It was based on an existing TTS, IndicT5. I wonder how different is “Sanskrit Chanting” to languages it could already do, like Hindi. Is it largely the glyph—to-phoneme that needs relearning? Or pitch control? Or more?
Sanskrit does not do schwa deletion. So engines must map the phonemes to Kannada/Telugu (which support the full complement of Sanskrit sounds) if they want to get somewhere. A lot of this can be solved if the backend supports ipa.
But this is for classical Sanskrit. Vedic recitation is too complex (and I know too little about it) to handle without a LOT of work.
It is neither.
The fundamental issue is that there is no way to represent the schwa sound in English[1]. All of a,e,i,o,u have been used to communicate the schwa (or schwa-like) sound in English.
- The `a` in about
- The `e` in taken
- The `i` in cousin
- The `o` in button
- The `u` in upon
Oddly enough amongst the Indic languages, Tamil has precisely the same problem: க, ப, ட may be voiced or voiceless plosives depending on context. Sanskrit loanwords in Tamil are typically pronounced very differently compared to their original in Sanskrit, or even in Telugu.
Personally when transliterating any Indic language I tend to use ISO-15919, and in that scheme, it is Rāma, and 'a' represents the schwa. Or Rāmaḥ, Rāmam, Rāmē, or Rāmasya, whichever grammatical attachment is appropriate.
The level of phoneticism between English language and its latin script is not evenly spread.
For example, the letter "c" might mean /s/ or /k/ sound. However, the letter "k" almost certainly means /k/ sound.
In some ways, the schwa sound in English the worst as there is no symbol which is committed even partially towards it.
> it is Rāma, and 'a' represents the schwa.
Sure, but if my name is Rāma, I have to choose either "Ram" or "Rama" or "Raama" for my passport name. Or legal name in most places, non-alphabetic symbols do not work with all modern systems.
> Many other languages using the Latin script (German, Italian, Finnish) don't have this problem, what you see is what get.
English imports spellings from other cultures and adds its own layer of pronunciations. Other languages probably don't do it as often.
> English imports spellings from other cultures and adds its own layer of pronunciations. Other languages probably don't do it as often.
English is almost unique in how inconsistent its orthography is especially with respect to vowel sounds, and loanwords are only the latest manifestation of this problem. Even consonants aren't spared. Consider the digraph 'th'. This can be a voiced or voiceless dental fricatives. English used to have letters for each: ð and þ. 'ough' has nine pronunciations—plough, though, through, thorough, cough, rough, bought, lough, hiccough.
English has experienced contact with such a wide variety of unrelated foreign languages to an extent few others ever have.