Phonetic Speech Synthesizer

Phonetic Back Ground

There are a limited number of sounds that make up words in human languages. In linguistics these sounds are referred to as phonemes. Any word may be created by a sequence of phonemes. Phoneme Synthesis Technique is best suited for applications that require unlimited vocabularies.

Table 7.1 presents a list of English phonemes. International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) assigns a set of symbols to phonemes. Most of these symbols are not available on an ordinary typewriter setting. A set of one and two character Latin alphabet codes are assigned to phonemes. These codes will be used for IPA expressions.

Electronic Phoneme synthesizers are devices capable of producing the phoneme sounds through corresponding digital code. Votrax SC01 is one popular phoneme synthesizers currently available.

Table 7.1: International Phonetic Alphabet

IPA CODE	Example	Phonetic Description
EY	gAte
EH	gEt
AE	fAt	Front Vowel
AA	fAther
AO	lAWn
OW	lOne
UH	fUll
UW	fOOl
ER	mURdER
AX	About
AH	bUt
AY	hIde
AW	hOW
OY	tOY
p	Pack	Unvoiced
b	Back	Voiced
t	Time	Unvoiced
d	Dime	Voiced
k	Coat	Unvoiced
g	Goat	Voiced
f	Fault	Unvoiced Fricative Consonant
v	Vault	Voiced Fricative Consonant
TH	eTHer	Unvoiced Fricative Consonant
DH	eiTHer	Voiced Fricative Consonant
s	Sue	Unvoiced Fricative Consonant
z	Zoo	Voiced Fricative Consonant
SH	leaSH	Unvoiced Fricative Consonant
ZH	leiSure	Voiced Fricative Consonant
HH	How	Whisper Consonant
m	suM	Nasal Consonant
n	suN	Nasal Consonant
NG	suNG	Nasal Consonant
l	Laugh	Liquid Semivowels
w	Wear	Liquid Semivowels
y	Young	Glide Semivowel
r	Rate	Glide Semivowel
CH	CHar	Affricate Consonant
j	Jar	Affricate Consonant
WH	WHere