S0065 : Spanish SpeechDat(M) - DB1 (Phonetically rich sentences & application oriented utterances such as keywords, digits, etc.)

The SpeechDat(M) Spanish database contains the recordings of 1,002 Spanish speakers (508 males, 494 females), recorded over the Spanish fixed telephone network.

A pronunciation dictionary for the correctly spoken items is also available.

It was agreed that the ESPRIT Project SAM standards be followed for speech file storage. Speech samples are stored as sequences of 8-bit 8 kHz A-law speech files (before compression).

Each prompted utterance is stored in a separate file. Each signal file is accompanied by an ASCII SAM label file which contains the relevant descriptive information.

This speech database was validated by SPEX (the Netherlands) to assess its compliance with the SpeechDat format and content specifications.

Each speaker uttered the following items:

• 1 isolated digit
• 4 connected digits (1 sheet number –4 digits, 1 telephone number –9 digits, 1 credit card number –16 digits, 1 spontaneous home telephone number)
• 2 natural numbers
• 1 natural number with decimal point
• 2 money amounts (1 large amount, 1 small amount)
• 3 spelled-out words (7 letter sequences)
• 2 time phrases (1 spontaneous time of day, 1 time phrase -prompted, word style)
• 3 dates (1 spontaneous date e.g. birthdayn 2 prompted dates)
• 3 yes/no questions (Are you calling from the same province? (as P1), Do you speak another language fluently?, Are you calling from a public phonebox?),
• 1 place (province of longest residence)
• 6 application keywords (out of a set of 54 words)
• 2 additional application keywords (out of a set of 18 words)
• 3 embedded application word phrases (from A1-6 vocabulary)
• 9 read sentences for phonetic coverage

The set of phonetically balanced sentences was automatically transcribed and manually checked by the Department de Filologia Espanyola of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. Standard Castillian transcription was used. No dialectal variations were considered.

The following age distribution has been obtained: 530 speakers are between 15 and 29 years old, 283 speakers are between 30 and 45, 156 speakers are between 46 and 60, and 23 speakers are over 60; the age of 10 speakers is unknown.