To all,

Hello from Boulder, Colorado in the U.S. Thank you for allowing me to join your group, and especially thank you to Rudiger for making this possible.

I have attached a user manual that I developed for Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 9.5. Some things may need updating to version 10.1, but alot of the basics remain unchanged and many of you new to speech recognition may find this useful in avoiding some of the pain of learning to become proficient in its use.

MDH

Hi Mark, welcome to the forum!

Thanks for sharing this with us! I have just browsed through it, but you seem to have put a lot of thought and experience into it. Quite useful, and it might be worth translating into German. Let's wait and see if we can find any volunteers.

It's so good to have you here, and perhaps I will take the liberty to translate your postings if need arises.

Other than that, you can also use tranlate.google.com in order to get an automated translation of your text which basically works. I think Lunis used that one, too, or Bing perhaps, but I think Google is better.

Rüdiger

Hello and thanks a lot for the valuable input.
After a 1st glance into your manual, I have one quick question regarding the recommendation you make on page 3:

"If using a desktop computer, make sure to insert the USB soundcard into a rear USB port"

Would you mind to explain in detail?
I have the USB plug of my SpeechMike microphone inserted into a frontside USB port for quite a while (simply for reasons of cable length) and never experienced any difference compared to the variant you recommend (and I used before).

Greetings from the Baltic Sea coast,
Marius

Marius,

Thanks for your welcome. I have to plead relative ignorance about this other than that I have seen that recommendation several times that it is recommended to use rear USB ports rather than front ones. The best ones are supposed to be just below the network cable. I believe Windows sometimes loses track of your microphone, and it is less likely using a rear USB port which apparently has a higher priority. Rudiger should be able to provide a better explanation.

MDH

Zitat von Marius Raabe

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Hello and thanks a lot for the valuable input.
After a 1st glance into your manual, I have one quick question regarding the recommendation you make on page 3:

"If using a desktop computer, make sure to insert the USB soundcard into a rear USB port"

Would you mind to explain in detail?
I have the USB plug of my SpeechMike microphone inserted into a frontside USB port for quite a while (simply for reasons of cable length) and never experienced any difference compared to the variant you recommend (and I used before).

Greetings from the Baltic Sea coast,
Marius

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Mark & Marius, I like that alliteration, by the way,

of course, this is one of the usual lines we are used to hear at the "Academy" (KnowBrainer forum). As far as my recollection, the front ports are said to be poorly shielded, sometimes, and then there is a chance that connectivity is more secure when using USB port #1 - and yes, they are numbered, too, although most user are not aware that ... .

(Hours later) ... Anyway, what really IS important, however, to always use the same port, once you have set up the device in Dragon.

Thanks for getting back to it, both of you.
Rüdiger

Would like to point out that Rudiger, being a non-native English speaker has a better vocabulary than me--using the $3USD (you will have to do the EURO conversion) word:

"alliteration"

MDH

Zitat von R.Wilke

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alliteration

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Ummm, supposing that "Academy" is just the short form of "Starfleet Academy", I liked that even better and am seriously pondering to apply one day, maybe they teach USB port 101 on the engineering deck.
By the way: "alliteration" works fine in the standard English vocabulary of my German-issue Dragon....

Greetings into the Rockies and the Rhineland (got it?), Marius

Hi Mark,

Good to see in the Forum. Perhaps you could help me with some difficulties I have using the program with an English user. Although I've chosen a British accent before I started training for this English user, the program produces American English words, although the British English versions are available too. What I say is definitely more British than American and therefore I do not understand why NaturallySpeaking always produces for example program instead of programme (BTW: I typed this last word).

I know, you are American, but perhaps you have an idea about how to solve this problem. I, personally, feel there should be an option in the vocabulary section to choose your accent, which should limit the vocabulary that the program writes to either British or American.

Any ideas?

Best,
Sandra

Sandra,

if you allow me to step in for Mark and offer my ideas, the answer seems quite simple to me: when creating an English user, you have the option to choose between US English or UK English. Only if you choose the former, you have the further options regarding different accents, e.g. a British accent or different American accents (as far as I know, it does not work the other way around, meaning you cannot choose a US accent for a UK English user file, but that would not be advisable for most native German speakers anyway). So, if you prefer British spelling, you should create a UK English user.

All the best, Marius

Did that of course! That's why I am so very surprised about (or annoyed by) the US spelling!!!

...sorry, what do you mean by "the former"? I take it you meant "the latter"?

Sandra

Zitat von sandra_dragon

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...sorry, what do you mean by "the former"? I take it you meant "the latter"?

Sandra

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Nope - I meant what I wrote, namely the US English version. AFAIK, only the US English language model allows different accents (at least, when I create a user based on UK English, I am not prompted to decide between different accents). Hence I have some reason to doubt you really chose the UK version. You can easily check it out in the properties window (Go to the NaturallySpeaking Menu and choose "manage users", then "properties").

Marius

Really sorry, don't get it... Isn't there a slight contradiction in what you wrote?

Zitat von Marius Raabe

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I meant what I wrote, namely the US English version. AFAIK, only the US English language model allows different accents (...) have some reason to doubt you really chose the UK version. You can easily check it out in the properties window (Go to the NaturallySpeaking Menu and choose "manage users", then "properties").

Marius

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...when I created the English user, I chose UK English (which is also shown when I check the user properties - and which should lead to a UK-English spelling). But what you suggested (or better "the latter" suggested) is - in my view - that I should have created a US user with a British accent? But I do not want US spelling! I think, doing it the way you describe would be suitable for a British person in the USA, thus preferring US spelling. I think "accent" refers to the recognition of words, and XYZ English to the spelling. So you could chose whatever accent offered for US users (to help DNS to recognise what you are saying) while it should use US spelling...

???

Sandra

Sandra,

I do not see any contradiction on my part, but indeed an erroneous conclusion: I was misled by your initial statement:

Zitat

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Although I've chosen a British accent

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Since only the US version allows "accents", I concluded you had chosen it - which would predictably lead to American spellings.
Now I see you did not mean "accents" in the first place but language models (US / UK English) ... Small wonder then you could not make sense of my remarks (apparently you did never come across the option to chose between accents since you did not create a user profile with US English). Sorry about the confusion ...

By no means I did or would suggest you should create such a (US) user for your purposes. If you do in fact selected UK English, it leaves me as puzzled as you are why you get American spellings as results. I doubt though that Americans can help us to get that riddle solved - better turn to the British folks like "monkey8" for help...

Marius

Sandra & Marius ,

I am not so sure, but perhaps there are some misunderstandings going on as regards the difference between the US English versus UK English speaker profiles, so I would just like to try and sort it out. When creating an English speech profile, the first choice you have to make is between US English versus UK English. This way, you choose between two different sets of base vocabularies, each of them covering all the differences as regards spelling certain words, and also coming with a typical set of underlying phonetic system, in their general forms.

In addition to that, you can optionally choose from different accents along with the US English profiles, which to some degree might change the underlying pronunciations for the words in the vocabulary, covering some of the regional variations within the US and abroad. However, that won't change the basic spellings in the first place, which can only be either US or UK consistently.

I think this has mostly been covered by Marius also, but I would just like to give a few examples in order to demonstrate the differences. Therefore, please look at the following:

US English / General accent
car \k)r
flavor \flAvP
harbours \h)rbPz

US English / British accent
car \k)r
flavor \flAvP
harbours \h)rbPz

UK English / General accent
car \k)
flavour \flAvP
harbors \h)bPz

The first entries in these lines designate the words in the specific vocabularies, these are separated by a double backslashes from their underlying pronunciations, using some sort of phonetic transcription. (If you wonder how I can come up with the underlying pronunciations in phonetic transcription, I can do this using the GetWords utility provided by Joel Gould, which I refer to in the download section of this forum.)

I think these examples speak for themselves, but if you have any questions as to what they are supposed to demonstrate, please feel free to ask.

Rüdiger