cg@ami-cg.UUCP (Chris Gray) (10/09/89)
While going through a bunch of old junk today, I came across something a
friend had used with a speech synthesizer on a PDP-11 (an old Votrax from
Federal Screw Works). The old timers have probably seen it already. Take
the enclosed story, put it in a file called 'story', and enter the command
say -s200 -p150 -x story
See if you can figure it all out.
--------------------------cut-here--story----------------------------------
Wants pawn term dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle
cordage honor itch offer lodge dock florist. Disc ladle gull orphan worry ladle
cluck wetter putty ladle rat hut, end fur disc raisin pimple caulder ladle rat
rotten hut. Wan moaning rat rotten hut's murder colder inset: 'Ladle rat rotten
hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter end shirker cockles. Tick disc
ladle basking tudor cordage offer groin murder hoe lifts honor udder site offer
florist. Shaker lake, dun stopper laundry wrote, end yonder nor sorgum stenches
stopper torque wet strainers.' 'Hoe cake, murder', resplendent ladle rat rotten
hut, end tickle ladle basking an sturred oft.
Honor wrote tudor cordage offer groin murder, ladle rat rotten hut mit
anamalous woof. 'Wail wail wail,' set disc wicket woof, 'evanescent ladle rat
rotten hut! Wares or putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?' 'Armor
goring tumor groin murder's,' reprisal ladle gull. 'Grammars seeking bet. Armor
ticking arson burden barter end shirker cockles.' 'O hoe! Heifer blessing
woke,' setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, 'Oil ticket shirt court
tudor cordage offer groin murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter, an den O bore!'
Soda wicket woof tucker shirt court, end whinney retched a cordage offer
groin murder, picket inner window an dore debtor port oil worming worse lion
inner bet. Inner flesh disc abdominal woof lipped honor betting adder rope.
Zany pool dawn a groin murder's nut cup an gnat gun, any curdle dope inner bet.
Inner ladle wile ladle rat rotten hut a raft attar cordage an ranker dough
ball. 'Comb ink, sweat hard,' setter wicket woof, disgracing is verse. Ladle
rat rotten hut entity bet rum end stud buyer groin murder's bet. 'Oh grammar,'
crater ladle gull, 'Wart bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice!' 'Butter
lucky chew whiff, doling,' whiskered disc ratched woof, wetter wicket small.
'Oh grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anamalous prognosis!'
'Buttered small your whiff,' inserter woof, ants mouse worse wadding. 'Oh
grammar, water bag mousey gut! A nervous sore suture bag mouse!' Daze worry on
forger nut gull's lest warts. Oil offer sodden throne offer carvers an
sprinkling otter bet, disc curl an bloat Thursday woof ceased pore ladle rat
rotten hut an garbled erupt.
Mural:
Yonder nor sorghum stenches shud ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.
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Chris Gray usenet: {uunet,alberta}!myrias!ami-cg!cg CIS: 74007,1165addison@pollux.usc.edu (Richard Addison) (10/11/89)
In article <0453.AA0453@ami-cg> cg@ami-cg.UUCP (Chris Gray) writes: >While going through a bunch of old junk today, I came across something a >friend had used with a speech synthesizer on a PDP-11 (an old Votrax from >Federal Screw Works). The old timers have probably seen it already. Take >the enclosed story, put it in a file called 'story', and enter the command > > say -s200 -p150 -x story > >See if you can figure it all out. <<< List of words that sounds familiar, deleted. >>> >Chris Gray usenet: {uunet,alberta}!myrias!ami-cg!cg CIS: 74007,1165 Gee, I hadn't thought of sending that old list of words thru the narrator. I don't remember the first time I saw that, but I beleive that it is quite a bit older than the Votrax. Last time I saw it was in the Exploratorium in Golden Gate Park. Good for a chuckle. A friend of mine was inspired by this passage some time ago, and so re-wrote a fairly well known song. Try: say -f -s250 -p150 -x song Give credit to my friend Mark Wolf. He just showed me another one today. I'll post it it there's interest. Bad hole limb often republish. Hosea Kenya sea, Bite herd aunts surely lied, Wad soap rody rehealed, Add debt while lied slashed cleaning. Ooze brought strive sand brides tars, Trudy parallel snide, Odor imparts sweet washed Worse soak gallon trees trimming. Andy raw kid shred Claire, End bobs spur stinging near, Gape roof true denied Dad turf lacquers tilled air. Hosea, dust hats terse pang old Ben Harriet waif, Order lamb dough deaf wee, Under hoe mauve deprave.
ranjit@grad1.cis.upenn.edu (Ranjit Bhatnagar) (10/12/89)
The story "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut" is from a fun book called _Anguish Languish_, by Howard L. Chace. (Prentice-Hall, 1956.) It also contains nursery rhymes like "Marry Hatter Ladle Limb." There's a similar book by Luis d'Antin Van Rooten called _Mots d'Heures: gousses, rames_ which encodes familiar English rhymes in French. (Try saying "Mots d'heures gousses rames" fast!) The Exploratorium is not in Golden Gate Park! It's on the edge of the Presidio. If you had an online dictionary which gave not only the spelling but the rough pronounciation of words, then, besides helping to make the narrator device more accurate, you could use it to generate things like these automatically by looking for sequences of words whose pronounciation approximately matches the input sequence. (In fact, I think something like this was posted on one of the sources groups a year ago or so, called 'autopun' or something.) - ranjit "Trespassers w" ranjit@eniac.seas.upenn.edu mailrus!eecae!netnews!eniac!... "Such a brute that even his shadow breaks things." (Lorca)
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (10/14/89)
I've given a lot of computer-speech demos at trade shows (as adjunct to demo'ing OTHER things), and what really helps is a dictionary such as the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, International Edition, which contains the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) pronunciation for all words. The IPA coding maps directly into, for example, Votrax phoneme codes (for the English language ONLY), and the same technique can be used for input to the Amiga's ``narrator'' (phoneme codes). With proper selection of phoneme codes, duration, and accents, computer speech using simple techniques (e.g. Votrax and Amiga narrator) CAN be quite understandable and usable. Blind usage of Votrax' "Text to Speech" and the Amiga's Translator produces, in general, speech that sounds like a drunken sot for whom English is not the native tongue! :-) :-) It's kinda sad to experience a program for which it's evident that over 500 hours was spent on whiz-bang graphics and less than 5 minutes for the audio. Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]