JPH08287070A - Language speaking device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To display a sentence by a language familiar with a user and to speak the sentence by the objective language. CONSTITUTION: This language speaking device speaks a sentence by a language specified by a user out of Japanese, English, Hangul, and Chinese. A CPU 201 determines a display language in response to the depression of a button 206, reads out text data corresponding to the sentence selected by the user and the display language from a ROM 202 and displays the read data on a display 204. In addition, the CPU 201 determines a speaking language in accordance with button depression executed independently of the specification of the display language, reads out voice data corresponding to the sentence and the speaking language from the ROM 202 and sends the data to a voice IC 207 to generate voice from a speaker 209.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a speech utterance device for providing a user with various sentence examples previously stored in a memory through visual and auditory senses.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, the following devices have been known as this type of device. <Prior art example 1> An apparatus which utters a sentence example designated by a user and displays the sentence example in the same language as that used when the sentence example is uttered. <Prior art example 2> A device for displaying a sentence example designated by a user in parallel in a plurality of languages and uttering the sentence example in one of these languages. <Prior art example 3> A language for utterance is predetermined, and a sentence example designated by the user is displayed in various languages, and one predetermined language is used regardless of the type of the displayed language. A device that speaks the sentence. <Prior art example 4> A device that sets two languages, a basic language and a target language, and speaks in a language opposite to the displayed language.

[0003]

The conventional examples described above have the following problems. (1) Problems of Conventional Example 1 When uttering a desired sentence example in a language other than the native language, the sentence example must be searched in the native language, and the language must be converted once before uttering. Also, if the language to be uttered is completely unknown to the user, it is not possible to confirm whether the utterance content is the intended content during utterance. Will be done. For example, when a Japanese user who has no knowledge of Hangul wants to use Hangul, it is impossible for that user to search for a desired sentence example in the Hangul language display. You will have to follow a complicated procedure. Display a sentence example in Japanese on the device and search for the desired sentence example. Have the displayed example sentences in Japanese be translated into Hangul. As a result, the sentence example requested by the user is displayed in Hangul. A vocalization instruction is given to the device and the sentence example is spoken in Hangul. Return the language used for display to Japanese, and check whether the intended sentence is spoken or not with the sentence displayed in Japanese.

As a technique corresponding to the conventional example 1, for example, there is a technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 6-242717.
The technology disclosed in this publication allows the user to specify the dialect, etc. from multiple types as the pronunciation for the Chinese display, but when a user who is not fluent in Chinese uses the pronunciation, It is difficult to confirm in real time whether or not what is being made accurately points to the desired sentence.

(2) Problem of Conventional Example 2 Since a plurality of languages are displayed at the same time, when the user uses this device for a purpose such as pre-learning, the translation in his native language is also displayed on the screen. Therefore, learning is hindered, and the user is forced to operate while hiding the part by his own device.

(3) Problems of Conventional Example 3 There are restrictions on the users who use the device. For example, if there is a device that speaks only Hangul, a user who is fluent in Japanese can use this device to ask questions in Hangul, but a user who is fluent in Hangul only has this device. Even if it was, I could not answer the question in Japanese.

(4) Problems of Conventional Example 4 Since two languages, a basic language and a target language, are defined, when communication is to be performed in three or more languages,
The language must be set each time, and it is actually quite difficult to exchange in three or more languages.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-described circumstances, and is used even in a situation in which it is necessary to overcome the above-mentioned inconvenience and to speak a language in which the notation is difficult for the user to read. It is an object of the present invention to provide a language utterance device that enables a user to utter a sentence example in a language required by a user without requiring the user to perform a complicated operation.

[0009]

The invention according to claim 1 is
In a language utterance device for uttering a voice in a specific language from a plurality of languages, a display unit for displaying a sentence example in a specific one or a plurality of languages, a language selecting unit for selecting a language to be uttered, and a voicing Voicing instruction means for instructing,
When the utterance instruction unit gives an utterance instruction, regardless of the displayed language type, a language utterance device that utters in a language or dialect specified by the language selection unit is provided. The main point is a language voicing device that does.

A second aspect of the present invention provides a language utterance device characterized by further comprising display means for displaying the type of language to be uttered in the device according to the first aspect. The invention according to claim 3 provides a language utterance device characterized in that the device according to claim 1 is further provided with means for not displaying a sentence example in the same language as the language to be uttered. .

[0011]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, even when the user wants to utter a language that is difficult for the user to read the notation, the search for the sentence example to be uttered is a language suitable for the search, such as a native language. And when uttering the sentence example obtained by the search, it can be uttered in the target language. According to the invention of claim 2, it is possible to easily confirm in what language the utterance is currently made. According to the invention of claim 3, it is possible not to display the sentence example in the same language as the spoken language, so that the hearing learning can be effectively advanced.

[0012]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. <First Embodiment> FIG. 1 is a plan view showing the appearance of a speech utterance apparatus according to a first embodiment of the present invention. In this figure,
2068 is a power button, and 209 is a speaker. Reference numeral 204 denotes a display, which is a sentence example display unit 2041 for displaying a sentence example provided to the user, and a utterance language display unit 2042 for displaying a language for uttering the sentence example.
And have. In this embodiment, four languages, Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese are handled, and the initial letters of these languages are displayed on the language display unit 2042.
Then, the language in which the utterance is currently made is notified to the user by reversing the display of the language in the corresponding one of the four initial letters displayed in the utterance language display unit 2042. Has become. In the example of FIG. 1, the English initial "English" is highlighted, which indicates that the utterance is currently being performed in English.

At the bottom of the display 204, cursor keys 2061 to 2064 for moving the cursor leftward, rightward, upward and downward respectively are provided. Then, below these cursor keys, a display language change button 2065 for designating a language for displaying a sentence example on the sentence example display unit 2041 and a utterance for instructing the utterance of the sentence example displayed on the sentence example display unit 2041. Button 2
066 and a utterance language change button 2067 for selecting a language for utterance are provided.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the functional arrangement of this language utterance apparatus. In this figure, reference numeral 201 denotes a CPU (central processing unit) that controls each unit in the language utterance apparatus, and has a RAM (random access memory) 210 built therein. Reference numeral 202 denotes a ROM (Read Only Memory), which stores various data for displaying or uttering various sentence examples. The contents stored in the ROM 202 will be described later. Reference numeral 203 denotes a display driver, which is under the control of the CPU 201.
A drive signal is supplied to the display device to display a sentence example. 205
Is a button input device, 206 is various buttons 2 in FIG.
It is a button group including 061 to 2068. The ON / OFF state of each button forming the button group 206 is detected by the CPU 201 via the button input device 205. Reference numeral 207 is a voice IC (integrated circuit),
Under the control of 1, the voice signal of the sentence example provided to the user is formed. The audio signal formed by the audio IC 207 is amplified by the amplifier 208, and the speaker 209
Is output as audio from.

FIG. 3 shows various data storage areas set in the RAM 210. The following information is stored in these storage areas. a. Display language storage area In this area, display language designation information for designating which language to display when the sentence example provided to the user is displayed on the sentence example display unit 2041 of the display 204 is written. b. Spoken language storage area In this area, the speaker 20 is provided as an example of sentences provided to the user.
When speaking from 9, the speaking language designation information for designating which language to speak is written. c. Read address storage area In this area, information designating an address in the ROM 202 to be read is written. d. Read Bank Storage Area In this area, information designating a bank in the ROM 202 to be read is written. The meaning of the bank will be described later.

As shown in FIG. 4, the ROM 202 stores text data representing various sentence examples and voice data for uttering those sentence examples. In the present embodiment, the ROM 20 is provided in order to provide the user with example sentences in four languages of Japanese, English, Hangul (Korean) and Chinese.
Text data corresponding to these four languages is stored in 2, and subsequently, voice data corresponding to the four languages is stored. A serial number called a phrase number is given to each sentence example provided to the user by this embodiment. The same phrase number as the phrase number given to the sentence example is also given to the text data and voice data for four languages corresponding to each sentence example.

FIG. 5 shows in more detail the storage state of the voice data corresponding to four languages. As shown in FIG. 5, the storage area for voice data in the ROM 202 is divided into a Japanese voice storage bank, an English voice storage bank, a Hangul voice storage bank, and a Chinese voice storage bank. The memory contents of each bank are as follows.

First, a Japanese voice data table is stored in the Japanese voice storage bank, and following this Japanese voice data table, voice data of each sentence example expressed in Japanese is stored in the order of phrase numbers. ing. Each of these voice data is time-series digital data representing a voice waveform corresponding to the sentence example. Since the duration of the voice waveform of each sentence example is different, the voice data forming each sentence is also variable length data of the number of bytes according to the duration of the voice waveform.

The location of the voice data of each sentence stored in the Japanese voice storage bank is determined based on each phrase number and read from the ROM 202. The Japanese voice data table is a table stored in order to enable access to voice data based on such phrase numbers, and the storage address of the first data of voice data corresponding to each sentence example is sequentially defined in the order of phrase numbers. are doing. Here, each address of the ROM 202 has a capacity of 1 byte, and the address of the ROM 202 is 2 bytes.
Expressed using bytes. Therefore, the storage address of the voice data corresponding to each phrase number is also stored using two consecutive addresses in the Japanese voice data table. Therefore, when the storage address of the voice data corresponding to a certain phrase number is read from the Japanese voice data table, the value obtained by doubling the phrase number may be used as the relative address and read.

FIG. 5 shows a procedure for reading Japanese voice data of phrase number 3. That is, C
The PU 201 first obtains the storage address 3111H of the voice data corresponding to the phrase number 3 by referring to the Japanese voice data table. Then CPU 201
Reads a series of digital data stored in the ROM 202 at consecutive addresses starting from address 3111H. This is Japanese voice data representing the voice waveform of the sentence example corresponding to phrase number 3.

The voice data table and voice data corresponding to each language are stored in exactly the same manner in the English voice storage bank, the Hangul voice storage bank and the Chinese voice storage bank corresponding to the other three countries. In each bank, voice data corresponding to each sentence example is stored in the order of phrase numbers. The voice data in these national languages is also the same as the case of the Japanese voice data above.
The location is obtained based on the phrase number of the sentence example to be read, and is read from the ROM 202.

The operation of this embodiment will be described below. In the language uttering apparatus according to the present embodiment, when the power button 2068 is pressed, the CPU 201 executes the initial setting process. By this initialization processing, information designating display and utterance in Japanese is written as default values in the display language storage area and the utterance language storage area of the RAM 210.

In this state, the user can input a command to search for a sentence example to be displayed and a command to change the display of the sentence example to another one by operating the cursor key or the like. This command is a button input device 205
It is detected by the CPU 201 via. CPU201
Reads from the ROM 202 text data of a new sentence example to be displayed on the display 204 in accordance with this command, which corresponds to the language designated by the stored contents of the display language storage area (Japanese at the initial setting). The display information for displaying the text data is supplied to the display driver 203. As a result, the sentence example selected by the user is displayed as illustrated in the box 301 of FIG. The operation up to the selection of the sentence example is the same as that disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 5-324702 (Title of Invention: Information Processing Device), and there is no difference from the conventional one. The description is omitted.

When the voice button 2066 is pressed while the desired sentence example is displayed, this pressing operation is detected by the CPU 201 via the button input device 205. As a result, the CPU 201 executes the designated language utterance routine whose flow is shown in FIG. 7 in order to utter the currently displayed sentence example.

First, the CPU 201 refers to the information in the speaking language storage area in the RAM 210 and detects that the speaking language is Japanese. Then, the bank in the ROM 202 storing the Japanese voice data is set as the ROM access bank to be accessed (step S1). Next, in step S2, sets the phrase number assigned to the phrase "hello" currently displayed twice value as voice data table address (step S2). Next, in step S3, the storage address of the voice data corresponding to the currently displayed sentence example is read from the area corresponding to the voice data table address in each area of the voice data table,
It is set as the initial value of the read address of the ROM 202. In this way, it is why the initial value of the read address for reading out the voice data in order to say the phrase "Hello" is currently being displayed in Japanese has been set.

[0026] Then CPU201 reads the first audio data constituting the audio phrase "Hello" from the area specified by the current read address in ROM 202 (step S4), and outputs to the sound IC 207 (step S5). Next, in step S6, C
The PU 201 determines whether the data read from the ROM 202 is end data indicating the end of voice. If the result of this determination is "NO", the read address of the ROM 202 is advanced (step S7), and the process returns to step S4. Thereafter, step S4~S7 until the end data is detected is repeated at step S6, 2-th constituting the voice example sentence "Hello", third, fourth, ... of audio data are sequentially read from the ROM 202, Voice IC
207 is supplied. Then, by the voice IC 207,
Decoding of a series of these audio data, D / A conversion, etc. are performed, and the analog audio signal obtained by this is converted into
Amplified by 8 and supplied to the speaker 209. As a result, the speaker 209, paragraph "Hello" is uttered in Japanese (see box 302 in FIG. 6). When reading the audio end data CPU201 is corresponding to sentence example "Hello" from the ROM 202, the determination result of step S6 is "YES", the language specified routine ends.

Next, when the user presses the voicing language change button 2067, this pressing operation is detected by the CPU 201 via the button input device 205. As a result,
The CPU 201 rewrites the utterance language designation information in the utterance language storage area of the RAM 210 from one that designates Japanese to one that designates English. In addition, the spoken language display unit 20
At 42, the character whose display is reversed is changed from the Japanese initial "Sun" to the English initial "English".
As a result, the display state of the display 204 is indicated by the box 303 in FIG.

After that, when the utterance button 2066 is pressed, the CPU 201 again executes the designated language utterance routine whose flow is shown in FIG. 7 in order to utter the sentence example currently displayed. However, the voice was spoken in Japanese last time, whereas the voice was spoken in English this time.

That is, the CPU 201 has the RAM 210.
By referring to the information in the utterance language storage area at, it is detected that the utterance language is English, and the bank in the ROM 202 corresponding to this English voice data is set as the ROM access bank (step S1). Then it sets the audio data table address on the basis of the phrase number of the example sentence "Hello" (Step S2). Then, from the area of voice data table this setting, the audio data for uttering the phrase "Hello" in English is stored R
Read the address of OM202 and use this address as RO
The read address of M202 is set as the initial value (step S3). After that, steps S4 to S7 are repeatedly executed as described above. As a result, the phrase "Hello" is spoken in English (see box 304 in FIG. 6).

By performing the same operation as described above, the user can utter the currently displayed sentence example in any language without changing the display language.
That is, by repeating the operation of pressing the speech button 2066 from pushing the utterance language change button 2067, the phrase "Hello" while it is displayed in Japanese, this phrase Hangul, can be uttered by Chinese (Fig. See boxes 305-308 in 6). Also,
During this period, the language currently used for utterance can be confirmed based on the display of the utterance language display unit 2042.

Then, when the display language change button 2065 is pressed, the CPU 201 rewrites the display language designation information in the display language storage area in the RAM 210 from the one corresponding to Japanese to the one corresponding to English. And CP
Based on this new display language designation information, the U 201 reads out text data corresponding to English from the ROM 202 and displays it on the display 204. In addition, due to this change in the display language, the display of the utterance language will also change to "day".
From "English", "Korea", "Chinese" to "JPN", "ENG", "KR"
Change to “A” “CHN” (box 30 in FIG. 6)
9). Thereafter, when the user selects a sentence example, the CPU 201 reads out the English text data corresponding to the sentence example from the ROM 202 and displays it on the display 204.
To display.

When the user repeatedly presses the display language change button 2065, the display language specification information in the display language storage area in the RAM 210 is changed to Hangul or Chinese each time the pressing operation is performed. Japanese, Japanese, ...
And so on. Then, the sentence example is displayed in the language designated by the updated display language designation information.

The following modifications can be made to the above embodiment. (1) In the above embodiment, the display of the spoken language is "Japanese" or "English".
The initials of each country, such as “Korean” and “Chinese”, are used, but pictograms with symbols or pictures indicating each country may be displayed. (2) The utterance language may be displayed by using a mark or the like, and the same mark determined for each country may be displayed regardless of the display language.

<Second Embodiment> In the present embodiment, with respect to providing sentence examples to users in the languages of four countries, the first embodiment described above is used.
Similar to the embodiment, when the sentence examples are displayed on the display, the sentence examples for a plurality of countries are displayed in parallel in the languages of the respective countries.
For this reason, this embodiment does not have a button corresponding to the display language change button 2065 shown in FIG. Also,
What is equivalent to the display language storage area in the RAM 210 in the first embodiment is also unnecessary, and the access control of the RAM 210 performed by the CPU can be simplified accordingly.
Further, in this embodiment, as in the first embodiment, the language for uttering a sentence example is changed in response to the pressing of the utterance language change button. However, in this embodiment, with respect to the language designated as the one used for utterance in this way, it is possible not to display the sentence example in the language. The other points are the same as in the first embodiment. Therefore, the structure of the apparatus according to the present embodiment is not particularly illustrated, and the one used for the description of the first embodiment is used.

FIGS. 8 and 9 exemplify the transition of the display state of the display when the apparatus according to this embodiment is used, and show the most characteristic operation of this embodiment. The operation of this embodiment will be described below with reference to these drawings.

Immediately after the power is turned on, display control and voicing control are performed according to the initially set conditions. That is,
All four language representations of the example sentence selected by the user are displayed in parallel (box 310 in FIG. 8). Also, when the voicing button is pressed, the default Japanese at the time of initial setting
The example sentence selected by the user is uttered (FIG. 8).
Box 311). It should be noted that the language set as the default may be determined in consideration of the home country of the main user of the language utterance apparatus according to this embodiment.

Next, when the voicing language change button 2067 is pressed, the CPU 201 (FIG. 2) writes information corresponding to Japanese into the voicing language storage area (FIG. 3) of the RAM 210. As a result, when the sentence example is displayed on the display 204, the information in the utterance language storage area is referred to, and the sentence example is displayed in three languages other than Japanese. In other words, the CPU201, current, example sentences that have been selected by the user, English text data corresponding to, for example, "Hello", Hangul text data and the Chinese text data is read out from the ROM202, the display information corresponding to each It is sent to the display driver 203. As a result, the English sentence that corresponds to the "Hello" is displayed on the display area corresponding to each of the language of the display 204,
Hangul and Chinese sentences are displayed respectively (box 312 in FIG. 8).

After that, when the utterance button 2066 is pressed, since the information corresponding to Japanese is stored in the utterance language storage area of the RAM 210, the Japanese voice storage bank in the ROM 202 is set as the bank to be accessed. Japanese voice data corresponding to the sentence example designated by the user is read from the Japanese voice storage bank and sent to the voice IC 207. As a result, the speaker 2
Phrases can be uttered in the Japanese from 09, for example, and so on "Hello" (box 313 in FIG. 8).

When the utterance language change button 2067 is pressed again, the contents of the utterance language storage area of the RAM 210 are rewritten to the contents corresponding to English. As a result, when the sentence example is displayed on the display 204, the information in the utterance language storage area is referred to, and the text data for three countries other than English of the sentence example selected by the user is R.
The display information read from the OM 202 and corresponding to each is sent to the display driver 203. As a result, the Japanese sentence, the Hangul sentence, and the Chinese sentence of the sentence example selected by the user are displayed in the display areas corresponding to the respective languages of the display 204 (box 31 in FIG. 8).
4).

When the voicing button 2066 is pressed, the English voice storage bank in the ROM 202 is set as the bank to be accessed according to the information in the voiced language storage area of the RAM 210, and is designated by the user from this English voice storage bank. The English voice data of the sentence example is read and sent to the voice IC 207. As a result, the sentence example is uttered in English from the speaker 209 (box 315 in FIG. 8).

The same operation as described above is performed when speaking in Hangul or Chinese (boxes 316 to 319 in FIG. 9). Then, when the utterance language change button 2067 is pressed in the state of uttering in Chinese,
Information indicating that no utterance is made is written in the utterance language storage area of the RAM 210. As a result, the text data of four languages corresponding to the sentence example selected by the user is read from the ROM 202, and the display information corresponding to each is sent to the display driver 203. As a result,
The Japanese sentence, the English sentence, the Hangul sentence, and the Chinese sentence of the sentence example selected by the user are displayed on the display 204 (box 320 in FIG. 9). Further, when the utterance language change button 2067 is pressed, the contents of the utterance language storage area of the RAM 210 are updated again to the contents corresponding to Japanese, and the same operation as described above is performed.

Among the conventional language voicing devices, there is a type of displaying sentence sentences in parallel in a plurality of languages as in the above-described embodiment, but this type of conventional device is used for hearing learning. While learning, the language that was the subject of the hearing was displayed, which hindered learning. However, according to the present embodiment, since the spoken language which is the target of the hearing is not displayed, such a problem does not occur and effective learning can be performed.

<Third Embodiment> FIG. 10 shows the electrical construction of the apparatus according to this embodiment. Further, the external appearance of the apparatus according to this embodiment is shown in FIG. In the first and second embodiments described above, the RAM 21 responds to the operation of the utterance language change button.
The content of the utterance language storage area of 0 is updated, and the RO corresponding to the language specified by the content of the utterance language storage area is updated.
It was to access the bank in M.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIGS. 10 and 11, utterance buttons 2066a to 2066 corresponding to each language.
d. These buttons 2066a-2066
In c, ON / O by each button as shown in FIG.
Each switch for performing FF switching is provided. These switches are holding-type switches, and when the button is turned on, the switch maintains the on state, and when the button is pressed again, the switch returns to the off state. Also, the ON / OFF state of each switch is in an exclusive relationship, and when one switch is ON, the other switch is ON.
When the switch is put in the state, the switch that has been in the ON state until then is returned to the OFF state. That is, the maximum number of switches that are turned on is one.

In this embodiment, as shown in FIG.
Each has ROM 2021 to 2024 in which voice data corresponding to Japanese, English, Hangul, and Chinese is stored. In addition, each switch corresponding to the voice buttons 2066a to 2066c is stored in the ROM 2 via the buffer 220.
Only the ROM corresponding to the switch that is connected to the switches 021 to 2024 and is in the ON state is set to the readable state so that the CPU 201 can read the audio data.

According to the present embodiment, when the user presses the utterance button corresponding to the desired language, the ROMs 2021 to 2022
Of the four, the one corresponding to the relevant language is selected. Then, the voice data corresponding to the language of the sentence example selected by the user (that is, the sentence example being displayed on the display 204) is read from the ROM corresponding to the pressed one of the vocalization buttons 2066a to 2066c, IC
It is supplied to the speaker 209 via the amplifier 207 and the amplifier 208 (see FIG. 2), and the example sentence in the language is uttered.
In the case of the present embodiment, since the CPU 201 does not need to recognize what the utterance language is, the burden of control can be reduced. When the number of spoken languages is increased or decreased, the buttons and switches described above and a ROM for storing voice data are used.
The number of can be increased or decreased according to the number of spoken languages. CPU
When 201 accesses the voice data in each ROM, as described in the first embodiment, information corresponding to the phrase number of the sentence example to be uttered is read from the voice data table in the ROM. Target audio data is read from the address specified by the read information. Therefore, no matter how many ROMs for storing the voice data are provided, the processing contents for reading the voice data executed by the CPU 201 are not affected at all, and therefore the control program need not be changed at all.

A modified example can be considered in this embodiment.
For example, instead of providing a plurality of switches as described above, one switch for generating a pulse and a shift register that cyclically shifts data "1" by this pulse constitute a ring counter, You may make it select ROM by the output signal of each stage of a register.

In each of the embodiments described above, four languages, Japanese, English, Hangul and English, are dealt with, but it goes without saying that the language can be selected arbitrarily.
Further, the number of displayed language types and the number of spoken language types may not be equal. For example, in Chinese, even if the same sentence is used, a wide variety of utterances are made depending on the region. However, the voice data of such various dialects is stored in the ROM so that the one selected by the user is provided. May be. In this case, the sentence example is displayed in Japanese, and when uttering Chinese corresponding to the sentence example, a desired one can be selected from a plurality of types of dialects.

[0049]

As is apparent from the matters described above,
According to the present invention, for example, when a Japanese person wants to ask a way in Korea, the visiting person can smoothly ask a question to the other person with a voice in Hangul while watching the display in Japanese.
Also, because the display language and the utterance language are managed separately,
Even in communication between three or more languages, it is possible to speak in the language of the other party while each displaying the native language.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a plan view showing the appearance of a speech utterance device according to a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing stored contents of a RAM 210 in the same embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing storage contents of a ROM 202 in the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an operation when reading audio data from the ROM 202 in the embodiment.

FIG. 6 is a flowchart showing the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart showing the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 8 is a flowchart showing the operation of the speech utterance system according to the second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a flowchart showing the operation of the embodiment.

FIG. 10 is a block diagram showing a functional configuration of a speech utterance device according to a third embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a plan view showing the outer appearance of the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

 201 CPU 210 RAM 202 ROM 203 Display Driver 204 Display 205 Button Input Device 206 Button 207 Voice IC 208 Amplifier 209 Speaker

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. A language utterance apparatus for uttering a voice in a specific language from a plurality of languages, a display unit for displaying a sentence example in a specific one or a plurality of languages, and a language selection for selecting a language to be uttered. Means, a voicing instruction means for instructing utterance, and utterance in the language or dialect etc. designated by the language selecting means regardless of the displayed language type when the utterance instruction is given by the voicing instruction means. A language utterance device for performing a language utterance. 2. The language utterance apparatus according to claim 1, further comprising display means for displaying the type of language to be uttered. 3. The language voicing device according to claim 1, further comprising means for not displaying a sentence example in the same language as the language to be uttered.