Estimating a Listener's Ability To Understand a Speaker, Based on Comparisons of Their Styles of Speech

Abstract

An automated telecommunication system adjunct is described that "listens" to one or more participants styles of speech, identifies specific characteristics that represent differences in their styles, notably the accent, but also one or more of pronunciation accuracy, speed, pitch, cadence, intonation, co-articulation, syllable emphasis, and syllable duration, and utilizes, for example, a mathematical model in which the independent measurable components of speech that can affect understandability by that specific listener are weighted appropriately and then combined into a single overall scorethat indicates the estimated ease with which the listener can understand what is being said, and presents real-time feedback to speakers based on the score. In addition, the system can provide recommendations to the speaker as to how improve understandability.

Description

technical field [0001] One exemplary aspect relates to improvements in communication. More specifically, one exemplary aspect relates to facilitating understandability between parties in a communication environment, such as a conference call. Background technique [0002] Even when two people speak the same language and are proficient in the vocabulary and grammar of that language, differences between the way they speak, for example, accent, pronunciation accuracy, prosody, phonetics, intonation, rhythm, intonation, coarticulation, syllable stress , syllable duration, etc., can affect how easily they understand each other's speech. Although these differences can occur among people who are native speakers of the same language, when a speaker's speech patterns are affected by the speaker's habit in a language other than the listener's, This problem can be particularly pronounced. Contents of the invention [0003] An interesting scenario where this happens is in an off-sh...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0002] Even when two people speak the same language and are proficient in the vocabulary and grammar of that language, differences between the way they speak, for example, accent, pronunciation accuracy, prosody, phonetics, intonation, rhythm, intonation, coarticulation, syllable stress , syllable duration, etc., can affect how easily they understand each other's speech

Although these differences can occur among people who are native speakers of the same language, when a speaker's speech patterns are affected by the speaker's habit in a language other than the listener's, This problem may be particularly evident

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