Would be interesting to make a similar one for Tibetan chants.
Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
41–50 of 65 posts
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#42Can the same engine be extended to Pali for Buddhist suttas?
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#43Forgive my ignorance; I'm not a Sanskrit speaker (Malayalam is my first language) -- but I love the sound of Sanskrit. I have lots of questions: what's the use case for this? Primarily religious / liturgical? It also seems that the fact that this tool works means that any arbitrary Sanskrit sentence can be translated into a chant by some sort of procedure (dare I say algorithm)? I'm terribly curious and fascinated by…
Everything doesn’t need a use case. It’s simply cool.
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's Ram, not Rama, it's yog, not yoga'... And they have no idea what schwa deletion is. It is neither. The fundamental issue is that there is no way to represent the schwa sound in English[1]. All of a,e,i,o,u have been used to communicate the schwa (or schwa-like) sound in English. - The `a` in about - The `e` in taken - The `i` in cousin - The `o` in button - The `u` in upon 1 - https://ashishb.net/linguistics/s…
I wouldn't say 'neither', because by your own example, 'a' in English can represent ⟨ə⟩. That every other vowel letter also can is English's low level of phoneticism with respect to the script it uses. Many other languages using the Latin script (German, Italian, Finnish) don't have this problem, what you see is what get. Oddly enough amongst the Indic languages, Tamil has precisely the same problem: க, ப, ட may be v…
> That every other vowel letter also can is English's low level of phoneticism
The level of phoneticism between English language and its latin script is not evenly spread.
For example, the letter "c" might mean /s/ or /k/ sound. However, the letter "k" almost certainly means /k/ sound.
In some ways, the schwa sound in English the worst as there is no symbol which is committed even partially towards it.
> it is Rāma, and 'a' represents the schwa.
Sure, but if my name is Rāma, I have to choose either "Ram" or "Rama" or "Raama" for my passport name. Or legal name in most places, non-alphabetic symbols do not work with all modern systems.
> Many other languages using the Latin script (German, Italian, Finnish) don't have this problem, what you see is what get.
English imports spellings from other cultures and adds its own layer of pronunciations. Other languages probably don't do it as often.
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's Ram, not Rama, it's yog, not yoga'... And they have no idea what schwa deletion is. It is neither. The fundamental issue is that there is no way to represent the schwa sound in English[1]. All of a,e,i,o,u have been used to communicate the schwa (or schwa-like) sound in English. - The `a` in about - The `e` in taken - The `i` in cousin - The `o` in button - The `u` in upon 1 - https://ashishb.net/linguistics/s…
I wouldn't say 'neither', because by your own example, 'a' in English can represent ⟨ə⟩. That every other vowel letter also can is English's low level of phoneticism with respect to the script it uses. Many other languages using the Latin script (German, Italian, Finnish) don't have this problem, what you see is what get. Oddly enough amongst the Indic languages, Tamil has precisely the same problem: க, ப, ட may be v…
Wikipedia has an interesting page on "Brahmin Tamil" which is the Tamil dialect spoken by Brahmins in Tamil Nadu and consists of Classical Tamil with a lot of Sanskrit influence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmin_Tamil
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#46Can the same engine be extended to Pali for Buddhist suttas?
Yes. The dhammapada uses a lot of Anushthubh chandas, which is an option in the website. However, the language differences between pali and sanskrit are enough to make TTS trip up. E.g only one "s" variant, and karma -> kamma, etc,. If you finetuned on pali a little bit it should work fine.
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#47BaaS: Bhatta as a Service.
nb: Bhatta is Sanskrit for priest.
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn't say 'neither', because by your own example, 'a' in English can represent ⟨ə⟩. That every other vowel letter also can is English's low level of phoneticism with respect to the script it uses. Many other languages using the Latin script (German, Italian, Finnish) don't have this problem, what you see is what get. Oddly enough amongst the Indic languages, Tamil has precisely the same problem: க, ப, ட may be v…
> That every other vowel letter also can is English's low level of phoneticism The level of phoneticism between English language and its latin script is not evenly spread. For example, the letter "c" might mean /s/ or /k/ sound. However, the letter "k" almost certainly means /k/ sound. In some ways, the schwa sound in English the worst as there is no symbol which is committed even partially towards it. > it is Rāma,…
> In some ways, the schwa sound in English the worst as there is no symbol which is committed even partially towards it.
> English imports spellings from other cultures and adds its own layer of pronunciations. Other languages probably don't do it as often.
English is almost unique in how inconsistent its orthography is especially with respect to vowel sounds, and loanwords are only the latest manifestation of this problem. Even consonants aren't spared. Consider the digraph 'th'. This can be a voiced or voiceless dental fricatives. English used to have letters for each: ð and þ. 'ough' has nine pronunciations—plough, though, through, thorough, cough, rough, bought, lough, hiccough.
English has experienced contact with such a wide variety of unrelated foreign languages to an extent few others ever have.
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#49The TTS quality seems to be poor. I just entered a single word "jaganmaatham" and it failed to pronounce it. What's the point anyway? If you really love your traditions, slokas and chanting, please keep it as natural as possible, instead of plasticizing it to the core. This is third level of mechanizing the sacred rituals. First - we lost the live chanting due to recorded recitals with human voice. Then we lost the e…
> First - we lost the live chanting due to recorded recitals with human voice. Then we lost the experience of presence due to online streaming. And now even human voice is lost - the broken chanting is generated.
This is not true at all. Live chanting, live pUjAs, etc. are still very much practiced. It's just that recorded versions also became available, making our lives richer.
The same applies to other art forms. E.g., bharatanATyam is still performed live, but we also have recorded performances. That is a good thing!
Re: Vāgdhenu: A Sanskrit Chanting TTS System
#50People seem to be making all sorts of assumptions/conjectures about the project and confusing themselves without reading the paper explaining the project (linked to in the site itself); From the introduction; Classical Sanskrit recitation, parāyaṇa, is a chanted rather than a read register. A faithful synthesizer must hold long vowels, sustain a terminal visarga, articulate retroflex and aspirated consonants, render…
Perhaps you could edit the submission to add this context?
Sorry, am not the submitter so we will let it be.