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Post by GizmoGuy411
jhfrontz reported to me that a street, called "Sulgrave Dr" was being pronounced "Sulgrace Dee Are" instead of "Sulgrave Drive".

I created two test roads with that name. One I cut and pasted the name directly from the original road, and the other I manually entered the name.

I finally got around to listening to the TTS, and my test roads produce the same results.

By coincidence, I also just discovered a road by the same name, on the other side of town from me. I'll have to drive it and see if it also produces the same results.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
GizmoGuy411 wrote:jhfrontz reported to me that a street, called "Sulgrave Dr" was being pronounced "Sulgrace Dee Are" instead of "Sulgrave Drive".
I've had TTS do this to Dr before too, but then with the same segment two minutes later on a return trip, pronounced it as "drive."
Well that does not bode well for testing!

And every segment of my local "Sulgrave Dr" has the same problem as our test roads, they are pronounced "Sulgrave Dee Are". I renamed them from "Dr" to "Drive" for now.

A quick search with Google found a number of roads with this name around the country. Renaming them all might be a nice labor of love for someone who would like taking on such a task!

And just in case anyone has a desire to know where this name came from, here is probably where:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulgrave
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Post by GizmoGuy411
vectorspace wrote:I'm sorry for posting this so late, but have been occupied with other things. I looked at the first post with the link to the document and didn't see a couple of things. I might have missed some.

Obvious:
== Cll (or CLL) is used all over NM for Calle (Street in Spanish). While Calle was in the first post spreadsheet, someone seemed to suggest "C" represent it. That seems too simple and might lead to confusion.

Indian Reservations:

I posted some of this on other threads I believe---that western US states especially have a lot of Indian reservations.

== Indian Service Route --or-- Indian Service Rte --or-- Indian Svc Rte

It would be nice to have ISR be placed in the TTS. This is relatively common. If there is some other standard, I don't care what it is. I am just worried that Indian reservations are under represented.

== Navajo Service Route --or-- other variant per above

This is less common, but I would imagine that each Indian tribe reservation may have their tribe name on some of these roads. While one could suggest NSR, I would wonder how many other tribes have special names. In New Mexico, it seems most tribes use the Indian Service Rte (or Route) on the map, but we have a large population of Navajos, so they may get special treatment.

== Indian Road

I have no idea if it is worth putting this in the mix, but have seen it a bit as well.

I agree that "C" is too simple of an abbreviation for "Calle".

At the moment however we are hesitating from making any more actual suggestions until we actually learn more about what is already recognized.

Since as you point out "Cll" and CLL" is commonly used for "Calle", I'll be sure to add those to the test list.

I was not entirely clear on your other suggestions however. Can you clarify which abbreviations are currently in use? I'll add them to the test list. I will also add any suggestions that you may not have actually seen on signs, but feel are likely being used. If you could check other mapping services, including state government sites, it may be helpful. I had no luck with a Google search nor in Wikipedia.

Later we can start making suggestions for abbreviation changes. That also probably also need an entire new forum thread to handle.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
Alice2 wrote:I just discovered how TTS treats one of the exits and streets here. On printed maps, the street is written as UTSA Blvd. The Waze map has it as Utsa Blvd. It is supposed to be pronounced as 'you tea ess aaa' sounding out each letter. TTS tries to say the name as a word - "ootsa Blvd". The exit signs for this street have it as 'UTSA Blvd / University of Texas at San Antonio', and TTS announces "ootsa Blvd / University of Texas at San Antonio". I see in this thread that to be pronounced as letters, they should be written as lower case surrounded by single quotes. That would probably look awkward -- 'u' 't' 's' 'a' -- and unmanageable if you have to write it very many times. How should this be handled to get the right announcement?

Since there is an "s" in name there is no was to just use spaces between the letters as "s" is currently the abbreviation for "South". And you are right that using the letters surrounded by single quotes would look awkward when displayed in the client.

Using U T 's' A would not be much better, although it would probably sound correct.

I'm afraid until we get that exception field that mapcat mentioned, the only way to handle it is to just spell it out.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
AndyPoms wrote:I can report that "Arpt" in Hartford, CT says "Airport" in TTS... I drove these ramps all the time... (Permalink & Permalink as well as a few other ramps in the area)
Ick... what a crappy abbreviation! Never would have thought of that one.

It is added to the list.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
xteejx wrote:Any chance we can have Saint back the way it was, ie St at the start. Annoying work if we have to change them all!

Sent from my GT-I9100P using Tapatalk 2
Just to be clear, we have not requested any change in the way it currently works. Others have reported in the past that they have seen inconsistent results, including the same road being pronounced different at different times.

And as many of us have said before, positional abbreviation awareness is a bad idea. We would much prefer using the period for "St." to be Saint, "St" to be Street, "Dr." to be Doctor, and "Dr" to be Drive as examples.

The "Sulgrave Dr" being pronounced as "Sulgrave Doctor" issue (see previous posts) is probably another example of why we don't want positional abbreviation awareness! (This could also be a specific exception rule that Waze used for some reason, and not a positional awareness issue.)

xteejx wrote:So we have to change everything? I'll let our lot know :'-(

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I would hesitate doing that for now. We have not made any suggestions to Waze for changes yet, and we have no idea which if any they will make or even can make.

While we know they have a tool to create specific exceptions, the TTS package is a delivered product from Nuance and they may be the ones who will need to make the changes we suggest and not Waze.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
The latest list contains several changes suggested by Wazers in the last couple of weeks.

Airport=Arpt was added.

Penn for Pennsylvania was moved from the main list to the State abbreviation list where it belongs, along with other alternate state abbreviations. Yes we definitely want it removed from the TTS! While in the State list, I also added a link for alternate State abbreviations and another for Canadian Providences that we should pull from to add to the list in the future.

vectorspace has done some good research on abbreviations that should be considered for our western States. The following were added to the list:

Bureau of Indian Affairs=BIA
Calle=Cll
Camino=Cam
Grande=? (no suggested abbreviations were found yet)
Indian Service Route=ISR
Service=Serv
Service=Svc
Valle=Vll
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Post by GizmoGuy411
mapcat wrote:Is it essential to have TTS say "Bureau of Indian Affairs Thirteen" for that road? What's wrong with calling it "be eye ay thirteen"? Or would TTS call that "by-ah thirteen" instead?
I would think that the letters "BIA" would be fine if the TTS results were predictable for letters. However even when all caps are used, results can be either the letters spoken or an attempt to make it a word. Adding spaces works with exception of the N E S W letters which result in the cardinal directions. So "B I A" should work for now at least. I suppose I should add a test for "B.I.A." too, so as to match the signage.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
AlanOfTheBerg wrote:
GizmoGuy411 wrote:..."bee eye aye" ...
FYI, in my area of the country "eye" and "aye" are both pronounced the same. :lol:

Phonetic representation of that would be "eɪ" as in "say," but that makes me realize there is no real easy was to represent vowel-only sounds without resorting to "as in" or using the phonetic characters.
Just checked to see what phonetic representations I used in the list for the letters, and even they could get pronounced differently by various English speakers. Not sure where I even found them at the moment.
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Post by GizmoGuy411
jemay wrote:Another example abbreviation problems...

Type: General error
Description: voice calls this "west avenue north" but it is "west avenue N"
Reported on: Yesterday

N is the letter of the street (A,B,C,...L,M,N,O) So it is not North.... So what do I do with the request UR

https://www.waze.com/editor/?zoom=4&lat ... FTTTTTTTFT

Thanks
Unfortunately there is only one solution at the moment, and that is to rename the road [West Avenue 'n']. You could also name it [W Ave 'n'] however I would opt to be as close to however the local signage displays it.

Note that 'N' will not work, only a lower case 'n' works so far that we have found for TTS to actually pronounce the letter instead of the cardinal direction. So same holds, 'e', 's', and 'w'.
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