How to pronounce a foreign word?

[John2740]

I want to create an application to help people speak a foreign language?
I would like to start from pronounce words first.
Do I need to have a Wave or AVI file for every word?

Any simple example will be a great help?

Thanks a lot!

[si_the_geek]

Moved from FAQ forum

[Static]

well. i would say yes. unless u can figure out how to create a "text to speech" control
(which, who knows one might already exist)

[Comintern]

well. i would say yes. unless u can figure out how to create a "text to speech" control
(which, who knows one might already exist)

I think there's a text to speech engine in the Microsoft Agent controls that supports several different localizations. That might be something to look into.

[shirazamod]

Yes you can use the MS TTS, although it doesn't support many languages.

[jeroen79]

MS TTS -or something like it- would be the easiest.
Just put it in your appliation and feed it strings.
As mentioned, it may not work for all languages.

Another option is to create a collection of soundfiles (wav, mp3).
A file's name would be the word it represents.
The user enters a word and the program loads and plays [word].wav.
Also easy but recording/finding all those soundclips is a lot of work.

You could also record a set of basic sounds.
Then you create a table where words (as written) are linked to a sequence of links to these basic sounds.
Your program then looks up the right sequence and steps through it, playing each basic sound one by one.
You'll need to fill the table which will be a lot of work.

There are phontic alphabets and some dictionaries may include phonetic transcription of words.
I suggest you study those.
Being able to create the table by just parsing an electronic dictionary will save a lot of work.

[John2740]

Comintern, Shirazamod & Jeroen79,

Thank all of you for pointing out MS TTS link!
I am down loading tools now. Will let you know if I have problems.
Have good day!

John2740