Robin,

On Wed, 3 Oct 2007 19:46:38 +0100, Robin Abbott wrote:

> Yes I remember experimeting with Allophones in the 80's with a chip - I
> think it might have been the SP-0256-AL2 from GI. It worked quite well and
> was very efficient - most words can be stored in Allophones in less bytes
> than normal text. However I particularly remember W's and V's as being awful

Ah yes, I remember that chip - I had a play around with a little black box that plugged into a BBC Micro - fun, but with the power of that machine it wasn't really 
feasible to do proper text-to-speech.  Using the "obvious" allophones for the letters just didn't work, you had to get quite creative to make it understandable.  And 
one problem was that after listening to it for a while you got used to its "accent" and started understanding it when anyone coming to it fresh was bewildered.  
You needed a supply of people who hadn't heard it before to judge whether it was understandable by "the man on the Clapham omnibus" :-)

I still have it somewhere (and a couple of BBC Micros) - one day I may find it and have another play around.

Cheers,


Howard Winter
St.Albans, England


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