Re: [Espeak-general] eSpeak - Secwepemctsin

[Neskie M. <ne...@gm...>]

> The spelling rules may be regular, but the phonology looks complicated.

Oh great, more work for you and not me =)

> The language uses some exotic consonants which are not currently
> provided in eSpeak.  These will need to be added.  eSpeak doesn't
> currently have pharyngeal consonants and I don't know whether its
> uvular consonants are correct.

Well we can test out the uvular consonants.  I have a more descriptive
narrative

> What is the difference between a normal consonant and a glottalised
> consonant.  We will need to find a way to make eSpeak create suitable
> sounds.  That may be difficult.

The way I've been told the difference is the signs can either be a
sharper stop of the consonant, or you add an 'L' to the end like p ->
pl.  We call it the explosive accent, because it sounds like the
consonant explodes.

> If the character '7' in Secwepemctsin can be a alphabetic letter which
> can occur in words,  as well as a number, then that will need to be
> added as a special case for this language.

This is a problem in spellchecking programs as well.  We could move to
using the actual glottlal stop unicode character, but we've been using
it for so long, perhaps I'll mention it to the language authority.

I have a google doc of a pronoucniation guide that is a bit more
descriptive of the sounds [1].

Just as a note.  I'm working on this because my friend is blind and I
was testing out orca, and I thought there is no way for blind
Secwepemc people to hear their langauge spoken by a computer.  So I
thought this would be great to start on.  I think if I can get
something usable in about a year that would be fantastic.

[1] - http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATNSaQrtdtBsZGd4aGhkZ2hfMzZkMnJiY2pocw&hl=en