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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6620 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 1 of 22 08 September 2006 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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Has anyone used "text to speech" software for study his target language?
In other words, with this software you can read and instantly listen websites in your target language. It seems very good. Any experience? Edited by slucido on 08 September 2006 at 5:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pentatonic Senior Member United States Joined 7192 days ago 221 posts - 245 votes | Message 2 of 22 08 September 2006 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have TextAloud and NewsAloud from nextup.com and many of the voices they sell are very good. It's amazing how far text to speech has come. You can go there and listen to examples of all the voices they sell, but make sure you wear headphones because there is background noise that can be very irritating. You might not notice it through PC speakers.
It's funny that you posted this because just today I listened to an mp3 that I created at, I believe, the AT&T site. The voice is a German one called Reiner and the quality is incredible. I'm not a native speaker but it only sounds a little unnatural at the end to me. I had just typed some random stuff: his name, a greeting, and a Christmas poem. I would buy this voice today if it sounded as good as that file, but unfortunately the version you can buy is not nearly the same quality. As I remember, the prices on the AT&T site were very high. The sample rate must have been very high. Anyway, I see that you are studying English and have I have the AT&T voices, Crystal16 and Mike16, and the ScanSoft voice Jennifer22 which is the best. I'll be glad to convert any text you want to an mp3 file so you can judge it. Just PM me if interested. But I wouldn't recommend using them to study English. The quality is not there, the intonation is off and unnatural at times, and there just is no need to as there is so much real audio with text available on the net. BTW, if anyone knows of other sources of SAPI5 compatible voices please pass them on. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6854 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 22 08 September 2006 at 7:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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If the intonation was really, really good (and there were enough languages), one could probably use one of the Pimsleur transcripts to make a new course...
In fact, I once chatted with somebody who was up to creating an entire language course with the help of my sample sentences. :) I haven't heard from him in a while, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7049 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 4 of 22 09 September 2006 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Considering I had to strain to understand just the English, I wouldn't recommend using these methods to learn how to say things in the target language.
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| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7022 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 5 of 22 09 September 2006 at 3:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I just had a look at TextAloud product mentioned above.
The English samples I listened to weren't very good. Very synthetic. But one of the Korean samples I listened to - Yumi in the Neosoft series I believe - was quite natural. Not perfect but I was very surprised. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kimsuhee Tetraglot Newbie Korea, South Joined 6891 days ago 27 posts - 28 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Korean*, Mandarin, EnglishC1, German | Message 6 of 22 09 September 2006 at 4:23am | IP Logged | ||
Yes,I agree with you.To me,most of samples of english and German sound quite synthetic.But as you said, Yumi(Korean) and Miyu(Japanese) of NeoSpeech sound relatively natural.And for chinese, both of samples sound very synthetic but Lily in Neosoft sounds better than Mei-Ling of Realspeak. Anyways,it's very amazing that computer can pronounce so similarly. Edited by Kimsuhee on 09 September 2006 at 4:23am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| slucido Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Spain https://goo.gl/126Yv Joined 6620 days ago 1296 posts - 1781 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Spanish*, Catalan* Studies: English | Message 7 of 22 09 September 2006 at 7:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I don´t want to use only this text to speed method.
I´m using the two Assimil books with audio. I listen this audios and shadow them three to ten times. And I have another resources: good audio with transcript. The question is I´m reading a lot of english and american sites.It´s an habit. I´m thinking maybe it´s a good idea to use some "text to speech software" to increment my listening skills. But not only this method. The problem is I´m searching and I´m not sure the best quality programs ad voices. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6960 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 22 09 September 2006 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | ||
If all you want is to hear English being spoken, why don't you try listening to radio or watching TV instead of converting text to speech? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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