home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
-
- !PHONEDIT
- =========
-
- !PhonEdit allows you to build up an exceptions list of words
- which the Speak module would otherwise pronounce incorrectly.
- This may be useful especially for some people’s names, place
- names, and words of foreign origin.
-
- !PhonEdit supports interactive help using Acorn’s !Help
- application.
-
- Firstly, you must copy the "JSDSpeak" font into your main !Fonts
- directory, and then restart your computer.
-
- Install !PhonEdit on the iconbar, and click on the icon to open the
- edit window.
-
- Type the word, whose pronunciation you want to change, into
- the Word box. Press Return, or click on the green square to the
- right, and the current pronunciation is spoken, and its phonetic
- representation is shown in the Old box below. Only a single
- word, without hyphens, is accepted. Letters are automatically
- converted to lower-case.
-
-
- Correcting the Pronunciation.
- ============================
-
- The corrected pronunciation can now be entered into the New
- box. This can be done by any of the following three methods:
-
- 1. Position the cursor in the New box and type from the
- keyboard. This is not very useful, as the phonetic word needs
- non-ascii characters which do not appear on the keyboard. They
- can in fact be produced by key combinations, such as ALT plus 1,
- ALT plus M, etc.
-
- 2. Select phonetic symbols by clicking on the coloured buttons
- at the bottom of the window. A click with Select places the
- symbol in the New box. A click with Adjust speaks the sound of
- the phonetic symbol, and gives an example word which uses it.
- Example words are also shown on the screen if the interactive
- help is in use from Acorn’s !Help application.
-
- 3. The simplest method is to type an English word, which
- “sounds like” the word which you want, into the ‘Like’ box. When
- you click on the green square to the right of the ‘Like’ box, the
- phonetic transcription of that word will appear in the ‘New’ box.
- For example, to get the phonetic transcription for the name
- “Phoebe”, you could type “Feeby” or perhaps “Feebee” into the
- ‘Like’ box. For “Tapestry” you could type “Tapperstry”.
-
- 4. If the current pronunciation is nearly correct, for example
- if only the stressed syllable needs to be changed, click on the
- down arrow button to the right of the ‘Old’ box. This simply copies
- the contents of the ‘Old’ box into the ‘New’ box, where it can be
- edited, using the coloured phoneme buttons.
-
- The DEL button just deletes the character to the left of the cursor,
- in the same way as the Delete key on the keyboard. It is
- provided so you can delete a character without having to use the
- keyboard, if you are doing the editing with the mouse.
-
- At any time, the contents of the ‘New’ box can be spoken by
- clicking on the green square to its right.
-
- Updating the Exceptions List.
- ============================
-
- The exceptions list appears in a small window to the side of the
- edit window. When you are satisfied with the pronunciation in
- the ‘New’ box, click on the ‘Add’ button. This will add the English
- word with its new pronunciation into the exceptions list. You
- will be able to see it in the Exceptions List window.
-
- You can amend or delete an entry which is already in the
- exceptions list. Click on the word in the exceptions list. It will
- appear in the ‘Word’ box, its phonetic representation goes into the
- ‘Old’ box, and the word is spoken.
-
- To remove the word from the exceptions list, click the ‘Remove’
- button.
-
- To amend the phonetic translation in the exceptions list, enter the
- corrected phonetic word in the ‘New’ box, as described above, and
- click on ‘Add’ to update the entry in the exceptions list.
-
-
- The Phonetic Symbols.
- ====================
-
- The orange buttons represent vowels.
- The blue buttons represent consonants.
- The yellow buttons are for consonants known as
- “continuants”, or frictionless consonants.
- The cream buttons towards the right are a selection of “foreign”
- vowels.
-
- Click with Select to add a phoneme to the ‘New’ box.
-
- Click with Adjust to hear the sound of the phoneme, together
- with an example word. The example word can be turned off by
- clicking the ‘As is’ option in the icon bar menu.
-
- If you have the interactive help turned on using Acorn’s !Help
- application, this will show example words for each phoneme, as
- the mouse pointer is moved over it.
-
- The vowel known as “schwa” (an upside down “e” symbol), is an
- unstressed neutral vowel. It is the most common vowel in
- English, but does not have its own symbol in the English
- alphabet! It is quite likely that this is the vowel to use in an
- unstressed position in a word, in order to get the correct sound.
-
- The ( j ) button (yellow) gives the sound which is generally
- represented in English by the “y” letter (as in “young”).
-
- The ( c ) button (blue) gives a sound which is not used in English.
- This is the sound such as in the German word “ich”.
-
- The buttons marked ( j- ) and ( r- ), which are called “linking y”
- and “linking r” respectively, are weaker versions of the ( j ) and
- ( r ) sounds. They are used internally within words, particularly
- when between a vowel and a following unstressed vowel.
-
- Note that in standard British English, there is no ( r ) phoneme
- after the vowel in words such as “car”, “fort”, “hurt”, “bird”,
- “share”. In general, ( r ) only occurs when followed by a vowel.
-
- Stressed Syllables.
- ==================
-
- The dictionary not only gives the phonemes which make
- up an English word, it also gives the position of the main
- stressed syllable in the word. If a word sounds wrong, it may
- simply be that the wrong syllable is being stressed.
-
- If no stress is marked, then by default it falls on the first
- syllable of the word.
-
- To change the stressed syllable, place the “primary stress marker”
- indicator ( ‘ ) before the vowel which you want to stress.
-
- For example “Wolverhampton” should have the stress on the
- third syllable “hamp”, not the first syllable.
-
- In a few cases, in a multi-syllabic word, you may also need to
- place a secondary stress marker ( . ) to produce the correct stress
- pattern throughout the word. This gives an additional, weaker
- stress.
-
- Note that with some words, the position of the stress varies
- depending on whether the word is being used as a noun or a
- verb. For example, “contrast”, “insert”, etc. Compare:
- “Pick up a large object”.
- “He will probably object”.
-
- The Speak module does not do a full grammatical analysis. It
- does attempt to make this distinction when reading a text
- passage, but is not always successful.
-
-
- Derived Words.
- =============
-
- When you add a word to the exceptions list, the pronunciation
- that you specify will also apply to certain derivatives which are
- made by adding suffixes.
-
- The suffixes which are recognised are:
-
- -s -’s -es -ed -er -est -ing -ness -able -ably
- -ability -ation -ship -ly
-
- If you don’t want your specified pronunciation to apply to these
- derivatives, follow the phoneme string by a space and then the
- directive $only
-
- For example, the word “suite” would have the following in the
- New box:
-
- swi:t $only
-
- This gives the sound as in “sweet”. The derivative “suited”
- however should be pronounced differently ("sooted") so we don't
- want our correction to apply to derivatives.
-
- Additional Sounds.
- =================
-
- The symbols ( j ) ( w) and ( r ) can be used to follow vowels to
- produce non-standard English diphthongs. Try experimenting with
- these symbols following various vowels. You may recognise
- some of the sounds as being used by some regional English
- accents.
-
- The colon ( : ) can be used to lengthen vowels which are
- otherwise short. You should not need to use it for standard
- English, as phoneme buttons are provided with the ( : ) included
- where it is appropriate.
-
- The Exceptions File.
- ===================
-
- The list of exceptions which appears in the Exceptions list
- window, is stored as a plain text file named “Exceptions” in a
- directory named “Data” in the Speak directory (i.e. the directory
- whose pathname is given by the system variable Speak$Dir).
- You can copy this file, in order to transfer your exceptions list
- between computers, if you wish.
-
- If you copy a new exceptions file into the Speak directory, you
- will have to run !PhonEdit and click on the ‘Save’ button before it
- takes effect. The ‘Save’ action takes the file named Data.Dict3,
- combines it with the Exceptions file to produce Data.Dict2, which
- is used by the Speak module.
-
-
-