Can speech synthesisers speak other languages?

[steve]

I have been reading threads about speech synthesisers today.
They mostly seem to use the SPO 256AL2 chip which uses English allophones (maybe with an American or Japanese accent ), so I wonder how closely they can reproduce the words of other languages, to be honest I have difficulty understanding them when they are supposed to be speaking English .

[TotO]

MEA8000 perfectly speech french!
May be it can speak english fine if someone can found the phoneme floppies add-on...
(Techni-musique)

[TFM]

The T-888 speaks 65536 languages, but donesn't like humans much.

[steve]

We have software with text in other languages, so I wondered if there is any point in offering "hooks" in programs to allow users to load their own phoneme strings.

[TFM]

You should be able to do it in software. There are at least software solutions for the CPC speaking English.

[steve]

But my question was "are the allophones in the SPO256AL2 suitable for other European languages".

[Bryce]

The Allophones in the SPO256 are pretty general. I've got my DKTronics Synth to produce pretty accurate French and German too.

Bryce.

[steve]

OK, Thanks.

[Gryzor]

Yeah - try it in Greek, no soap.