Hi all,
Just a heads-up, Waze have applied a fix to the TTS engine to solve the “N1” -> “North One” issue. “N1” is now correctly pronounced as “Enn One”. However, as a result of this change, “N1 (N)” is now pronounced as “Enn One Enn”; in order to achieve the correct pronunciation, we need to use the style the other countries use: “N1 N”. I’m not really sure if there’s anything to discuss here, but I guess this needs to be included in the new wiki page or whatever the result of the currently-ongoing standards discussion is.
I think they might revert it again, as requested in the Your Help,UK Text to Speech (TTS) thread.
I still had the old cached announcements, and tested it after Timbones commented the the “(N)” broken for UK by clearing cache. So, as I suspected, it broke other functionality. As discussed in the general Test of Text-to-Speech (TTS) Abbreviations in Waze Clients thread in map editing, the ‘N’ naming convention using single quotes seems to correctly pronounce it as ‘Enn’, but I hardly think renaming 7000km+ of mostly dualed roads is a good solution.
Glad you confirmed this, as I have no (N) named roads near me, and would only be able to test with the segments near Woodmead and surrounds.
Do we have any localization experts that can confirm if SA English is closest to UK English or US English ? I have always thought that UK English is most appropriate.
Waze defaults to English, but I always set mine to UK English, so I’m not sure this will be visbile to everyone or affect everyone.
For TTS, only your choice of voice matters, and for this we only get the option to use the UK voices (Daniel and Serena). The other setting is client interface localization, I believe.
Regarding the cardinal, there is no need to delimit it, “N1 N” should work just fine. Anyhow, I’ll be waiting to see if they revert it or change it further before I change any road naming.
Agreed on the TTS, but the General Language should actually match that, as it likely affects searches etc. I’m not sure how Waze uses the primary language settings. Android does support SA English.
There is currently a mix of naming conventions, using ‘N1 (N)’, ‘N1 North’ and ‘N1 N’. The space occupied by N vs North on the N roads should not affect client visiblity, so it might be an option to name them using the full cardinal direction. At least this way ‘tweaks’ in future should not break that part, but still, it’s a fair stretch to rename.
I’d prefer that they fix this in code without breaking anything else for us or the rest of the UK.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “client visibility”. “N1 North” takes up significantly more room onscreen than “N1 N”, which is why I’ve always been vehemently against road naming with unabbreviated cardinals.
Compare that to something like ‘Albertina Sisulu Freeway (Direction)’ and I’d say it’s not that long.
Still, I agree to wait and see what happens wrt to the fix. We are advocating to use the shorter naming conventions overall.
For reference, the US convention would be to label it “N1 N” whereas the UK convention would be “N1 (N)” (so they’ll definitely have to do something about it for the UK guys).
Ours in the UK was specifically agreed upon to not violate any other possible combinations for TTS, hence the brackets.
No idea who requested the change that messed it up. I do agree SA is a lot closer to UK (proper) English than US 
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That would probably be our fault
The change was meant to fix the problem that “N1” here (our national highways are labelled N1 through N21) was pronounced as “North One” instead of “Enn One”. Obviously the change had some unintended consequences; I’m guessing what they did is make “N” followed by a space expand to “North”, but make “N” followed by a non-space character stay as “N”.
I do not think it affects all non-spaced N directions.
A section of the R101 is named “Old Johannesburg Rd (R101 N)” and that was pronounced fine yesterday as “R101 North” after I cleared the cache.
But it has a bracket next to it. Perhaps Waze don’t know about the TTS system or it can’t accept certain rules?
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I think we all would love to get some insight on the rules that they apply. If “Nxxx” is now spoken as “Enn xxx” and was the only ‘fix’, it should only apply to certain positioning within the name string, like it being at the start. If not, it would still not explain why “(N)” in the middle of the name is now broken and “<space>N)” is not, even if both have other text immediately following after the N. The <space> is likely the factor here.
Some info from Waze might actually help us to help them, instead of breaking other goodies while trying to fix seemingly trivial bugs. Quick ‘workarounds’ always tend to bite you in butt later down the line.
I hope that the new Localization forum section would be dedicated to discussion of this sort of thing, and getting Language support expanded.
Indeed. Perhaps if Waze allowed some kind of testing platform on their Vocalizer or access to some kind of rules file, we’d all be able to sit down and work it out.
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I just got another response from Waze support; they claim that “N1 (N)” should now be pronounced correctly (ie. “Enn One North”). I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, will report back once I do.
Tristan, were you able to test ?
I do not normally travel on the Western bypass which is/was named “N1 (N)” and “N1 (S)”, but it’s not far from me, so can check it on my way home tonight. Elphix might have renamed some, but I can also check on the N3, which is still named as such.
I’m not sure the UK chaps would have noticed if this is fixed or not their side, as the cached TTS files are not always replaced once they are on the device, especially if the map segments themselves did not change.
I’ll flush the TTS folder and test tomorrow.
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Search code ‘cc@tts’ will clear your TTS cache.
Incidentally, in the UK “High St N” and “High St (N)” have different meanings, but are read (almost) the same by TTS. The later has a slight pause, and is for the cardinal direction.
Hopefully, no longer an issue 
via mobile
Didn’t know there was a difference except dual/motorway vs other roads.
Cheers for the code Tim
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I have tested this now and “N1 (N)” is working fine.
SO must we be renaming the roads - Most have the direction spelled out in full