2 <b>SpeakGoodChinese (shuo1 hao3 zhong1 wen2)</b>
6 <big><b>Manual</b></big>
10 The SpeakGoodChinese tone recognizer tries to help you to practise to pronounce mandarin tones in a "normal" voice. It tries to recognize what tones you said assuming that you pronounced the requested words in a normal voice. It will warn you if you speak with a voice that is either too low, too high, if you exaggerate the tone melodies or reduce them too much (flat tones).
14 The abilities of the tone recognizer are limited. It will only work reliably if you pronounce the requested words in a normal voice. You should also practise in silent surroundings using a low noise microphone. It also helps to check the settings of the audio-mixer to ensure that your voice is neither recorded too loud (clipped sounds) or too soft (very noisy).
18 Recognizing errors is always difficult. SpeakGoodChinese is no exception to this rule. Therefore, accepting or rejecting your pronunciation as correct will be much more accurate than determining what exactly you did wrong. If SpeakGoodChinese informs you that it rejected your pronunciation, you should always look at the recognition result, the feedback and the graphical display of your tone contours. It also helps to look at how your tones were pronounced when they are correct.
30 In the top part of the display, you see a graphical model of the melody, or pitch, of the requested tones in black. After you have recorded your own pronunciation of the word, the melody of your voice is displayed in red. If your voice is to high or low, you might consider changing the base register of your voice in the Voice menu.
38 On the display, you will find the pinyin transcription of the requested word. After you have recorded your own pronunciation, this will be replaced by the recognition result. In some cases, the tones could not be recognized, and you will see question marks (?) instead. The advice will try to explain what happened. Note that SpeakGoodChinese is better at recognizing correct tones than specifying what exactly went wrong, especially if the melody of your voice could not be determined accurately. So we advice you to always look at the red tone contour to see what happened.
46 After your own speech has been recognized, you will find the result printed out below the recognition result.
58 Record your voice. You get 2 seconds to speak the requested word. SpeakGoodChinese does not work well if there is background noise. Also, some microphones can add a lot of noise, which could interfere with recognition. The tone recognizer assumes you try to speak the requested word. If you pronounce a different word, the results are unpredictable. In some cases, a wrongly pronounced word can be recognized as correct erroneously. SpeakGoodChinese will try to isolate the word you speak from other sounds. This means that if you pause between syllables, either syllable might be cut off the word and you end up with only a single syllable. In this case, the results of the recognition will be completely random.
66 Replay the recorded sound.
74 Play an example of the requested sound. In the Play menu, you can choose whether to play hummed tones, or existing recordings.
82 Go to the previous item on the list.
90 Go to the next item on the list
102 <i>not functional yet</i>
103 Quit - Stop application
115 Play an example before you Record
119 <i>Mandarin</i> - Play an existing example
123 <i>Hum</i> - Generate a hummed contour
131 The example played after pushing the Example button
135 <i>Mandarin</i> - Play a pre-recorded example or resynthesize the last the correct tones (if available)
139 <i>Hum</i> - Generate a hummed contour
147 You must choose what type of voice you have. Basically, if you often get "Too Low" or "Too High" messages, you might want to raise or lower the indicated register. You can always look at the display and try to find a voice register that makes your own voice (red line) match the Reference Pitch (black line) best. The frequency (in Hz) indicated is always the ideal frequency of the first tone.
151 <i>Male (150Hz)</i> - Low range male
155 <i>Male (200Hz)</i> - Mid range male
159 <i>Female (300Hz)</i> - Mid range female
163 <i>Child (450Hz)</i> - High pitch voice, children
171 <i>Add+</i> - Add a word to the list
180 <i>About</i> - About the SpeakGoodChinese application