Taiwanese Text to Speech Mispronounces Some Words, Including "Shen2 me".

[Plecocalypse]

Some of these are easier to reproduce than others. I've noticed three or four errors so far although only one is easily reproducible, another not so easy and the other one I forgot what it is now sorry

I think most significantly, shen2 me (what?) is being consistently pronounced as shi2 yao1 which I am pretty sure is an error. I've been studying Mandarin on and off in Taiwan for almost a year now and don't believe I've ever heard anyone say shi2 yao1.

The other error I noticed is that some words that start with da4 (big) as a component will not pronounce correctly although if da4 is by itself the error doesn't seem to happen.

Hopefully someone can test this and fix the error if they can get it to reproduce. Thanks!

 

[mikelove]

Are you using Pleco in simplified character mode? The Taiwan voice assumes you're reading traditional text (which I suppose is not surprising given the attitude we hear from many Taiwan-based users about simplified characters), in which 什 would usually be read shi2 and 么 usually yao1. But I suppose at least with example sentences (where we know the correct traditional equivalent) it would make sense to pass it the traditional version instead.

 

[Plecocalypse]

I think I am using traditional character mode, I forced it in the flashcards and they come up with traditional characters first in the dictionary although sometimes I see another character in brackets [] next to those in the dictionary. Those may be simplified characters and I'm not sure how to turn them off in the dictionary although some people helped me turn them off in the flashcard mode.

So if there is a way to turn off all simplified characters in the dictionary mode I hope someone can tell me, it might solve my issue.

That does explain why she's saying shi2 yao1 but I do think it would be nice if you changed it, assuming this isn't an error on my side. I am trying to find a good way to work on my chinese pronunciation in lieu of being able to read a lot of characters and even materials in Taiwan sometimes defer to the standard mandarin pronunciation which is not as useful to me, so I am imitating pleco's taiwanese synthesizer and I think it is helping a bit, although the nuances of Taiwanese mandarin (like the usually dropped h's among other things) aren't in the synthesizer, it is still more similar to how they talk than other similar products have been so I think it's helping me a bit.

 

[mikelove]

Is traditional mode turned on in Settings / Language? Are you doing this with example sentences or somewhere else in Pleco?