[TUHS] speak and speech synthesis

[Douglas McIlroy via TUHS]

Clipped consonants, not necessarily initial, were always a problem.
They made many single-word Votrax utterances unintelligible. One of my
favorite examples was
    cheek, chief, cheat, cheap
which which was essentially indistinguishable from
     cheep, cheep, cheep, cheep

Another favorite bad example was a list of composers. Failure there
was due to the pronunciation rules' ignorance of foreign names.
     Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Respighi, Tchaikowsky
came out
     Batch, Brams, Beet Oven, Ress Spy E, Chay Kowsky

Doug