Author Topic: Speech dictionary case sensitivity and TTS  (Read 2042 times)

Exergist

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Speech dictionary case sensitivity and TTS
« on: June 27, 2018, 11:13:35 PM »
I recently noticed that (on my Windows 7 PC) if I enter a custom word in the speech dictionary and try to voice that word with text-to-speech, that word must be inputted exactly as it is in the speech dictionary otherwise the custom pronunciation is not voiced properly. Obviously the word needs to be spelled the same in the dictionary and TTS input, but even differences in capitalization will cause undesirable results.

So if you add a word that could be used anywhere in a sentence you'll get different TTS (as well as recognition) results depending on that word's capitalization. It seems like the only way around this is to have two entries in the speech dictionary for a given word - one lower case and the other title case. This just seems really cumbersome and happens regardless of any additional options selected when entering the word(s) into the speech dictionary.

Does anyone know if the above behavior is expected? Thanks!

Exergist

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Re: Speech dictionary case sensitivity and TTS
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2018, 10:15:08 AM »
Here's some more information based on my testing.

Test TTS phrase = "Paitches are paitches with Paitches."

A.) Paitches ("pooches") and selecting "This word is sometimes capitalized"
Result = "payches are pooches with payches" ==> NOT OKAY

B.) Separate entries with lower case first
1.) paitches ("pooches")
2.) Paitches ("peaches")
Result = can't add in this order ==> NOT OKAY

C.) Separate entries with upper case first
1.) Paitches ("pooches") - selecting "This word is always capitalized"
2.) paitches ("peaches")
Result = "pooches are peaches with pooches" ==> OKAY

...so it looks like to get a given word to be pronounced correctly regardless of first letter capitalization for both the Windows TTS preview as well as VA TTS you need to enter the word twice (first with a capitalized leading letter and second with everything lower case). Seems REALLY inefficient and looks like the option for "This word is sometimes capitalized" is not doing it's job.