Spanish Galician (gl-ES)

This documentation was updated on October 31, 2023.

Creating grammars

The following subsections describe key issues for working with grammar documents in the Galician language.

Character encoding

Nuance Recognizer has full internal Unicode support. For example, you can create your grammars using UTF-8 or Latin-1 (also known as ISO-8859-1) character encoding. For example, your grammar header might be:

&lt;?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?&gt;  



&lt;grammar xml:lang="gl-ES" version="1.0" root="test"&gt;

Below are codes for writing some common Galician characters. These are useful if you do not have access to a Galician keyboard, and are typed by pressing the Alt key while entering digits on your keyboard (after typing the last digit, the desired character appears on your screen when you release the Alt key):

Alt/0224 = à	Alt/0237 = í
Alt/0225 = á	Alt/0239 = ï
Alt/0231 = ç	Alt/0242 = ò
Alt/0232 = è	Alt/0243 = ó
Alt/0233 = é	Alt/0249 = ù
Alt/164 = ñ	Alt/0250 = ú

If you do not have access to a keyboard for your target language, you can use the Windows character map. (Choose the “System” font and the “Latin-1” subset.)

Start _→_ Programs _→_ Accessories _→_ System Tools _→_ Character Map

alphanum_lc built-in grammar

The alphanum_lc grammar recognizes a connected string of up to 20 digits and lower case alphabetic characters.

For example, this grammar could be used to recognize a product code or order number.

Characters are the letters a-z, and ñ.

Digits are 0-9.

Non-alphanumeric characters such as hyphens (-), dots (.), and underscores (_) are not recognized; if spoken they reduce recognition accuracy.

Returned keys/values

MEANING	Contains a string of ISO-8859-1 digits and lowercase letters, with no embedded spaces.
SWI_literal	Contains the exact text that was recognized.

Note: the alphanum_lc built-in grammar replaces the alphanum built-in grammar.

alphanum built-in grammar

The alphanum grammar is identical with the alphanum_ lc grammar for Galician.

boolean built-in grammar

The boolean grammar collects an affirmative or negative response.

Properties

The y and n parameters let you associate any two touchtone buttons as synonyms for yes and no.

Parameter	Description
y	Desired DTMF digit to be equivalent to “si” (default = 1)
n	Desired DTMF digit to be equivalent to “non” (default = 2)

Examples

Caller says	MEANING key
si	true
non	false

digits built-in grammar

Valid characters are the digits 0-9.

Vocabulary items and pronunciations

This chapter describes considerations for vocabularies and their pronunciations in Galician (gl-ES). Your product documentation covers details about how to work with pronunciations and dictionaries.

Specially tuned pronunciations

The following table shows common words that are fine-tuned by Nuance.

Words with tuned pronunciations (do not modify):

All letters of the alphabet, a-z and ñ.
Boolean: si and non
Digits: 0-9

Galician pronunciations

This section provides detailed reference information to help create pronunciation dictionaries. It is intended for people who have sufficient knowledge of the Galician language as spoken in Spain. It provides information about transcription and pronunciation.

If you are not sure how a certain word is pronounced you can refer to the IPA transcriptions given there and then convert them into the SAMPA symbols, given in The Galician symbol set in alphabetical order .

The Galician phoneme system

The Galician phoneme system can be divided into two groups:

Vowels
Consonants

It is possible to distinguish seven different types of Galician consonants:

Plosives
Fricatives
Affricates
Nasals
Laterals
Trills
Xenophone

Galician symbol set grouped by phoneme classes

The following table shows all phonemes used in Galician transcriptions. They are listed according to their phoneme classes with their SAMPA and IPA representations.

Phoneme class	SAMPA	IPA	Examples of use
Consonants	Plosives	b	b
p	p	palacio	/palaTjo/
d	d	diploma	/diploma/
t	t	teatro	/teatro/
g	g	galiza	/galiTa/
k	k	informativo	/informatiBo/
Fricatives	f	f	fondo
B	β	laboratorio	/laBoratOrjo/
D	ð	limitado	/limitaDo/
G	ɣ	igrexa	/iGrESa/
s	s	observar	/oBserBar/
T	θ	limpeza	/limpETa/
S	ʃ	peixe	/pejSe/
Affricates	tS	ʤ	sánchez
Nasals	m	m	humana
N	ŋ	joaquín	/xoakiN/
J	ɲ	mariña	/mariJa/
n	n	xunto	/Sunto/
Laterals	l	l	alemán
Z	ʎ	camillo	/kamiZo/
Trills	r	r	camerún
R	ʀ	carreira	/kaRejra/
Xenophone	x	x	jerez
Vowels	Single vowels	a	a
e	e	ceno	/Teno/
E	ɛ	daniel	/daniEl/
i	i	definitivo	/definitiBo/
o	o	delictos	/deliktos/
O	ɔ	depósitos	/depOsitos/
u	u	funcionario	/funTionarjo/
Semivowel	j	j	funerais

Galician consonants

The standard Galician consonants system is considered to have:

six plosives
seven fricatives
one affricate
four nasals
two laterals
two trills
one xenophone

The sample words given below demonstrate the different contexts in which the sounds can appear. A short explanation is also given.

Plosives

There are three voiced and three voiceless plosives in Galician, which can be arranged in pairs as shown here:

Voiced	Examples		Voiceless	Examples
/b/	balón	/balOn/	/p/	paciente	/paTiEnte/
/d/	documento	/dokumento/	/t/	toca	/tOka/
/g/	gabriel	/gaBriEl/	/k/	kibuz	/kiBuT/

Fricatives

There are seven fricatives in the Galician SAMPA symbol set

Examples			Examples
/f/	figura	/fiGura/	/s/	salsa	/salsa/
/B/	fluvial	/fluBial/	/T/	sancionar	/sanTionar/
/D/	padrón	/paDroN/	/S/	socioloxía	/soTioloSia/
/G/	pagar	/paGar/

Affricates

In Galician there is one affricate /tS/

/tS/	acochar	/akotSar/

Nasals

There are four nasals in Galician, /m/, /n/, /N/, and /J/.

/m/	mecánica	/mekanika/
/n/	natalidade	/nataliDaDe/
/N/	negociación	/neGoTiaTioN/
/J/	pelouriño	/pelouriJo/

Laterals

There are two laterals in Galician, /l/ and /Z/.

/l/	película	/pelikula/
/Z/	permaneceríalle	/permaneTeriaZe/

Trills

There are two trills in Galician, /r/ and /R/.

/r/	permite	/permite/
/R/	perruqueira	/peRukejra/

Xenophones

In Galician there is one xenophone (borrowed phoneme) /x/

/x/	tejero	/texEro/

Galician vowels

Single vowels (monophthongs)

The Galician language has seven distinguishable monophthongs:

/a/	abandonar	/aBandonar/
/e/	eclipse	/eklipse/
/E/	efecto	/efEkto/
/i/	ibérica	/iBErika/
/o/	oeste	/oEste/
/O/	obra	/OBra/
/u/	unida	/uniDa/

Semi-vowels

There is one semi-vowel in Galician:

/j/	universitaria	/uniBersitarja/

Specific pronunciation transcription methods

The grapheme <h>

There is no phonetic realization of the grapheme <h>. For example:

hotel	/otEl/

Pronunciation of foreign words

When there is a need to transcribe foreign words, the general rule is to transcribe those words with the same SAMPA symbol set than the rest. In case of a Galician transcription you have to transcribe every word of the dictionary with the Galician SAMPA symbols.

If you use a different symbol set your system will be incapable of understanding the input.

Every language has a different phoneme inventory, so you may have problems in covering each and every sound. For the most common case we offer transcription examples.

The French nasals for example are adapted to the Galician vowel system:

blanc	/blO/
centre	/sOntrE/

Multiple pronunciations (variants)

The type of pronunciation used in SAMPA and in the Galician Background dictionary conforms to the standard non-regional Galician pronunciation. Since it is possible to have more than one pronunciation for a word by using pronunciation variants, it may be difficult to determine how many pronunciation variants should be created.

The general rule is: create variants only if the pronunciation differs in more than one phoneme.

The Galician symbol set in alphabetical order

The following table shows the Galician symbol set in alphabetical order:

SAMPA	IPA	Examples of use
B	β	laboratorio
D	ð	limitado
E	ɛ	daniel
G	ɣ	igrexa
J	ɲ	mariña
N	ŋ	joaquín
O	ɔ	depósitos
R	ʀ	carreira
S	ʃ	peixe
T	θ	limpeza
Z	ʎ	camillo
a	a	cartel
b	b	bolsa
d	d	diploma
e	e	ceno
f	f	fondo
g	g	galiza
i	i	definitivo
j	j	funerais
k	k	informativo
l	l	alemán
m	m	humana
n	n	xunto
o	o	delictos
p	p	palacio
r	r	camerún
s	s	observar
t	t	teatro
tS	ʤ	sánchez
u	u	funcionario
x	x	jerez

Start→Programs→Accessories→System Tools→Character Map

key issues for working with grammar documents in the Galician language.