[DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)

Raymond Grote musicalman1 at comcast.net
Wed Feb 1 23:34:56 EST 2012


True, but some of it sounds like there's an accent, and I don't think you can do it with phonemes. You can probably do some of it, and other things you can get close, but not everything.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Jake McMahan 
  To: DECtalk Discussions 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 9:31 PM
  Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


  He didn't get a dectalk with a german or russian accent, he modified the phonemes to fit the particular accent.  


  From: Blake Roberts 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 9:19 PM
  To: 'DECtalk Discussions' 
  Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


  I've wondered that myself at times. I guess we'll never know how he got a Dectalk 4.3/4.4 with a German accent. It is my understanding that the first Dectalk version with foreign languages (in addition to American English) was 4.6 something.
  Blake



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  From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Raymond Grote
  Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 9:01 PM
  To: DECtalk Discussions
  Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


  Yes, that definitely brings back memories!
  I just wish his site didn't go down. I wonder where he got that version of Dectalk.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Blake Roberts 
    To: 'DECtalk Discussions' 
    Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 6:50 PM
    Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


    I read somewhere that when Patrick made his Revenge of Borris skit, he used a German Dectalk and made it sound Russian. That production still amazes me after over 10 years. For fun, I'm attaching Patrick's production so  that list members can hear it again. Enjoy!
    Blake


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    From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Raymond Grote
    Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 6:35 PM
    To: DECtalk Discussions
    Subject: Re: [DECtalk] Foreign Languages (was DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?)


    Wow, interesting thing there. I know Patrick Perdue made Dectalk sound Russian once. It sounded exactly like 4.3, with a Russian accent. I say 4.3 because when it sang, there was vibrato, which 4.4 can't do because of some bug I heard. I wonder if he used the Russian language and then used phonemes to make it sound English, or if he used English and somehow made it sound Russian. I'd bet the former, but either way would be hard. I doubt he used a Speak window either, since those older versions of the Speak window had only english support.

      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: ebruckert Bruckert 
      To: DECtalk Discussions 
      Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 10:34 AM
      Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?


           just to be clear there are no legal versions of DECtalk in the public domain, if there were I wouldn't have gone without a tool for years, and is of course I have versions of DECtalk but they weren't able to work with my screen reader.  
      If there weren't public domain version I would be working to partner up with somebody and create some tools which is basically what I did with enable cuss I needed a SAPI.
         Okay as far as versions of DECtalk that were made, there is American English, British English, French, German, Chinese, and Korean. The quality varies is there a lot of problems in doing this besides just creating the phonemes.
          In addition I did a special version of DECtalk that is used by kinnor  software which can chant the Torah and other things to prepare one for bar mitzvah. It lacks letter to sound rules because both Hebrew and Arabic letter to sound rules are extremely difficult because in a lot of texts they don't write the vowels, which people can figure out but computers are hardly data
      .  As an example right in English sentence remove all the vowels and see if her friend can figure it out,


      On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 10:15 AM, Raymond Grote <musicalman1 at comcast.net> wrote:

        Well, the sonic thing wasn't a real big thing at least for me, nor anyone else I knew that used it. It sounded strange, and I never did like dectalk above rates of400 or so.
        Going off topic here, I wonder if a decent British dectalk was ever made? 


        ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pitermach" <pitermach at gmail.com>
        To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>

        Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 8:47 AM 

        Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?



          Actually yeah. The driver was written by Tyler and I sort of helped him out with it. The first version only did Paul and had sonic to speed the rate up even more. I asked him to add voices, and that's the newer version where sonic had to be removed because it was crashing things apparently.

          On 2012-02-01 13:52, Raymond Grote wrote:

            Hi,
            I was under the impression that both Dectalks were the same engine, just different versions of the driver, and the newer one supported voices but the older one didn't?

            ----- Original Message ----- From: "Pitermach" <pitermach at gmail.com>
            To: "DECtalk Discussions" <dectalk at bluegrasspals.com>
            Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2012 5:43 AM
            Subject: Re: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?



              About the issue with the second dectalk, what happens is almost every parameter is actually changed, except the pitch and inflection, so after you change voices you just need to manually raise the pitch or what ever to set it straight.

              On 2012-02-01 03:18, Blake Roberts wrote:

                Doris,
                I discovered the other day that two Dectalks for NVDA exist. I was able to
                try both out after obtaining them and reinstalling NVDA. Both NVDA-specific
                Dectalks have issues. In the first one, only Paul is available as a voice.
                To me, that version of Dectalk for NVDA sounds similar to 4.4, though I have
                no idea what DT version it is based on. The second Dectalk for NVDA lists
                all 9 voices, but apparently is based on another version of Dectalk. Some
                of those voices sound, um, different. Example: Kipp sounds like he's going
                through puberty or something similar. If anyone wants to experiment with/use
                Dectalk for NVDA, write me off-list. As far as  I know, Dectalk for NVDA is
                not officially supported by the NVDA developers and I don't know who created
                Dectalks for NVDA.

                Regarding Dectalk for Jaws, there is Dectalk Access32. Problem: Freedom
                Scientific broke Dectalk Access32 functionality in an earlier version of
                Jaws. Since a Jaws-specific version of Dectalk Access32 is no longer sold or
                supported by FS, I sort of understand why  Freedom Scientific won't fix the
                problem. Another member of this list found a workaround to make Dectalk
                Access32 work with Jaws which involves uninstalling Eloquence.
                Blake

                -----Original Message-----
                From: dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com
                [mailto:dectalk-bounces at bluegrasspals.com] On Behalf Of Doris and Chris
                Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 8:56 PM
                To: DECtalk Discussions
                Subject: [DECtalk] DECTAlk 4.4 Public Domain?

                with all the discussion of singing dectalks, it was a couple of times
                mentioned that dectalk version 4.4 is in the public domain.

                Is there a version of this or can one be made available that works with
                screenreaders?

                I enjoy the dectalk songs I have heard and am amazed at the creativity and
                finesse and perfection that goes into those songs but this is nothing I have
                any interst in persuing myself .

                I like dectalk for its clear speech and low footprint on older systems and I
                would love to have a working version to use with my screenreaders, i.e. jaws
                and nvda. For nvda especialy it would be nice to have a free dectalk
                version. nvda comes with espeak, which is free and open source. espeak is
                certainly usable and I like its responsibeness but dectalk has much clearer
                speech and would be much easier to understand for those used to more human
                sounding synths.

                With all the time and energy devoted to making dectalk sing and talking
                about this, if there is a public domain version of dectalk available, could
                some of the time and energy be devoted to giving us a free dectalk to just
                use with screenreaders or a free sapi version?
                I do not know what would go into this but I'd like to see something that is
                usable for the broader masses and especialy for nvda users.
                nvda is coming of age and a decent free synth with it would be such a
                blessing!

                Doris





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