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Pronunciation lexicon covering both English and Chinese languages for Automatic Speech Recognition.

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BigCiDian

1. Goal

This project is an attempt to create a pronunciation lexicon covering both English and Chinese words in a unified phoneset for ASR applications.

P.S. "CiDian" means "lexicon" in Chinese.

typical use cases in Chinese ASR applications:

你手机上都装了什么 APP ?
APPLE 的新 MACBOOK PRO 真漂亮
上个月 PRADA 出了款新包包
手机开了 GPRS 导航
世界杯 H 组小组赛

2. Phoneset

The unified phoneset should be a simple and precise phoneset that covers both languages. Note that the mapping listed below are heavily based on IPA.

2.1 English Phoneset Mapping

English entries are derived from CMUDict 0.7b, hence we need a mapping from ARPA phoneset to target phoneset.

ARPA IPA CMUDict example entries
AA0 a icon:AY1 K AA0 N
AA1 a heart: HH AA1 R T
AA2 a kmart: K EY1 M AA2 R T
AE0 æ romance: R OW1 M AE0 N S
AE1 æ lambda: L AE1 M D AH0
AE2 æ setback: S EH1 T B AE2 K
AH0 ə station: S T EY1 SH AH0 N
AH1 ʌ bug: B AH1 G
AH2 ʌ haircut: HH EH1 R K AH2 T
AO0 ɔ hongkong: HH AO1 NG K AO0 NG
AO1 ɔ law: L AO1
AO2 ɔ layoff: L EY1 AO2 F
AW0 au foundation: F AW0 N D EY1 SH AH0 N
AW1 au founder: F AW1 N D ER0
AW2 au hometown: HH OW1 M T AW2 N
AY0 ai hypothese: HH AY0 P AA1 TH AH0 S IY2 Z
AY1 ai ice: AY1 S
AY2 ai iceland: AY1 S L AH0 N D
B b bike: B AY1 K
CH ch chase: CH EY1 S
D d desk: D EH1 S K
DH ð those: DH OW1 Z
EH0 e princess: P R IH1 N S EH0 S
EH1 e professor: P R AH0 F EH1 S ER0
EH2 e progress: P R AA1 G R EH2 S
ER0 ə r programmer: P R OW1 G R AE2 M ER0
ER1 ə r purge: P ER1 JH
ER2 ə r showgirl: SH OW1 G ER2 L
EY0 ei eighteen: EY0 T IY1 N
EY1 ei email: IY0 M EY1 L
EY2 ei thursday: TH ER1 Z D EY2
F f face: F EY1 S
G g give: G IH1 V
HH h hey: HH EY1
IH0 i facing: F EY1 S IH0 NG
IH1 i fear: F IH1 R
IH2 i fellowship: F EH1 L OW0 SH IH2 P
IY0 ii email: IY0 M EY1 L
IY1 ii prefix: P R IY1 F IH0 K S
IY2 ii increase: IH1 N K R IY2 S
JH zh gesture: JH EH1 S CH ER0
K k cat: K AE1 T
L l lack: L AE1 K
M m may: M EY1
N n no: N OW1
NG ŋ thing: TH IH1 NG
OW0 əu crypto: K R IH1 P T OW0
OW1 əu token: T OW1 K AH0 N
OW2 əu earphone: IH1 R F OW2 N
OY0 ɔi invoice: IH1 N V OY0 S
OY1 ɔi floyd: F L OY1 D
OY2 ɔi episode: EH1 P IH0 S OW2 D
P p pat: P AE1 T
R r risk: R IH1 S K
S s sing: S IH1 NG
SH sh shake: SH EY1 K
T t test: T EH1 S T
TH θ think: TH IH1 NG K
UH0 u fulfill: F UH0 L F IH1 L
UH1 u full: F UH1 L
UH2 u goodbye: G UH2 D B AY1
UW0 uu rescue: R EH1 S K Y UW0
UW1 uu fool: F UW1 L
UW2 uu restroom: R EH1 S T R UW2 M
V v very: V EH1 R IY0
W w west: W EH1 S T
Y y yes: Y EH1 S
Z z zero: Z IY1 R OW0
ZH ʒ illusion: IH2 L UW1 ZH AH0 N

notes: If you find anything that doesn't make sense in the mapping table, please let me know, thanks

2.2 Chinese PinYin Mapping

Chinese entries are extracted from DaCiDian project

Here is a PinYin to IPA mapping from educational prospective: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/Pinyin_chart

With a few mapping modifications and symbolic adaptations, here is the final PinYin to target phoneset mapping

2.3 tone

There are normally 5 tones in Chinese PinYin system ranging from 0 ~ 4. However there is no tone definition in English. In BigCiDian, Chinese tonal information is retained and merged with untoned English, so the resulting phoneset may contain 6 tonal variation(1 from English and 5 from Chinese):

e.g. for phoneme *ai*

1. HI -> h ai
2. 哎 -> ai_0
3. 掰 -> b ai_1
4. 还 -> h ai_2
5. 凯 -> k ai_3
6. 外 -> w ai_4

2.4 the unified phoneset

The final unified bi-lingual phoneset details are listed below:

phoneme CN example EN example
a 把 b a_3 AACHEN a k ə n
æ CAT k æ t
ai 爱 ai_4 KITE k ai t
an 安 an_1
羊 y aŋ_2
au 老 l au_3 LOUD l au d
b 白 b ai_2 BUT b ʌ t
ch 陈 ch ən_2 CHEST ch e s t
d 大 d a_4 DAY d ei
ð THIS ð i s
e BED b e d
ei 累 l ei_4 LAKE l ei k
ə 鹅 ə_2 COCA-COLA k əu k ə k əu l a
ən 陈 ch ən_2
əŋ 横 h əŋ_2
ər 二 ər_4
əu 欧 əu_1 BOAT b əu t
f 房 f aŋ_2 FACE f ei s
g 刚 g aŋ_1 GIVE g i v
h 海 h ai_3 HUG h ʌ g
i 天 t i an_1 HIT h i t
ie 别 b ie_2
ii 比 b ii_3 BEAT b ii t
iii 吃 ch iii_1
in 音 y in_1
听 t iŋ_1
j 九 j i əu_3
k 看 k an_4 CAKE k ei k
l 来 l ai_2 LAKE l ei k
m 马 m a_3 MAKE m ei k
n 那 n a_1 NIKE n ai k ii
ŋ INTERESTING i n t ə r e s t i ŋ
ɔ OFF ɔ f
ɔi JOY zh ɔi
p 胖 p aŋ_4 PACE p ei s
q 钱 q i an_2
r 让 ʒ aŋ_4 RISK r i s k
s 丝 s iii_1 SING s i ŋ
sh 上 sh aŋ_4 SHAKE sh ei k
t 团 t u an_2 TIME t ai m
ts 才 ts ai_2
u BOOK b u k
从 ts uŋ_2
桌 zh uɔ_1
uu 不 b uu_4 TWO t uu
v VICTORY v i k t ə r ii
ʌ CUT k ʌ t
w 王 w aŋ_2 WEST w e s t
x 西 x ii_1
y 言 y an_2 YES y e s
yu 去 q yu_4
yue 缺 q yue_1
z 赞 z an_4 ZOO z uu
zh 中 zh uŋ_1 GESTURE zh e s ch ə r
ʒ 让 ʒ aŋ_4 LEISURE l e ʒ ə r
θ THINK θ i ŋ k

So overall there are 56 phonemes in the unified phoneset(regardless of tones).

Theoretically some phonemes can be split with smaller granularity(eg. au->a u, ɔi->ɔ i, an->a n ...), hence making the phoneset even more compact. But it is a common practice that larger acoustic modeling units are beneficial for Chinese ASR accuracy, and the existence of decision-tree based state-tying, makes base phoneset size less irrelevant to ASR problem.

I may or may not change the unified phoneset in the future, currently it seems to be sufficient for my purpose.

3. Usage

sh run.sh should give you a ready-to-use bi-lingual ASR lexicon (lexicon.txt), and a phoneset list(phones.list) in project root directory.

4. Extend entries

To extend the final lexicon with entries of your own interest(say "IPHONE", "华为P30"), you can either:

  • add those entries into the very bottom sources(CMUDict and DaCiDian)

or:

  • maintain a seperate extension-lexicon, and merge it with main lexicon automatically generated above.

5. Experiment result

In AISHELL-2 Mandarin ASR task, replacing Chinese lexicon(DaCiDian) with multilingual CN-EN lexicon(BigCiDian), details are showed below:

For DaCiDian, system performance:

----- test -----:
%WER 44.39 [ 21986 / 49532, 338 ins, 2085 del, 19563 sub ] exp/mono/decode_test/cer_9_0.0
%WER 24.25 [ 12011 / 49532, 393 ins, 792 del, 10826 sub ] exp/tri1/decode_test/cer_12_0.0
%WER 22.13 [ 10963 / 49532, 396 ins, 644 del, 9923 sub ] exp/tri2/decode_test/cer_12_0.0
%WER 19.29 [ 9555 / 49532, 263 ins, 640 del, 8652 sub ] exp/tri3/decode_test/cer_13_0.5
%WER 8.33 [ 4125 / 49532, 84 ins, 192 del, 3849 sub ] exp/chain/tdnn_1a/decode_test/cer_8_0.5

For BigCiDian, system performance:

%WER 43.92 [ 21754 / 49532, 405 ins, 1574 del, 19775 sub ] exp/mono/decode_test/cer_7_0.0
%WER 22.54 [ 11163 / 49532, 406 ins, 652 del, 10105 sub ] exp/tri1/decode_test/cer_11_0.0
%WER 21.09 [ 10445 / 49532, 377 ins, 609 del, 9459 sub ] exp/tri2/decode_test/cer_12_0.0
%WER 18.47 [ 9148 / 49532, 265 ins, 621 del, 8262 sub ] exp/tri3/decode_test/cer_13_0.5
%WER 8.22 [ 4072 / 49532, 68 ins, 260 del, 3744 sub ] exp/chain/tdnn_1a/decode_test/cer_9_0.5

Conclusion

  • It shows that BigCiDian only gives slightly better results than DaCiDian.
  • But more importantly, BigCiDian turns a pure Chinese ASR system to multiligual system, which is pretty much the case in nowadays Chinese ASR applications.

THE END

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