Microsoft Sam

[bot47]

Hm, btw, since I'm not a native speaker: You all (should) know the Microsoft TTS-engine. What kind of English is it speaking? British? American?

[pear_eater]

[quote="bot47":145a876cfe]
What kind of English is it speaking? British? American?
[/quote:145a876cfe]

It can be configured for either one.

[bot47]

Not with my windows.

[Alex]

You probably need to install other languages

[mikeazorin]

IMOM, Sam has fairly poor voice emulation, especially compared to the voices that can be found on OS X. I think Sam is set to American by default.

[bot47]

Can you tell me a word to figure this out? Maybe if I let "him" say "pretty" I can here it?

[Apple 101]

IMOM, Sam has fairly poor voice emulation, especially compared to the voices that can be found on OS X. I think Sam is set to American by default.

Microsoft Sam is set to American English by default.

Can you tell me a word to figure this out? Maybe if I let "him" say "pretty" I can here it?

I don't think "pretty" will help you out there bot47. Try a prefix, such as "multi".

In Australia and the UK and possibly other countries, "multi" is pronounced as "malt-ee". I believe, in America (no offense anyone) "multi" is said as "malt-eye".

If you input "multi" into Microsoft Sam, it should say "malt-eye".

[bot47]

Thanks a lot. He speaks American English But why not "pretty"?
As far as I know Americans pronounce it "preedee" and Britains like "preetea"?

[Apple 101]

You're correct, MS Sam does say "preedee". I've never thought about it before...

[CannotResolveSymbol]

I'm American and I say "malt-ee" (IPA /məlti/). Probably one of the better ways to differentiate "American" english from British or Recieved Pronunciation would be to use a word like Florida or origin, where you would get a /-or-/ in General American (unaccented to an American) and a /-ɒr-/ (are) in British English. The catch there is that speakers in New England will use the /-ɒr-/ sound like a British speaker, so you can't make a generalization there either. Sorrow and bother, among others, both retain the /-ɒr-/ sound in General American.

Here are the sources I used to figure this out:

Wikipedia: IPA
Wikipedia: General American
Wikipedia: IPA Chart for English: Shows Recieved Pronunciation, General American, and Australian English sounds and their IPA equivalents.
Wikipedia: International Phonetic Alphabet for English

There does not appear to be a Wikipedia chart mapping IPA directly onto German in either the English or German wikipedias, but I'm sure you could find one somewhere online if you actually knew German (which I don't).

Oh, and to try to answer the question at hand, it sounds to me like American english (General American), based on the borrow/sorrow difference. However, it isn't perfect and isn't really a great example of anything (it mispronounces the i in Florida-- that's the same in both dialects).