Welsh talking computer

Welsh General / Questions
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This is my first post so give me a bit of leway :slightly_smiling_face:

During my learning i found myself using Google translate… (and it’s rubbish…)
but i was using it mainly just to get pronunciations on words I didnt know or couldnt read…

But that silly robot voice is a waste of space…

I looked around to see if anything better existed and i got onto the trail of the Ivona Gwyneth voice which im sure a lot will know about…

But when i went to download it (as a lot said it was free) i saw that they had been bought out by Amozon and now it isnt available… I spent all night looking around and I found this…

The Welsh version of Gwyneth, for download and a free 30 day trial…

https://harposoftware.com/en/welsh/145-gwyneth-cy-welsh-voice.html?search_query=gwyneth&results=4

The English Gwynedd is here -

https://harposoftware.com/en/english-wales/92-s2g-en-gwyneth.html?search_query=gwyneth&results=4

These are legit free trails - no pirate stuff…

Also you have no need of their reading software -

I tried several readers… Balabolka is a free one that works just like ‘Text aloud’

But my prefered was this… Read4me - which is really just a clipboard reader…and it’s free and very small

so no need to copy paste text into it, you just have to quick select text.
works in any application

If you look at the pics you can see that you can set keys to speak different voices.
So now if i have a page in English or Welsh i only have to sweep the text to select it and hit ctl-E or ctl-W for it to read it to me in either english (with a lovely Welsh accent) or in Welsh with far better pronunciation than Googles r2d2…

Hope thats of help to someone…

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Wow that is quite a first post @john-johnson - most people say hello! :smile:

Welcome to the forum l!

That sounds very interesting - I will check it out later - thank you.

Rich :slight_smile:

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I had to use that Ivona voice for an online project I was working on once. I found that I could manipulate the way it pronounced words by deliberately misspelling them, which was fun! I displayed the correct spelling, but gave Ivona the misspelt version and I could get it to sound a lot more realistic. I guess the volunteers behind Duolingo don’t have the time for that … or if they could afford to do that, they could probably record a real person speaking instead of using a computer voice.

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Thanks Rich…

I was allways taught when you go to someones house take a pint of milk or a packet of biscuits as a courtesy :grinning:

So i wanted to share what i’d found so far.

Ive found it usefull for just picking a word to remind me of how to pronounce it…
but also as i’m not speaking to anyone else… at least i can use that to get practice listening to stuff, and i can slow it down a bit if it gets a bit complicated.

It’s just that i saw a post on the duo lingo forums as to how many people were disappointed that they couldnt get it anymore…

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Thanks @Deborah-SSi

My upstairs neighbor is a did it at school and can remember a bit type of speaker, and when she visits i can just say “How do i say that”… but when im on my own im a bit stuck, and this has been really handy for that… Cant wait for the day i can uninstall it when i dont need it anymore :grinning:

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Thank you for this, really interesting. I will check it all out later.
In the past just for words or short phrases I have used ‘Forvo.’ It’s possible to just log on and leave a message for pronunciation and real people record the word for you. I like the fact that they are Welsh speakers but sometimes they take a day on two to come back.

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