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