English Phonetics

English Vocaloids are Vocaloids that are capable of mimicking the English language much easier than Vocaloids of other languages. The following is a list of phonemes needed to make the Vocaloid sing in English.

English Vocaloids
The English Vocaloids have a greater array of variation between them than the other languages seen so far and even two that have similar accents to each other may not pronounce the same results. Vocaloid and Vocaloid 2, uses American spelling such as "color" instead of "colour". Vocaloid 3 is confirmed to be capable of localisation, but it is unknown if it will open up the ability to have American and British spelling.

The English language has one of the greatest variations of dialect in the world, and thus, there is much more variety of pronunciation for English Vocaloids than Japanese only Vocaloids. Users who are not aware of the potential difficulty of accents may overlook odd pronunciations that need to be adjusted for smoother/closer results. This is true for non-native based accents more so. With Vocaloids, the accent has been known to aid or add difficulty to the use of Vocaloid. Potentially two Vocaloids with the same vocal range but a different accent to each other may produce different results.

British-English Accented
British-English accented Vocaloids were Vocaloids whose provider was known to have been of "British" nationality. As Great Britain is the main origin of English, British-English Vocaloids sing in a native English accent. Originally, they were the standard English accent type used to develop the English engine. British accented Vocaloids mostly came originally from Zero-G who worked souly with British artists to collect their vocal samples from.

For more information see wikipedia


 * Leon
 * Lola
 * Miriam
 * Prima
 * Sonika
 * Tonio
 * Oliver

American-English Accented
American-English speakers are native speakers of the English language. Due to the fact there is only one American-English accented Vocaloid, there are not many details when an American Accent is combined with the Vocaloid engine. The most notorious difference is in the rhotics phonemes like [r] and the r-colored diphones. American accented Vocaloids have providers that came from the United States of America.


 * For more information see wikipedia American Accent


 * Big Al

Japanese-English Accented
Japanese-English accented Vocaloids are English vocaloids produced by those who came from Japan. They have the Japanese language as their native language, but were used to produce English voicebanks. Therefore the Japanese-English accent is a non-native English accent and has significant differences between it and native English accents. While it would be true that Luka is the only Japanese-English accented Vocaloid with an English voicebank, do note that even from the demos of Hatsune Miku and Kaito's English voicebanks, they have many common traits that are clearly able to be picked out that are already known about Luka.

The major issue seen with Japanese accents is that they often struggle with a number of sounds due to the lack of distinction between them, particularly vowel sounds. Many of these are simply sounds that in the Japanese language itself would have no distinction ("L" and "R" sounds for example). Luka's use of English to pronounce the words "Road Roller", which risks coming out as sounding like "roe rorora", is the most famous case. Depending on the providers efficency in English, depends on the level of difficulty the Vocaloid will have in making pronunciations destinct. Despite this, Japanese-English vocaloids are capable of more closely mimicking the English language than a purely Japanese voicebank.


 * Megurine Luka (Yū Asakawa was competent in speaking English)
 * Hatsune Miku (yet released; Saki Fujita did not speak English at all prior to the voicebanks recording)
 * Kaito (yet released; Naoto Fūga has an unknown level of English)

Misc.

 * Sweet Ann - While her provider "Jody" supposedly came from Australia, some Australians do not hear a Australian accent and many have claimed she has a "Southern American-English" accent instead.

Phonetic System's Characteristics
There are 52 phonetic pronunciations which make up the English Vocaloid library, these phonetic inputs will use any set of the estimated 2500 diphonetic samples, (Vocaloid uses a total of approx 8,500 samples altogether for english) needed for English recreation altogether.

Vowels
The English phonetic systems includes 10 vowels of the 11 pure vowels of the English Language, missing the phoneme /ɑː/ or open unrounded vowel.

Diphones
The English phonetic also includes an array of diphones including 6 r-colored or rhotacized vowels, 3 [j]-colored vowels and 2 [w]-colored vowels. Although useful, the diphones tends to cause some problems for the user when they need to be extended or split in two notes. Also is important consider the r-colored vowels can have important pronunciation differences depending if the chosen voicebanks has rothic accent or not.

Consonants
The Phonetic System also includes 31 consonants phonemes. The system considers the various allophones of the English language, including aspirated consonants, both allophones for L (dark and clear). After the release of Prima, it was included the /r/ or Rolling R to the phonetic system.

Aspirated Consonants
English makes distinctions with the normal and aspirated consonant. The aspiration is the strong burst of air that accompanies at the release of of some obstruents. In International Phonetic Alphabet the aspirated phonemes are indicated by a small superscript ‹h›, as with [kʰ] for a aspirated [k].

In the English language, the consonants [b], [d], [g], [p], [t], [k] became aspirated at the beginning of the words. The aspirated phonemes are distinguished from their standard versions due to the addition of a h which represents the IPA's small superscript ‹ʰ›.

Both phonemes, the standard ones and the aspirated ones, can be swapped with no problem.

Dark L and Clear L
The system also includes both allophone for the L, the [l0] or alveolar lateral approximant, also known as Clear L; and the [l] phoneme or velarized alveolar lateral approximant, also known as Dark L.

These phonemes aren't designed to be encoded alone; however, the [l0] seems to handle better to be reproduced without a vowel in comparison to the [l] phoneme. The former results in audio loop, while the latter generates electronic buzzing or doesn't produce sound at all without a vowel.

The only exception to this is Luka, which her [l] phoneme can be used without a vowel.

Rolling R
Although it is not a phoneme of the English language, the alveolar thrill or rolling R was included to the English phonetic system to increase the Opera singing capabilities of Prima. After this, it became a common phoneme in the English voicebanks released after Prima (with exception of Luka).

Nonetheless, the performance of this phoneme varies between different English Vocaloids. For example, it is known that Big Al is capable of using it only at the end of words and requires some techniques to use it in the beginning or middle of a word.

The symbol which represents it in the English Phonetic System is the Vocaloid's phoneme [R].

Phoneme Replacement
Due the big array of allophone and similar sounding phonemes (particularly in the case of the vowels) available in the English Language, this allows a great flexibility replacing the phonemes for similar ones. This has a lot of applications, like alter the emphasis or stress of a word, correct some weird pronunciation found in a voicebank, alter the accent or general pronunciation of a particular Vocaloid , etc.

Also is possible replace some diphones with some phoneme combination. For example, it's possible replace a [j]-colored diphone like [aI] (Open front unrounded vowel + Near-close near-front unrounded semivowel) with an ah-like sound followed by the glide [j]. Similarly is possible change a r-colored vowel with a vowel + [r] combination, something useful if you want change between a non-rothic accent to a rothic accent.

This added to some auxiliar phonemes allows a great diversity of combinations and possibilities to experiment. However, the user must consider the results may vary between the different voicebanks due the individual differences like accent, pronunciation and samples' quality present in the voicebank. The most recommended is take these tips as a guide and experiment by yourself.

Phonetics List
Special note: This was the list is based in the Big Al's help file, and complimented with Vocaloid-User.Net chart and expanded to include the IPA's symbols and names. However there were some incorrect entries within the released list. Entering some of the words provided here as examples for the phoneme usage will not result in the expected phonemes that were used for the list. In addition, the list did not indicate which particular letters the phoneme applied to; the wikia has underlined the relevant letters for the benefit of readers. Of the Japanese Vocaloids, only Luka will be able to use this system properly.