MA1 - A Malay female voice for the MBROLA synthesizer

Created by :    Kow Weng Onn
                kwonn@mimos.my	
              
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Table of Contents
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1. Description of MA1 database
	a. Phonemes
2. Distribution and test
3. Acknowledgments

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1. Brief description of MA1 database
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MA1 is a Malay female diphone database provided in the
context of the MBROLA project (http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis).

It consists of 801 diphones.

MA1 database was recorded, segmented and processed by 
Kow Weng Onn (kwonn@mimos.my) at the Language Engineering Research Group
of MIMOS Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.


a. Phonemes
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The database uses SAMPA symbols to specify the phonemes.

Phoneme	 	SAMPA	Example

_		_	(silence)

[consonants]
p		p	pasang
b		b	besar
t		t	tidur
d		d	dekat
k		k	kasih
c		tS	cari
j		dZ	jarum
y		j	yang
g		g	ganti
h		h	hutan
f		f	faham
v,w		w	wira, versi
s		s	sopan
z		z	zalim
m		m	makan
n		n	nasi
r		r	roti
l		l	lekas

ng		N	ngeri
kh		H	khabar
sy		S	syabas
ny		nY	nyaman
gh		G	ghaib


[vowels]
a		V	ayah
e		@	emak
e (ay)		e	enak
e (air)		eI	ekspot
i		I	ini
o		@U	orang
o		Q	objek
u		U	untuk

ai		aI	balai
au		aU	pulau
oi		OI	amboi

Note : The eI and Q phonemes are not true Malay phonemes and
were only added to facilitate the pronounciation of borrowed
words. At the moment, there are some missing diphone pairs that
involve these 2 vowels in the database. If in doubt, use the e
and @U phonemes instead.

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2. Distribution and test
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If you have not copied the MBROLA software yet, please consult
the MBROLA project homepage (http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/synthesis).
Refer to the readme.txt file provided with the mbrola software
for using it. 

This distribution of MBROLA database contains the following files:
ma1	        :the MA1 MBROLA database
ma1.txt		:this file  
test\*.pho	:pho examples 

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3. Acknowledgments
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I would like to specially thank Baris for his help and support
when building this database and his efforts on the mbrolization
of the diphones.

Kow Weng Onn
Language Engineering Research Group
MIMOS Berhad
Technology Park Malaysia
57000 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
email: kwonn@mimos.my
tel:  + 603 89965000
