release 0.2 - June 00 -------------------------------------------------------------- A Mäori male voice for the MBROLA synthesizer -------------------------------------------------------------- 1.0 Description of the Maori diphone database -------------------------------------------------------------- MBF is the SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics) language code for New Zealand Mäori. The Mäori diphone database consists of 230 diphones, recorded from a native male speaker of Mäori. Maori diphones (d0.raw to d229.raw) export.dat (label file) readme.txt (this file) Mäori orthographic representation is associated with the Austronesian or Malayo-Polynesian languages. The phonemic unit number is very small by comparison to English. Vowels: There are five distinct phonemic vowel sounds in Mäori. Vowel length can be short or long and so there are five long vowels which correspond to twice the length of the five short vowels. Therefore there are 10 vowel phonemes in pairs. Short /a/ /e/ /i/ /o/ /u/ and long /a:/ /e:/ /i:/ /o:/ /u:/. The presently accepted orthographic representation for the long vowel is by the use of a macron (eg. /ä/ /ë/ /ï/ /ö/ /ü/) but some still use the double short vowel to represent the long vowels (eg. /aa/ /ee/). NB: If the font used to read this document does not contain the macron characters, then an umlaut will be the default. SAMPA Mäori Translation Transcription i pipi clam pipi ii pïpï chick piipii e keke cake keke ee këkë armpit keekee A kaka clothes kAkA AA käkä parrot kAAkAA o koko scoop koko oo kökö bellbird kookoo u ruru owl ruru uu rürü handshake ruuruu Consonants: There are ten Mäori consonant phonemes, consisting of three plosives /p/ /t/ /k/, two fricatives /h/ /f/, three nasals /m/ /n/ /N/, one liquid /r/ and one semivowel glide /w/. Note that two consonants have orthographic symbols with two Roman letters, where /f/ is represented by 'wh' and /N/ for 'ng'. SAMPA Mäori Translation Transcription p poaka pig poAkA t tëpu table teepu k kuri dog kuri h haka dance hAkA f whare house fAre m motokä motor car motokAA n noho sit noho N ngutu lips Nutu r ringa hand riNA w wahine woman wAhine Phonotactics: Consonants can only appear in word-initial and word-content positions, they cannot appear as word-final or in clusters within words. Vowels can occur in all three positions, and in multiple clusters. A Mäori word must therefore always end with a vowel, but few appear in the word-initial position in comparison to consonants. For example, (C)V, where C is optional. All number of combinations of short and long vowels can appear in Mäori, how these are realised is based on syllabic structure: vowel length, morpheme boundaries, identical and non-identical pairs of vowels: monothongs and diphthongs, and also whether used in casual or formal speech. Mark R. Laws - Maaka. Knowledge Engineering Laboratory - KEL. Information Science Dept - Rorohiko Whai Ki Aho-Putaiao. University of Otago - Te Whare Wananga o Otakou. P.O.Box 56, Dunedin - Otepoti. New Zealand - Aotearoa. Phone: 64 3 479-8316 Facsimile: 64 3 479-8311 Cellular: 021 252-0858 URL: http://kel.otago.ac.nz/maaka/ EMail: --------------------------------------------------------------