Full snow... with my tomtom

[Smokiewolf]

For those of us that speak English



Nextourer: Then, we should use the French voice when travelling to Montreal?

Gilbert: Loquendo released two French-Canadian voice: Charlotte and Olivier since June 2007. Loquendo is the company that provides software to Tomtom synthetic voice. I asked what we have access to these voices to Tomtom and got the answer that they constantly assess the needs of their users. So, if we want to have access to one day he would have to francophones du Canada in the request to make Tomtom ...

The site of Loquendo offers a copy of each of these voices. (Www.loquendo.com)

feejo: Brilliant. I use the voice in English unless she gets on the nerves.

Nextourer: Lol. And the voices in English no problem with the pronounciations street Montreal?


You have an XL-S, no? You do not have the voices in French? Or you have the French voices but you want the French-Canadian voice?

feejo:

Ha yes it would be great to be informative and say the street name in Quebec. "After the light there, xxxxxxx <sorry, lost in translation >."


Gilbert: I was only Susan (American English) that I remove the car's internal memory XL-S has only 1GB and already quite full, in order to replace it with Juliette (french de France). Since then, I bought a map SDHC 4GB that works with certain restrictions because of the integrated system Samsung supports only USB v1.1. When I use USB connection system Tomtom, updates of Home Tomtom often cause serious problems of writing but the system can read them without much difficulty. The writing of QuickFix is generally good, but the rest, can cause larger problems of writing. I make sure that everything is functional with a Chkdsk then resumes the operation that normally ends without error.

HAAAAAAA! Birdman, you are da MAN!!!

 

[feejo]

H? oui il est slow le xls sur les backup. J'?tais assez surprit d'apprendre qu'il n'est pas en USB 2. C'est comme mon Palm E2. il est pas vite lui non plus.

 

[lec510]

Dr Pennfield = Drive Pennfield
St Joseph st. = street Joseph street ..?

 

[Birdman]

Dr Pennfield = Drive Pennfield
St Joseph st. = street Joseph street ..?

They speak backwards.....


Or maybe WE speak backwards

 

[Gilbert]

I was able to lay my hands on the large voice of Juliette, wondering if it might pronounce some names better. The XL-S comes with highly compressed voices when compared to those of the x20s. The large voice does not offer better pronounciation from what I could gather. I get the impression the problem lies with the pronounciation included in the map but unaccessible to Tomtom users. This comes from some info I found on the Loquendo site that mentioned that there are something like two distinctive fields for street names: the alphabetical name field and the pronounciation field. So my annoyance of Saint-Laurent street pronounced as ?Saint-Laurin? is not a problem related to the voice but to an unaccessible field within the map.

I may eventually try to modify the xxx.lex file and learn more on the pronounciation ?alphabet? but wonder if I will have the patience to go through all that?

I hope this makes sense to some of you that have interest in this...

 

[feejo]

Voice in english is about the same for me, It is good that there is other instructions to help. That is good to know that voice on go are not better. When I first try a GPS it was a 750$ Garmin, voices where really good, but I will not swithch to Garmin about it.

I was close to Jacque-Cartier bridge this afternoon, it was funny he said Jacque but Cartiere. The "er" sound is so common in french.

 

[Nextourer]

J'avais seulement Susan (anglais am?ricain) que j'ai du effacer car la m?moire interne du XL-S n'a que 1Go et d?j? passablement pleine, pour pouvoir la remplacer par Juliette (fran?ais de France). Depuis, je me suis procur? une carte SDHC de 4Go qui fonctionne avec certaines restrictions car le syst?me int?gr? de Samsung ne supporte que USB v1.1. Lorsque j'utilise la connection USB du syst?me Tomtom, les mises-?-jour de Tomtom Home causent souvent des probl?mes d'?criture mais le syst?me peut les lire sans trop de difficult?s. L'?criture du QuickFix se fait g?n?ralement bien mais le reste, plus volumineux peut causer des probl?mes d'?criture. Je m'assure que tout est fonctionnel avec un Chkdsk puis recommence l'op?ration qui, normalement, se termine sans erreur.

je ne sais pas de XL-S mais pour mon TomTom ONE (New Edition), cet site sugg?re que je utilise une carte SD, pas une carte SDHC (Il y a quelques probl?mes). C'est parce que j'ai une carte SD 2Go.


I don't know about the XL-S but for my TT ONE (New Edition), people on this forum suggest that I use a regular SD card, not an SDHC (It causes some issues). That's why I'm using a 2GB card.

 

[Nextourer]

Voice in english is about the same for me, It is good that there is other instructions to help. That is good to know that voice on go are not better. When I first try a GPS it was a 750$ Garmin, voices where really good, but I will not swithch to Garmin about it.

I was close to Jacque-Cartier bridge this afternoon, it was funny he said Jacque but Cartiere. The "er" sound is so common in french.

lol.. so the English voice is ok with the pronounciation of French road names then? lol.

 

[Gilbert]

lol.. so the English voice is ok with the pronounciation of French road names then? lol.

No surprise here... When I went to the Loquendo web site, it mentioned that the roads have an extra field which contains the phonetic name of the road. This implies that whatever the voice you choose, it would pronounce any foreign language road correctly.

I have not tried this with European maps choosing different countries such as Italian voice trying to pronounce ?Brougham? or ?Leicester? of England. There are also the xxx.lex files that translate phonetically some written words. Those files may easily be viewed.

 

[d0nt_beli3ve_the_4ype]

Yes, they do. When you go into set your voice, select a computer voice and make sure that the box for "pronounce foreign street names" is checked.

 

[Nextourer]

No surprise here... When I went to the Loquendo web site, it mentioned that the roads have an extra field which contains the phonetic name of the road. This implies that whatever the voice you choose, it would pronounce any foreign language road correctly.

I have not tried this with European maps choosing different countries such as Italian voice trying to pronounce ?Brougham? or ?Leicester? of England. There are also the xxx.lex files that translate phonetically some written words. Those files may easily be viewed.

ahh alright then. But yeah again there are certain ways things are pronounced in a foreign language that would sound odd if you tried to use the phonetics to pronounce it (as in the examples you've given. What if someone's using an Italian voice and have it try and pronounce the two names above)

 

[feejo]

Yes, they do. When you go into set your voice, select a computer voice and make sure that the box for "pronounce foreign street names" is checked.

Cheched or not it prononce the same.

 

[Gilbert]

ahh alright then. But yeah again there are certain ways things are pronounced in a foreign language that would sound odd if you tried to use the phonetics to pronounce it (as in the examples you've given. What if someone's using an Italian voice and have it try and pronounce the two names above)

I expect the phonetic field to make whatever voice to pronounce whatever name the right way because it also includes the tonic accents if it has the phonetic field correct. IOW, you should hear ?brome? and ?lesster? with all computer voices because the phonetic field determines the right pronounciation. The quality of the effort that goes into getting the phonetic field right for each street name should determine your satisfaction in hearing it. I learned phonetics a long time ago but have not been in touch with it for a very long time.

 

[Nextourer]

ahh I see. Ok then. They've come a long way =).

OT a bit. How was my French anyway? lol. I haven't spoken/written often for about 5 years so I'm soo out of touch .

 

[Gilbert]

ahh I see. Ok then. They've come a long way =).

OT a bit. How was my French anyway? lol. I haven't spoken/written often for about 5 years so I'm soo out of touch .

Text to speech is not too bad when you think about it for the Tomtom. About fifty sentences (?Turn right after xxx meters/feet?) and the phonetic field of the street. Voice recognition is another matter...

As for your French, I was able to understand and you even went so far as to translate it... I am a perfectionist and tend to be annoyed by bad spelling when I know the writer writes in his native language and confuses simple words like ?there? and ?their?, particularly when this person has a university degree. When I think of my mother who only went to the 9th grade and you had a hard time finding one mistake in a full page whether grammar, syntax or punctuation...

 

[Nextourer]

lol. Yeah I don't have TTS cause I have a ONE V2.

Oh yeah, in English I get annoyed with spelling errors (seperate, definately, warrantee, guaranty etc etc)... I learned French from Gr 8-12. I learned a bit when I was 5-6 and a bit in elementary but never really got into the language until high school.

I think it's easier to type cause I have all the time in the world to think about how to structure my sentence properly in French =P. I'm sure there are better ways of saying/typing what I said in my posts as I was just trying to get my message across without having to look up the dictionary or my high school notes haha.

 

[Gilbert]

I did not speak English ubtil I was 15 when my parents sent me to St Michael's College in Winooski, VT, during my summer holidays. There were people from all over the world there, mostly young people who wanted to study at some American College and needed to learn to speak English. Since I did not speak any foreign language, English became the language to communicate between us.

I seldom practice my spoken English these days. If I went to the USA or English Canada for a week or two, it would come back quickly. It's not that I constantly search for my words, it is more a matter of the flow and common sentence structure. My sentences would sound more like written English...

 

[feejo]

lol.. so the English voice is ok with the pronounciation of French road names then? lol.

No not really, even english voice have difficulties to say McGill it will say mc gui-lle.

Cartier sound cartiere, that work shoud be prononced the way it is written

 

[Nextourer]

No not really, even english voice have difficulties to say McGill it will say mc gui-lle.

Cartier sound cartiere, that work shoud be prononced the way it is written

hahaha

I did not speak English ubtil I was 15 when my parents sent me to St Michael's College in Winooski, VT, during my summer holidays. There were people from all over the world there, mostly young people who wanted to study at some American College and needed to learn to speak English. Since I did not speak any foreign language, English became the language to communicate between us.

I seldom practice my spoken English these days. If I went to the USA or English Canada for a week or two, it would come back quickly. It's not that I constantly search for my words, it is more a matter of the flow and common sentence structure. My sentences would sound more like written English...

ahhh ok. Yeah no if I went to Qu?bec, I wouldn't be able to speak naturally. I'd still be a little slow. Need more practice!

 

[8alchemist8]

They speak backwards.....


Or maybe WE speak backwards

I feel like I'm on Church Street in Burlington around the holidays.

But hey, look at me... another New Yorker in Vermont complaining about all the out of state tourists clogging up Starbucks!!!