonkester
_Certainly when speaking foreign languages, I always do my most over the top
accent, which seems to go down very well._

Indeed. My Spanish goes down best when I'm channeling Antonio Banderas.

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dunsany
Yeah, the problem we found is that when we switched to non-American English,
Siri expects us to be speaking it as well... and messes up what she
understands.

~~~
yeukhon
That reminds me of this parody:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU)

~~~
ilyanep
I'm really pleased that I knew exactly what this was before clicking. I send
this to people anytime I see them fighting a speech-to-text engine.

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shirro
I am Australian and use the British. The Australian doesn't sound right. How
lucky we are to have so many mutually understandable yet varied accents. I
wish they had more UK and US regional accents for a bit of variation.

~~~
gerbal
As an American a strongly regional American Midwestern or Rural Canadian would
probably be pretty nice. weird enough that it just sounds odd rather than
machine-ey.

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gohrt
So the idea is to add _more_ errors, so the other errors don't seem so lonely?
That makes the system more usable?

~~~
adam-a
This reminds me of dithering in computer graphics. Take an imperfect system
and add noise to mask the imperfections.

~~~
unwind
Except, perhaps a little, that dithering is not "noise", i.e. it's not random
but instead carefully chosen to appear (to the eye of the beholder) as data
that isn't really there.

~~~
lookACamel
Well the "noise" from the non-US accent isn't random either.

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jamesrom
I'm Australian and the Australian voice sounds so bad to me. I have to use
American English.

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carlob
This is interesting. I'm an Italian native speaker. Sometimes GPS voices have
a very marked accent (usually from Milan). To me it ends up sounding parodic
rather than soothing (I'm from Rome).

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NAFV_P
I was wondering if received pronunciation was an available option.

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jodrellblank
I've wondered if foreign humans sometimes fall _into_ uncanny valley in their
vocalising and behaviours, and then seem extra alien and 'wrong'.

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cstrat
Does anyone else have issues when dictating phone numbers to be dialled??

If I tell Siri to call "1800528555" it will interpret this as "Call 18005 to
8555"

Fail...

What am I doing wrong?

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hanley
Maybe it's because you're forgetting the last digit?

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bitwize
Not if he's Aussie.

Australian phone numbers are a four-digit area code plus a six-digit number --
and Australia has reserved "1800" as a toll-free area code for congruence with
American numbers.

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m3mnoch
this is the same exact reason i use "amy" from ivona for my morning commute.
as a non-brit, rather than frustratingly hard to understand, listening to her
instead is totally dreamy...

that, and she doesn't stumble over names like "Abalamahalamatandra".

~~~
billforsternz
You use sat nav for your morning commute ?

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mikeash
I have in the past, for realtime traffic info and rerouting.

~~~
billforsternz
Cool, I didn't even know that was a thing yet (other than via old school radio
broadcasting).

~~~
mikeash
It's common on smartphones. There are lots of apps out there (Google Maps and
Waze being two that come to mind) that collect real-time traffic data from
their own users and public sources, and use that to find the most efficient
route for you at the current time. Standalone GPSs can often do the same thing
by linking to your smartphone and using its data plan to download the realtime
traffic data. It can be really handy in a city with dense and variable rush-
hour traffic.

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jedmeyers
"Turn right on El Camino rEal", said Siri's sister from UK.

~~~
objclxt
Yeah, this all falls apart when you're driving in a city like San Francisco or
Los Angeles, where many of the street names are in spanish. British Siri just
mangles them!

That said, I'm a Brit myself so I can just stick with the US voice and get the
benefit of both worlds.

~~~
ilyanep
In my experience, US-English text-to-speech mangles those street names too (my
favorite is "El Monte" as "Ell Monty"), though I haven't used Siri in
particular.

~~~
georgemcbay
As a San Diegan, I can confirm this happens all the time with US-English on
various TTS engines.

La Jolla pronounced exactly the way you'd expect someone with no exposure to
Spanish to pronounce it (rather than 'La Hoya').

El Cajon ('El Cahone') becomes El Kage-on.

etc.

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auctiontheory
I use South African "Tessa" on my Mac. Until now, I'd never understood why I
preferred her - this explanation makes so much sense!

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NextUserName
> _Anyone who works regularly with people from other countries will recognize
> this right away. Your brain goes into a sort of fuzzy recognition mode
> searching for meaning rather than critiquing flaws._

This is an interesting reason. I have always noticed that the British and
Australian accented voices sounded better. I though that perhaps it was easier
to emulate their pronunciations.

Would the inverse hold true for British/Australian people as well? Does US
English sound the best to them in TTS applications?

~~~
gradstudent
> Would the inverse hold true for British/Australian people as well? Does US
> English sound the best to them in TTS applications?

US English always sounds wrong. No matter who is speaking. UK English or non-
cockney Australian is the way to go.

