Voices in Hindi on Mac OS X (or Mac OS 9)

Paul P · 03-31-2007, 01:22 AM

Greetings all,

I have a Wallstreet PowerBook which I’ve set up for my son with two different partitions - one for OS 9, one for OS X. He is keen to be able to type numbers on his computer, and then have the computer speak the numbers back to him. As my wife is Indian, and as I have World Text installed, he likes typing the numbers in Hindi (well actually, the written form of Hindi, which can be Punjabi, Gujurati, etc.). I know the computer can speak numbers and text in English, but I cannot find any way to obtain voices in Hindi, or its variations.

I don’t know if this is even possible, be it with OS X itself, or a 3rd party app. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Paul

TheOneEyed Hobo · 03-31-2007, 01:35 PM

As far as I know, you can't. However, I would look for a third-party app like you said. Your best bet would probably be some kind of teach-yourself-Hindi software that also has a feature like that.

-Reese Hyde
The One-Eyed Hobo

macosnoob · 04-01-2007, 09:53 PM

A flash card program that supports audio input/output might do the trick, especially if you need only numbers or have a limited vocabulary list. You would have to train the program, though your son might get a kick out of hearing your voice (or even his own) saying the numbers back to him when he has spelled a word successfully.

I did a bit of experimenting with some freeware called ProVoc. It seems to support any Unicode you can throw at it--or at least it successfully distinguished one group of Devanagari characters (entered one by one, from the Character Palette) as "right" and another as "wrong" once I had trained it to think one arbitrary group of Devanagari characters was "one" and another arbitrary group "two," etc.

http://www.arizona-software.ch/applications/provoc/en/

Paul P · 04-01-2007, 10:44 PM

Many thanks to both macosnoob + The One Eyed Hobo. I will look into the suggestions you have both made and see how I go.

If anyone else out there has any other ideas, please let me know.

Thanks Again.

Paul

03-31-2007, 01:22 AM	#1
Paul P Triple-A Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 94	Voices in Hindi on Mac OS X (or Mac OS 9) Greetings all, I have a Wallstreet PowerBook which I’ve set up for my son with two different partitions - one for OS 9, one for OS X. He is keen to be able to type numbers on his computer, and then have the computer speak the numbers back to him. As my wife is Indian, and as I have World Text installed, he likes typing the numbers in Hindi (well actually, the written form of Hindi, which can be Punjabi, Gujurati, etc.). I know the computer can speak numbers and text in English, but I cannot find any way to obtain voices in Hindi, or its variations. I don’t know if this is even possible, be it with OS X itself, or a 3rd party app. Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance. Paul Last edited by Paul P; 03-31-2007 at 05:28 PM.

03-31-2007, 01:35 PM	#2
TheOneEyed Hobo Triple-A Player Join Date: Apr 2006 Posts: 81	As far as I know, you can't. However, I would look for a third-party app like you said. Your best bet would probably be some kind of teach-yourself-Hindi software that also has a feature like that. -Reese Hyde The One-Eyed Hobo __________________ eMac G4: 1GHz w/768MB iBook G4:1.46GHz w/768MB PowerBook: 1.67GHz w/512MB email: reesehyde@gmail.com AIM: oneeyedhobo

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04-01-2007, 09:53 PM	#3
macosnoob MVP Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 1,751	A flash card program that supports audio input/output might do the trick, especially if you need only numbers or have a limited vocabulary list. You would have to train the program, though your son might get a kick out of hearing your voice (or even his own) saying the numbers back to him when he has spelled a word successfully. I did a bit of experimenting with some freeware called ProVoc. It seems to support any Unicode you can throw at it--or at least it successfully distinguished one group of Devanagari characters (entered one by one, from the Character Palette) as "right" and another as "wrong" once I had trained it to think one arbitrary group of Devanagari characters was "one" and another arbitrary group "two," etc. http://www.arizona-software.ch/applications/provoc/en/

04-01-2007, 10:44 PM	#4
Paul P Triple-A Player Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Sydney Australia Posts: 94	Many thanks to both macosnoob + The One Eyed Hobo. I will look into the suggestions you have both made and see how I go. If anyone else out there has any other ideas, please let me know. Thanks Again. Paul