West Point Brazilian Portuguese Speech

Item Name: West Point Brazilian Portuguese Speech
Author(s): John Morgan, Sheila Ackerlind, Sterling Packer
LDC Catalog No.: LDC2008S04
ISBN: 1-58563-471-9
ISLRN: 563-271-238-124-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.35111/yjwc-zx48
Release Date: May 19, 2008
Member Year(s): 2008
DCMI Type(s): Sound
Sample Type: pcm
Sample Rate: 22050
Data Source(s): microphone speech
Application(s): speech recognition
Language(s): Portuguese
Language ID(s): por
License(s): LDC User Agreement for Non-Members
Online Documentation: LDC2008S04 Documents
Licensing Instructions: Subscription & Standard Members, and Non-Members
Citation: Morgan, John, Sheila Ackerlind, and Sterling Packer. West Point Brazilian Portuguese Speech LDC2008S04. Web Download. Philadelphia: Linguistic Data Consortium, 2008.
Related Works: View

Introduction

West Point Brazilian Portuguese Speech is a database of digital recordings of approximately 1.6 hours of spoken Brazilian Portuguese designed and collected by staff and faculty of the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) and Center for Technology Enhanced Language Learning (CTELL) to develop acoustic models for speech recognition systems. The U.S. government uses such systems to provide speech-recognition enhanced language learning courseware to government linguists and students enrolled in various government language programs.

The data in this corpus was collected in March 1999 in Brasilia, Brazil using informants from a Brazilian military academy. The corpus consists of read speech from 60 female and 68 male native and non-native speakers.

The speech was elicited from a prompt script containing 296 sentences and phrases typically used in language learning situations. The prompts are listed in the file prompts.txt. Each line of this file has two fields separated by a tab: the first field denotes the base name of the waveform file; and the second field denotes the prompt used to record the utterance.

A pronouncing dictionary developed by Dr. Sheila Ackerlind with help from cadet Sterling Packer is provided in the file SANTIAGO.txt.

The speech was collected using four laptop computers running MS Windows. Three of the computers recorded with a 16 bit data size and sampling rate of 22050 Hz, the other laptop recorded with an 8 bit data size at a sampling rate of 11025 Hz. The recording script presented a visual display of the sentence to be recorded. The informant pressed a key and spoke the sentence. The recording was played back for review, allowing the utterance to be re-recorded. A member of the data collection team was present during the recording session to verify recordings and to provide technical assistance in case of malfunctioning equipment.

Samples

For an example of speech contained in this corpus, please listen to this audio sample (MS Wave format).

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