Help understanding TTS pronunciation differences

[u/lannfonntann]

Hi,

A bit of background - I use Google's Wavenet Text-to-Speech to aid in my language learning (for other languages).

I have very little knowledge of Arabic as I'm just starting out.

I am giving the TTS a try for Arabic, but I'm a bit confused. This is my example sentence:

أنا آكل التفاحة

When Google pronounces this sentence, it has a -da/-ta sound at the end.

However, when I got a native Arabic speaker to pronounce this sentence, she pronounced it without this sound.

So one sounds like "Ana akulu at-tuffaha ta" and the other sounds like "Ana akulu at-tuffaha"

I asked ChatGPT and it said that the -da/-ta sound is related to formal vs informal speech. Is that right?

Please could you explain why Google gives me the "-da/-ta" pronunciation? Is there anything I could do to make it give me the other pronunciation? Or is this just something that it's not able to do properly?

The pronunciation can be heard here https://translate.google.co.uk/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%D8%A3%D9%86%D8%A7%20%D8%A2%D9%83%D9%84%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%AD%D8%A9.&op=translate

Thank you

[u/Dyphault]

the ـة sound is pronounced like a fatha except when in idafa construction. In the example you gave, that is not idafa.

[u/lannfonntann → u/Dyphault]

Sorry, these terms are new to me as I'm still learning. So does that mean the TTS pronunciation is incorrect and it isn't able to process the pronunciation correctly?

[u/Dyphault → u/lannfonntann]

Sorry i don’t mean to info dump! idafa is a concept you should watch some videos of, its a genetive construction meaning like posessive. for example in english we have the ‘s to show posession. The teacher’s apple. Or you could also say the apple of the teacher. The latter is how Arabic does genetives (posessives) and in those constructions: تفاحة المعلم the ta marbouta (ة) makes a [t] sound instead of a fatha [a] sound.

tufaHat ilmu3alam instead of tufaHa ilmu3alam.

In general I am always skeptical of computer systems for pronunciation or grammar advice. I have not used a TTS system for how to pronounce stuff, I either watch videos and observe things in that or I chat with family and friends who can directly give me examples and help me understand

[u/lannfonntann → u/Dyphault]

Oh, that's interesting thank you - I will look it up.

Okay, maybe that's what I'll have to rely on instead then. I've found it's been pretty good for some other languges but maybe it's not so good at Arabic. Thanks for the help.

[u/Dyphault → u/lannfonntann]

yeah its unfortunate Arabic hasn’t had much love in terms of dedicated community bases building tools for learning the language.

[u/lannfonntann → u/Dyphault]

To be fair, I passed the sentence through the TTS software on narakeet.com, and it pronounced it fine, so maybe it's just something weird with Google.

[u/Hour-Swim4747 → u/Dyphault]

This is incorrect. Where did you get this information? The ﺔ in التفاحة is only pronounced with a fatha because it is in the accusative case, being the object of the verb آكل. Otherwise it would be in the nominative case and be pronounced with a dammah.

[u/lannfonntann]

I had a go with Amazon Polly and that is pronouncing the sentence more like the native speaker, so I suspect it's a Google specific problem, but I will make sure to check any results with native speakers going forwards.

[u/Hour-Swim4747]

Let's look at the sentence - أنا آكل التفاحة

anā ākul(u) [a]t-tuffahat(a)

*( ) represents grammatical case marker, [ ] represents silent letter

The (a) sound in at-tuffahat(a) shows the word is in the accusative case. It is in the accusative case because it is the object of the verb آكل.

Usually in spoken MSA, the grammatical case marker of the last word of the sentence isn't pronounced. It's not compulsory to not pronounce it but this is almost always what happens. This is called the rule of waqf.

So applying this, the sentence then becomes

anā ākul(u) [a]t-tuffahat

But wait, notice that the letter ت at the end of the sentence is a [ﺔ] , which is a taa marbutah. If a taa marbutah is at the end of a sentence and you don't pronounce the grammatical case marker, you have to pronounce it like the letter haa [ه]

After all this, the sentence is finally pronounced as -

anā ākul(u) [a]t-tuffahah

TL;DR: It's not really formal vs informal Arabic because even formal Arabic does this. But Google Translate pronounced it correct, using the grammatical case markers. Your friend also pronounced it correctly since he/she applied the rule of waqf.

Hope this helps!

[u/lannfonntann → u/Hour-Swim4747]

Brilliant, thank you for the detailled explanation!