An app for voice analysis
A new app developed by linguists at the Universities of Zurich and Geneva analyzes how high or fast we speak and how our voice sounds. "VoiceÄpp" even recognizes the user's dialect by means of automatic speech recognition.
The app, developed by dialect researchers at the Universities of Zurich and Geneva, measures how fast, high or low someone speaks. All users have to do is record a sentence with their smartphone, whereupon the app analyzes the pitch and speed of speech. The voice analysis also shows how people with hearing impairments, such as tinnitus, perceive their own voice.
Based on the data generated with the app, the linguists hope to create a corpus of Swiss German of unprecedented size. For the first time, it will be possible to determine far-reaching population statistics on speaking speed or voice pitch. The data could be used to analyze individual dialect regions, age or gender groups.
"VoiceÄpp" can be downloaded free of charge from the Apple App Store and in the Google Play Store can be obtained. It is the product of a two-year project by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
