A word plan you can bank on

A handful of Kiwis losing their ability to speak are taking steps to preserve their speech, writes Nicole Lawton.

Two years ago Peter McInnes began having trouble talking – now he’s taking the extraordinary step of banking his own voice before it runs out completely.

He is one of the first people in New Zealand to use the voice banking technology that is allowing people who are becoming mute the ability to continue to speak with their own voice long after it runs out, rather than the generic computerised American or British voices.

A man of few words, the grandfather-of-three from Pukekohe said being able to preserve this one shred of his identity was ‘‘pretty damn good.’’

He’s banking commonly used phrases he can replay in certain circumstances – where a synthetic voice just wouldn’t cut it.

‘‘Great game, mate!’’ is reserved for watching his grandson playing football.

‘‘Well that’s a pain in the ass,’’ is another that would be useful in certain situations.

About 1600 sentences are recorded, and then weaved into a synthetic voice, with the help of Talk Link, a Kiwi company that specialises in helping those with communication impairments.

McInnes said although he is only 600 words through, his digital voice already sounds about 95 per cent like his actual voice.

To date, seven people in New Zealand have banked their voice, and four more are going through the process.

McInnes was diagnosed in July with a progressive condition that will eventually take away his ability to speak. Now, his speech is laboured and deliberate, his tone somewhat flat.

He laughed and said that when he meets new people, they often think he is drunk and slurring his words.

He even carries a card around with him explaining his condition in case he ever gets pulled over by police officers.

‘‘When it first started happening, I thought my tongue was swollen or something,’’ McInnes said.

‘‘It just kept on flapping around in my mouth and catching on my teeth.’’

The 69-year-old started voice banking on Friday and said the program was easy to use.

‘‘It’s an amazing feeling. The

frustration of potentially not having a voice and therefore a way to communicate is not something I wanted to contemplate.’’

Talk Link general manager Ann Smaill said the process of recording a synthetic voice took a few weeks, and sometimes longer if the user’s speech was already affected.

‘‘It takes a long time but when it’s done right, it can capture the user’s unique intonation, pitch, timing and dialect – something that’s sorely missed when faced with the

alternative generic American or British voices.’’

Now, Talk Link is working with University of Canterbury speechlanguage therapy students on a project to create New Zealand European and New Zealand Maori voices.

‘‘These are for people who have already lost their voice but still want to sound Kiwi, instead of American or British.’’

The project is nearing completion, and she’ll be able to tackle her dream project of making a te reo voice.