Harvard sentences

The Harvard sentences are a collection of sample phrases that are used for standardized testing of Voice over IP, cellular, and other telephone systems. They are phonetically-balanced sentences that use specific phonemes at the same frequency they appear in English.

IEEE Recommended Practices for Speech Quality Measurements^[1] sets out 72 lists of 10 phrases, described as the "1965 Revised List of Phonetically Balanced Sentences (Harvard Sentences)." They are widely used in research in telecoms, speech and acoustics, where standardized and repeatable sequences of speech are needed. The Open Speech Repository^[2] provides some freely usable, prerecorded WAV files of Harvard Sentences in American and British English, in male and female voices.

Example

List 11^[3] consists of the following 10 phrases:

1. Oak is strong and also gives shade.
2. Cats and dogs each hate the other.
3. The pipe began to rust while new.
4. Open the crate but don't break the glass.
5. Add the sum to the product of these three.
6. Thieves who rob friends deserve jail.
7. The ripe taste of cheese improves with age.
8. Act on these orders with great speed.
9. The hog crawled under the high fence.
10. Move the vat over the hot fire.

References