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Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

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Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#191

Post by voicevoice50 »

clan wrote: post #137
audiohermit wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in pathological speech processing/synthesis so I'm unfortunately familiar with your father's position. It really sucks that these people didn't know that archiving their voice would've been useful. I hear snippets that people manage to glean from family videos right after listening to their current voices and it makes me really sad. On the upside, your father can choose any celebrity he wants to voice him! Ton…

Are there any simple howtos anywhere which describes the process in as simple terms as possible? Without knowing the cool toolkits du jour. Something like: - Download these texts - Record in WAV at least 48 kHz - Record each line in a separate file. - Do 3 takes of each line: flat, happy, despair Maybe even a minimal set and a full set depending on how much effort you are willing to put in. A plain description on how…

For recording training audio:

https://github.com/daanzu/speech-training-recorder

The recorder works with Python 3.6.10. Need to pip install webrtcvad also.

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#193

Post by thaumasiotes »

alexjm wrote: post #127
gnulinux wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ins…

> You might get a mix of some ASL topic-comment word order with some English subject-verb-object word order.

Not a huge shock, since you also get this between two sole English speakers communicating vocally.

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#194

Post by thaumasiotes »

klyrs wrote: post #185
gnulinux wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 brai…

> In my experience, learning ASL is more akin to riding a bike, than learning a romance language -- much less Chinese.

The fact that you had formal language classes in romance languages doesn't mean that's the only way romance languages can be taught or learned. You can learn or teach any language however you want. Some ways are more effective; some are less effective.

One reason students can't speak any French after taking four years of school French is that effectiveness isn't really a goal of the instruction (or of the students).

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#195

Post by zapzupnz »

Rotten194 wrote: post #53

I would also suggest looking into learning American Sign Language (of course alongside this project). While communicating via keyboard is workable and good for communicating with the wider world, ASL would be much more convenient for communicating between you two -- and a very interesting language to boot. It is a foreign language thats not related to English besides a few loan words, but there's tons of online resou…

I agree, there is great value in sign languages for people who are unable to speak. (Disclaimer: I am hearing and learnt New Zealand Sign Language)

Obviously, it comes with great effort on both the part of the wife and OP, plus a rethinking of some social interactions and even social groups.

However, no problem is insurmountable with sufficient assistance and support from friends, family, and expert groups. Learning sign language is fun and a great way to meet new friends, hearing and Deaf alike.

It may be a last resort, but it's an option not to be ignored.

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#196

Post by at_a_remove »

pugworthy wrote: post #130
thaumasiotes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, it isn't.

But good lord, sometimes trying to get technical help on the Internet turns into this rabbithole of people who are specifically looking for ways not to be helpful. "Did you really want that?" "Did you consider alternatives?" "What you really have is an XY problem."

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#197

Post by offsky »

I’m sorry that the both of you have to deal with this. I’ve read many of the replies here and I’m surprised there isn’t already a self-service website that does this. Pay some money, record some text, and boom here’s your voice. Something like this should exist. Someone should build this.

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#198

Post by grogenaut »

audiohermit wrote: post #62
grogenaut wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say this. My brother has a PhD in chemistry and no coding experience. He was able to create a voice model of himself using basic nvidia example generators in a week. My dad lost his voice and it would have been very nice to have a TTS that was much more close to him. I personally would think it would be worth it to have that database. But obviously also attend to the human matters as well, eg spend tim…

I work in pathological speech processing/synthesis so I'm unfortunately familiar with your father's position. It really sucks that these people didn't know that archiving their voice would've been useful. I hear snippets that people manage to glean from family videos right after listening to their current voices and it makes me really sad. On the upside, your father can choose any celebrity he wants to voice him! Ton…

Unfortunately dad passed 21 years ago. But the options now are much better. Just projecting my past experiences on the obvious Delta.

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#199

Post by bluGill »

whatusername wrote: post #187
saltcured wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it must, but it isn't as smooth as conversation can be. sign language is a real language, and you can have real conversation, with all the pros and cons of real conversation.

Re: Ask HN: My wife might lose the ability to speak in 3 weeks – how to prepare?

#200

Post by totetsu »

The mycroft voice assistant has some tooling they used to create voices.

https://mycroft.ai/blog/mimic-2-is-live/ https://github.com/MycroftAI/mimic2

Search Results Web results

Festival Speech Synthesis has a tool for recording speech databases, and some tutorials for training festival voices. http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/research/projects/speechrecorder/

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