Strongly suggest reaching out to Dr. Rupal Patel (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rupalvocalid) of Northeastern University (https://coe.northeastern.edu/people/patel-rupal/) and VocaliD (https://vocalid.ai/about-us/). She's a licensed Speech-Language Pathologist (https://web.northeastern.edu/cadlab/publications/RupalPatel_...) and she and her husband, Dr. Deb Roy, did the Human Speechome project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Speechome_Project). She was also my doctoral advisor and I feel confident saying she would be very interested in talking with you.
Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
181–190 of 229 posts
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#182You might look at what Jamie Dupree has done.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/15/health/dystonia-jamie-dupree-...
He uses a text-to-speech system that sounds more-or-less like him.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#183My 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 depress…
This reminded me of some wonderful writings from Roger Ebert, a brilliant man who also lost his ability to speak.
I cannot find it now, but I believe he wrote about this exact phenomenon: even with the best technology, you cannot communicate as fluently as a conversation demands, so you're relegated to the background.
Here's one of his writings I was able to find: https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-...
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#184Probably not what you were seeking, but I have to imagine it would be similar to long periods I have spent in a non-verbal state. Being allowed to exist and just smile or laugh as a "part" of the conversation around me was like sunlight on a dark day. The range of human emotion and expression often overlaps enormously between people. Sometimes pretending you're voice is really the good you hear around you and not the throat mumblings that cause so much conflict is the most beautiful dream.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#185Earlier 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…
Personally speaking, as a hearing, native english speaker. I've taken classes in French, Italian, Spanish, and ASL.
The romance languages were taught in English, with a strong focus on the rules. Progress was extremely slow. I've had opportunities to practice Spanish and Italian, and that's been way more helpful than those classes ever were (and let's be honest, Spanish and Italian are too similar for my muddled brain and "communication" is more of a negotiation). I've heard from quite a few students of French that after 4 years of formal study, they can't speak a lick. I didn't hang on that long.
ASL is often taught immersively. You might have an interpreter for the first day or the first week, but after that, it's voices off (and if you're lucky, your instructor is Deaf). You start with letters, to bootstrap from English, and mimeing, because that forms a basis for a lot of informal ASL. Subsequent vocabulary is communicated through a combination of fingerspelling and mime. Grammar is considered a fairly advanced topic; and by the time your teacher gets around to that, you'll have absorbed more of it than you realize.
In my experience, learning ASL is more akin to riding a bike, than learning a romance language -- much less Chinese.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#186Probably not what you were seeking, but I have to imagine it would be similar to long periods I have spent in a non-verbal state. Being allowed to exist and just smile or laugh as a "part" of the conversation around me was like sunlight on a dark day. The range of human emotion and expression often overlaps enormously between people. Sometimes pretending you're voice is really the good you hear around you and not the…
Also... Learn sign language. Some of the most beautiful and overlooked people are non-verbal. I've met several truly speechless people who had families that never learned to sign. It's sad for them.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your answer misses the point of the question. Learning ASL can be done after the surgery if she lost her voice. The question was what can be done now before the surgery. The kind of things which, if it comes to the worst and she loses her voice, cannot be done after.
I wouldn't discount the value of having some rudimentary signs to communicate immediately after surgery. It seems odd to me to focus on some dream of a perfect TTS synthesis if these more basic needs are not addressed first. If you've ever had a mouth injury that inhibits talking, or been in a foreign environment where your speech is totally useless, it can be very stressful to be unable to communicate. I think the c…
a pen and paper would suffice for immediate communication needs.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#188I went through something similar with a parent years and years ago. I wanted to be able to do things to help with what would eventually be lost.
I have to say I didn't help as much as I thought I could and afterwards I was always wondering if I could have used this technology or that and done more.
So - I think you should recognize that you can only do so much, we're doing the best we can, and in the end we are all winging it.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd go for Stephen Hawking, myself. (Not using his voice synth, reconstructed using ML, because it should sound more natural that way ;-)
I recall that the "say" program on the SGI from the mid 90's was approximately Hawking's voice. Hawking gave his speech for the Whitehouse Millennium Lecture at SGI also, and while I wasn't able to attend I found the transcript of it and fed it in there... there were some jokes that he had that only really came through with the intonation and pacing of a voice synth -- its the ultimate dead pan voice. https://clinton…
Hawking’s original voice synth was the default sound of the DECtalk hardware speech synth.
It would not surprise me if SGI’s software implementation were similar to the he most popular hardware of the 1980s.
Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?
#190Hi, I like your idea for your wife. Hope the surgery will succeed without damage to her speaking. I'm from Nvidia and know well the team behind NeMo toolkit. Happy to connect you to the team if that helps. You may send me an email to ardenwood.bruin_at_gmail.com. -- Michael