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--- |
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license: mit |
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task_categories: |
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- audio-classification |
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language: |
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- yue |
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tags: |
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- speech |
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- cantonese |
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- yue |
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- syllable |
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- pronunciation |
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pretty_name: Cantone |
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size_categories: |
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- 10K<n<100K |
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--- |
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# Cantone |
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A dataset of 34,489 recordings of Cantonese syllables by 10 speakers. |
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Those syllables are generated through the Cantonese speech synthesis engines of Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft. |
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All recordings are stored as WAV files with the following format |
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* Channel: mono |
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* Sample rate: 16 kHz |
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* Bits per sample: 16 |
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Here's a breakdown of the number of recordings under each speaker: |
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| Company | Speaker | # Syllables | |
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| --------|-------- | -------- | |
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| Amazon | Hiujin | 3,885 | |
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| Apple | Aasing | 2,977 | |
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| Apple | Sinji | 2,977 | |
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| Google | A | 3,653 | |
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| Google | B | 3,653 | |
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| Google | C | 3,653 | |
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| Google | D | 3,653 | |
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| Microsoft | Hiugaai | 3,349 | |
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| Microsoft | Hiumaan | 3,349 | |
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| Microsoft | Wanlung | 3,349 | |
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## Dataset Construction |
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1. Gathering |
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We first identified 3,904 common Cantonese syllables based on words.hk's syllable recordings. |
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The, we ask the speech synthesis APIs to pronounce each of the syllables. |
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The queries use SSML's phoneme attribute to precisely specify the syllable we want. Here's a sample SSML query that fetches the syllable jyut6: |
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```xml |
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<speak><phoneme alphabet='jyutping' ph='jyut6'></phoneme></speak> |
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``` |
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Apple voices are gathered using jyutping text directly and a native Cantonese ASR system is used to filter out unsupported syllables. |
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2. Preprocessing |
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* All audios are converted to 16kHz WAV files |
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* Peak normalize all audios to -20 dBFS |
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* Clip silence at the beginning and end (sound below -50 dBFS are deemed silence) |
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3. Verification |
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Occassionally, some syllables are not synthesized correctly. |
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* Apple voices usually renders tone 5 syllables as tone 2: we remove all tone 5 syllables from apple voices |
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* Microsoft voices prepends consonants like ng, g, and b in front of isolate vowel syllables like aa: we remove all vowel syllables from microsoft voices |
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## License |
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MIT |
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