The pronunciation of Mandarin Chinese using ESpeak NJ in NVDA is not normal

[cary-rowen]

When reading a Chinese character aloud, in addition to reporting the Chinese character itself, the tones of the Chinese character will also be read out in English numbers. This is abnormal.
This looks similar to this Issue
I have created the same issue in NVDA's Repo:
nvaccess/nvda#12952

Steps to reproduce:

1. Use NVDA 2021.2 or the latest Alpha version to read the following text, The Chinese meaning of 'this text is(Today's weather is good.':

• 今天的天气很好

2. Use NVDA2021.1 to read the Same sample text:

• "今天的天气很好".

Actual behavior:

In step (1)
NVDA reports ("今One 天 One 的 Five 天 One 气 Four 很 Three 好 Three").
The following is the incorrect recording demonstration (from NVDA-2021.2):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wBNLbUzQpPMx-5zLfXYC-XbEg0d6_1fo/view?usp=sharing

Expected behavior:

NVDA reports sample text (" - 今天的天气很好") in Mandarin, just like NVDA-2021.1.
The following is the correct recording demonstration (from NVDA-2021.1):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EdaSVpDq8kLXCaAEqZmFcaHRpMwfiJOU/view?usp=sharing

[hozosch]

This is because you use the voice which reads latin as English, and I think the Chinese characters are converted to Pinjin in ESpeak for it to process, if I'm not mistaken. If it reads anything as English, this is probably why.

[valdisvi]

This is behavior change introduced in commit 4825905.
The old functionality of assuming Latin characters are pinyin can be achieved with new language cmn-Latn-pinyin
and is also described in CHANGELOG.md.

[cary-rowen]

I don't know the code details of the ESpeak NJ, I am just a user.
I created the same issue in NVDA REPO.What do nvaccess needs to do.
nvaccess/nvda#12952

[hozosch]

There are two Chinese mandarin voices in NVDA, "Latin as English " and "latin as pinjin". With the latter, the processing works properly. If you still want to have latin read as English but have correct processing of Chinese Characters, then I don't know, but this looks more like an ESpeak issue rather than an NVDA issue, and once this does get fixed, NVAccess needs to update ESpeak.

[cary-rowen]

Is there the latest news about this issue? Can we fix this error?

[jaacoppi]

I can't repdoruce this, but it's probably connected to #1044.

[jaacoppi]

Sorry, my bad. I can reproduce this. The discussion is in the other thread.

[cary-rowen]

At present, Chinese users are still plagued by this problem. Is there any progress on this issue?

[jaacoppi]

Unfortunately there has been no progress. I can't find the root cause. Reverting to older behavior would cause mandarin and cantonese work differently and cause different kind of problems.

[cary-rowen]

Hi,

Please default ESpeak NG's voice role to "Chinese (Mandarin, latin as Pinyin)" for Chinese to fix this issue.
I've created the issue in the NVDA Repo, but it seems like it should be reported to ESpeak.
Please see #13572

Thanks