First off I'm sorry you're going through that, it sounds really tough. We sometimes have families use us for this (https://trysaga.com) as a way to collect voice recordings of loved ones, to record and share a large number of memories and stories in their voice and have them saved forever. You can download all the recordings to keep. It's free right now and I'd be happy to help out and make sure it got you what you needed, let me know.
Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
121–130 of 229 posts
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#122Please. There is a small chance you said. Everything will be fine.
But still carry on your research on the problem since it might help others.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#123Others here are addressing technical solutions, but I don't see anyone here covering non-verbal communication. IMO, that's going to be just as important.
I am going to assume that your wife and you have a healthy relationship with strong communication, in part because you've developed an intuition for her body language and other non-verbal communication methods. In the scenario where she loses her ability to speak, even if she happily and completely takes to whatever technical solution(s) you offer to replace that, I think it's likely she will reflexively lean more heavily on those non-verbal channels, and you're going to need to get better at reading them than you are now.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#124Please. There is a small chance you said. Everything will be fine. But still carry on your research on the problem since it might help others.
even if there is a small chance, the preparation may help lesson the blow of what would still be a tremendous loss.
also it might just help pass the time since OP has 3 weeks.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is she on board with this? I can imagine a lot of people being severely put off by being asked to record "a corpus of approximately 1000 hours" in advance of what sounds like a stressful surgery.
Seconding this, also, reproducing her voice with an AI may not be something she is on board with, it could make her feel like you don't accept her with or without a voice. It may also be unhealthy for you, similar to how spending too long on social media can become a dangerous source of dopamine. It might make sense to consider making a recording that is more meaningful, and focus on giving her emotional support rath…
It's not like OP is replacing her entirity with Alexa, if I were the wife I'd think "sure, let's 'backup' my voice, having it available in case I lose mine would be useful, so that people can still hear my thoughts in my voice instead of a robot's."...
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#126Not exactly what you're asking for, but I wrote an app for this scenario:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.anaisbetts...
This is a text-to-speech app with a very keen emphasis on Day To Day usage - the UX will put the focus at the right places, help you reply faster, etc. I used it for a full month when I was unable to speak after voice surgery and it made a big difference, other folx have reported the same
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
She's not losing her knowledge of English. The odds are overwhelming that she'll prefer to communicate by English text (where she'll have native fluency) than in a new language .
I think most people who are not familiar with ASL don't understand that ASL is an entirely different language with completely different grammar, morphology and semantics. It's linguistically as distinct as it can be from English. It's probably closer to an English speaker learning Chinese than an English speaker learning German or French. Most people imagine it's just a relex of English where English words have "sign…
Sign language in the US forms a sort of dialect continuum.
At one end is ASL, which its own language as you said, although with some influence from English).
On the opposite end are things like Signed Exact English that reproduce English verbatim on the hands, borrowing from ASL in some places and inventing signs in other places. For example, ASL has no sign for -ed (the past tense ending) because it marks aspect instead of tense, so SEE invented a sign for it.
And in the middle is Contact Sign or Pidgin Signed English, a sort of compromise between ASL and English grammar, which is most used when ASL speakers and non-fluent speakers communicate. You might get a mix of some ASL topic-comment word order with some English subject-verb-object word order. You'l get a lot less "simultaneous" ASL grammar like indicating the subject or object pronoun using eye gaze, or conjugating verbs by changing motion, because those are hard for non-fluent ASL speakers to understand. You'll also get a lot less of the SEE constructs like explicit -ed markings, because they're usually obvious from context.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#128Vocalid.ai has an vocal bank where you can record yourself, and use other people's voices as well. It could be a good choice for her to use her own voice
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#129My mom lost her ability to speak, and what you are going to find is that your life and how you interact with everyone will have to change. Human verbal communication is very fast. She will find it difficult to be part of normal conversations. Without lots of help, she will start to fade into the background of conversations, because she can't keep up. You will have to help her be a part of things. It will be a depressing experience for her, and you will have to help her. People will look at her differently like she is mentally handicapped. (I know she won't be, but people will assume that she is even unconsciously). I recommend finding her a therapist if she has to go through this transition.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably the guy is better at guessing what his wife wants than you are, and his wife is an adult who can tell him if he guesses wrong.
> his wife is an adult who can tell him if he guesses wrong She can, but she might not. A lot of that depends on how he presents the idea to her -- it might seem like something that's important to him.
It's sad that people trying to discuss the emotional side of this are being down voted.
Honestly there is no doubt a very large emotional/personal side of this, irrespective of who's idea it is and who supports it.
Technology isn't the solution for all problems and challenges in life.