Speech Synthesis:
Pronunciation

deɪzi deɪzi
gɪv mi jər ænsər du

aɪm hæf kreɪzi ənd
ɔl fər ðə ləv əv ju

ɪt woʊnt bi ə staɪlɪ∫ merɪdʒ
aɪ kænt əfɔrd ə kerɪʒ

bət jul lʊk swit
əpɔn ðə sit əv ə

baɪsɪkəl bɪlt fər tu

Pronunciation

Experienced phoneticists are able simply to look at a text and transcribe its phonetic equivalent. If one does not have that skill, there are pronunciation keys at websites such as worldwidewords.org and wiktionary.org. Another alternative is to find online tools for automatic phonetic transcription.

I found such a tool at learn-foreign-language-phonetics.com, typed in the lyrics to “Daisy Bell”, and obtained the result shown in Listing 3. The site also provides indicators for tonic accents and long vowel durations. These features would be very relevant had we been setting the lyric to a new melody; however we already have a melody in hand. I have therefore deleted the accent and duration indicators from Listing 3.

The color coding in Listing 3 is mine, and its purpose is to identify different categories of phoneme. These phoneme categories are:

• Green: Vowels and Diphthongs — Iteration #2,
• Blue: Glides and Liquids — Iteration #3,
• Brown: Nasals — Iteration #4,
• Magenta: Fricatives — Iteration #5,
• Red: Plosives — Iteration #6.

Next topic: Vowels and Diphthongs