Hi,

Dave2084 wrote:Don't forget that currently we name a Road like "North High Street " as "N High St ", so if TTS pronounces N as en rather than north we will get "en High Street"

Sorry to disappoint but I have never abbreviated the first word of a street name.
We had a discussion about this last year, no? I was sure that we would not be abbreviating any street name first words bar Saint.

Worse, it looks too much like googles way of doing their street naming and thus best avoided.

Des. . .

Timbones wrote:

Kuhlkatz wrote:If they fix it for us, it might break things for the UK.

I don't think this particular issue will affect us either way.

Don't forget that currently we name a Road like "North High Street " as "N High St ", so if TTS pronounces N as en rather than north we will get "en High Street"

Timbones wrote:However, Waze have recently changed the cardinals, it seems. (N) is now pronounced "En", which isn't good for anyone.

Orit: please restore behaviour of (N) (E) (S) and (W)

Sigh ... history repeating itself. Is this the second or third time this has happened?


Orit,

As well as fixing the cardinal directions for (N) etc and taking another look at making "St." being pronounced "Saint" is there any way that TTS can parse our ramp names better?

Currently an exit ramp on a motorway (freeway) would be named something like "M1 (N) J24 Exit to A453", could the TTS system skip some of the text to just say "Junction 24 Exit to Ay Four Fifty-Three"? (Note the junction bit is optional as there are some junctions that do not use it).

Is it not possible to tie the TTS localisation to a specific country or language?

seriousarsonist wrote:I don't believe we have any N named roads in the UK, or for that matter S, W or E. You may wish to check with the Ireland crowd as they did (not sure if they still are) have N as a road prefix.

Thanks Pip - absolutely right - all major highways (ie non-motorways) are N-roads - and hearing TTS tell me to "turn left onto north four east" when I want to get onto the east-bound carriageway of the N4 is kinda annoying.

I think it would be a relatively minor tweak to the TTS - that wouldn't trouble any other part of the world - to pronounce all letters that are followed immediately by digits (with no intervening space) as that letter, rather than as a cardinal direction that just happens to have a first letter that is the same as the letter used as part of the road type.

This has been mentioned before in various other threads - so it would be great to get the TTS changed to make it behave properly in the Irish (and South Africa) cases. Others have suggested renaming all the roads here to wrap the N in quotes, but I can't imagine that 'N'4 E is going to look very good on the client.

++David \ davidg666

Timbones wrote:

orit_y wrote:In the UK, do any roads exist with such a naming (specifically N# and not N-#)?

To summarise, the answer to this specific question is no. The UK does not have any roads named N#.
[...]
Meanwhile, our friends in Ireland (but not Northern Ireland) do have N# roads.

Thanks Timbones; here in Ireland we do indeed have N# roads (and I don't really fancy having to rename all of them to 'N'# roads). The same issue exists in South Africa too, but I think they also have S# roads.

orit_y: are you in a position to sort out the TTS problem with N# roads in Ireland, or should we be campaigning elsewhere?

Neighbours in the UK: sorry for partially hijacking your thread. I (mostly) lurk on your forum (as well as the Australia and NZ forums) because you have similar road designs and also drive on the correct side of the road.

++David \ davidg666

Hi Orit,

orit_y wrote:As part of our efforts of improving the TTS feature worldwide, we encounter clashes between street-naming standards.
In this case, in South-Africa we encountered an issue that putting N in the beginning of a street name (ex: N3) it is read as "North #".

First off, UK community, sorry for blatantly hijacking this thread for 'personal gain', but this is the first opportunity to get a foot in the door

Twister_UK wrote:Given their greater level of usage elsewhere in the EU, you may already have implemented a TTS workaround for use in those countries - it might even be enabled for the UK and Ireland too and we just don't have any data to test it with yet...

As Twister_UK mentioned, a more generic approach would be likely be a long-term solution instead of a once-off country-specifc tweak matching one or two special-case criteria. Any Alpha string directly followed by a number with no spacing in between, should likely be considered being pronounced as the individual characters.

The "N1" through "N18" routes in South Africa comprises more than 7000Km of mostly dualed roads, so any tweak is preferred over us renaming or filling in a TTS override for each of the segments involved. Even though these are the major routes and we use N,R,M for National, Regional and Metropolitan routes, we also have another set of minor or secondary routes, serving mostly farming communities.
These are shorter, mostly non-paved routes between major and minor 'R' roads. They are the 'main arteries' for these communities, and unfortunately, these are all prefixed with an S like the S821.

I'm not sure if any other countries added special designations to similar naming conventions, but the Euro routes might well prove a problem in other countries. Senegal (if there any Wazers there) also seems to use the N route naming system.
Something for the interested :
Road Designation or Abbreviation and International E-Road network

Yep, I know it's Wikipedia, so this quote might well apply :

Never trust anything you read on the internet.
- Abraham Lincoln

It seems that the question in this thread originated from individual support requests from Ireland and South Africa regarding the N routes, as we all make use of the 'UK English' language sets in Waze.

If they fix it for us, it might break things for the UK.

Timbones wrote:However, Waze have recently changed the cardinals, it seems. (N) is now pronounced "En", which isn't good for anyone.

I saw your post in the general NA thread on TTS testing, which is why I think it might be language set specific vs. Country specific, hence the broken cardinals for UK.
The N1 is still pronounced as North 1, but I think I should do a quick test after clearing cache again. It might be using existing TTS files on my device.

I'll let you know.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk 2

As I thought, clearing cache now correctly announces "N1 South" and "N1 North" as "En One" South / North.
The exit I take daily from the N1 North is named "Exit 121A: R101 N Old Johannesburg Rd" and the cardinal is still correctly pronounced as North in that bit after the clear.

I'll look for segments near me that are named with the "(N)" or other bracketed cardinal directions and check TTS on them as well.

Street keeps on becoming Saint when spoken, even when formatted correctly as "St".

Road numbers need to be said as for example A1234 as "A one two three four", not "A one-thousand and thirty-four" or "A twelve thirty-four" as I keep on hearing.

Dave2084 wrote: Don't forget that currently we name a Road like "North High Street " as "N High St ", so if TTS pronounces N as en rather than north we will get "en High Street"

As it currently stands, I believe the situation is this:

"N Something St" will be pronounced "North Something Street".

"N3" will be pronounced "Enn Three".

"N3 (N)" will be pronounced "Enn Three Enn".

"N3 N" will be pronounced "Enn Three North".