Counting time to words.

Hobbes

Bit of a werid one, just wondering if something like this already exists.

I was thinking of doing something up which would create an average time per text.

For example.

"Four score and twenty years" - spoken in 4 seconds slow, 2 fast.

Is there a method of creating timing to words? I would guess that the timer would be based on the syllables but I can't think of anyway offhand to do it beyond getting some kind of dictionary?

seamus

Interesting idea. Probably requires quite a bit of pre-coding preparation though. You'd have to confirm if the length of time it takes to say a word does actually depend on the number of syllables. Maybe the length of time to say a certain syllable also depends on the no of letters in the syllable.

I'd say get the dictionary out and do an averaging over 2/3 hundred words or so, with different amounts of syllables. No doubt you'd need a mic and some sort of wave analysis software, as you'll be dealing in milliseconds for the syllable length.

Offhand, here's a URL for one of the computers lecturers here in ucd: http://cspeech.ucd.ie/~fred/ <-- he has a PhD in Linguistics and is all into speech analysis software etc..

Anyway IMO, it sounds like a good idea, but with a lot of practical research and not very much coding.