Towards An Automatic Foreign Accent Reduction Tool
Abstract
An automatic tool to reduce foreign-accent is described and evaluated. An unaccented speech utterance was used to improve three prosodic features of a corresponding foreignaccented utterance. The duration, pitch and intensity of the foreign-accented speech utterance were modified using DTW (Dynamic Time Warping), WSOLA (Waveform Similarity Overlap Add), and other automatic speech processing algorithms. The modified speech utterance was then evaluated to determine the perceived foreign accent compared to the original. Fifteen native speakers of American English took part in the perceptual test to rate the degree of foreign-accent in Korean-accented American English. The results show that the modified Korean-accented utterances were perceived to have a lower degree of foreign-accent than the original Koreanaccented utterances.
Recommended Citation
K. Cho and J. G. Harris, "Towards An Automatic Foreign Accent Reduction Tool," Proceedings of the International Conference on Speech Prosody, Scimago Journal & Country Rank, Jan 2006.
Department(s)
Electrical and Computer Engineering
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
2333-2042
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2025 Scimago Journal & Country Rank, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2006
