Ordinal number suffixes and their incorrect number prefixes mix to produce unexpected behavior

[derekriemer]

1. Take any natural numeric prefix such as 1, 2, 3, 4.
2. Prepend this with either st, nd, rd, or th.
3. Notice how when the wrong number is put with the ordinal number suffix, Espeak speaks the number as if it were an ordinal number.

Examples.

legend:

• yes
  / no

ordinal prefix	ordinal suffix	ordinal combination	speech	correct? * or /
1	st	1st	first	*
2	st	2st	secst	/
3	st	3st	thirst	/
4	st	4st	fourst	/
1	nd	1nd	firrnd	/
2	nd	2nd	second	*
3	nd	3nd	thirrnd	/
4	nd	4nd	fourrnd	/
1	rd	1rd	fird	/
2	rd	2rd	secd	/
3	rd	3rd	third	*
4	rd	4rd	fourd	/
1	th	1th	firth	/
2	th	2th	secth	/
3	th	3th	thirth	/
4	th	4th	fourth	*

reason.

I haven't dug into the code rules, but I suspect that espeak is concatinating things like thi with rd to make third and thi with st to make thirst or something.

[valdisvi]

In general, this is "garbage in, garbage out" problem.
Derekriemer, if you have some suggestions, what espeak-ng should say in the wrong cases, I could evaluate, some reasonable workarounds for these cases.

[rhdunn]

This is due to the way espeak handles ordinals. It splits them into the number and (st|nd|rd|th) part. That is, the 1 in 1st is pronounced as fir. The way I would like to implement this in espeak-ng is to use the words for the ordinals. That is, 1st should map to the word first, not f'3:st.

The motivation behind this is to make it easier to support accent variations and to be consistent across the numeric version and the version using words (e.g. 14 and fourteen).

The question is how to handle things like 3st. My thinking is to use:

Word	Pronunciation
3rd	third
3st	three s t
3 st	three stone

with the last one being handled by the $units marker proposed in issue #115.

[valdisvi]

OK.
I'll try to solve it.