So, just bought the 340 S and we're using here in LA. The street names are being read aloud,however it seems like it's mixing in French into the English pronunciation. For example, it says Highway 405 E as "Four West Five East" (O is the French abbr for Ouest or West). It pronounces many other common English street names with the French pronunciations. I know it's set to English because it speaks the turn directions in English. Really weird. I updated it right after I bought so it is pretty up-to-date. One other thing, for a while, it stopped using the word "Highway" and replaced it with "Motorway" which I guess is UK English.

 

Because of the combined US/Canada map, Tomtom installed some French into its language dictionary (eg: to support Quebec).

You can fix the "o" = "WEST" bug by opening the following file on your Tomtom drive in notepad:
\LoquendoTTS\data\roadnrEnglishUS.lex

Then remove the line:
"o" = "WEST"

__________________
Current Tomtoms:

GO 740 app 9.054 (weekdays)
Map North America 2GB 855 + full POI + map subscription
+ LIVE services

GO 930 app 8.302 (weekends)
Map North America 855 + map subscription
Map WCE_2GB 825
+ PLUS traffic + Fuel prices + free safety cameras

HOME 2.7.4.1962 - WinXPproSP3

Prior Tomtoms:
Go 720, Go 510, One Limited Edition, One 2nd edition (all sold)

 

Thanks for posting back.

I actually returned the device to the store once we returned from our trip. (Restocking fee of 15% at Best Buy). I would have been willing to tweak the language pronunciations as you suggest, but not sure your average consumer is going to want to pull up notepad and hack the config files. There were a lot of mispronunciations in the code - San Pedro, Los Angeles, Sacramento all were spoken unrecognizable. How would you fix that?

What sent me over the edge, and really prompted me to return it was the difficulty of getting the USB inserted for the car charger. Really overly difficult. Maybe it was just me. Also, the location of the on-off button, which I always managed to press as I put it up on the suction mount, really annoyed me too. It was a collection of those two minor quirks, and the wierdo pronunciations - I mean how does it mispronounce" Los Angeles" for Pete's sake it's the largest city in the US! - that just made me think that I shouldn't pay 270 bucks for it. I should have kept my lesser model refurb Tom Tom, had for under 100 bucks. I did like the big screen, though. I think I'll let things stew for a few months and see if the models keep getting better.

 

If you plug the usb into the unit prior to mounting and put your fingers at the 3 o'clock and 9 o'clock position on the unit, mounting isn't really an issue, I think.

But, guess that's irrelevant now .........

__________________
TomTom 720--NA Map 855--WCE Map 840--NZ Map 835--App 8.351

 

I am wondering how the TomTom is storing Highway 405 E then.
I thought the TomTom used a space in it's search of what to replace using the lex

If a space is not being used as a control character MaximusToo should be hearing "West" any time there is a o (not zero)

Maybe that street is named weird and needs a mapshare correction.
Is it being stored as Highway 4 o 5 E?

This would be hard to debug what portion of the Highway had this problem now that MaximusToo returned his unit.

The thing that makes it difficult to debug is the TomTom does not store a long street/highway/road as a complete line and instead breaks it up into segments.
(anyone who had done a mapshare edit for say like speeds has experienced this)

So Highway 405 E maybe correct for some areas but not others.

 

I remember the 4-west-5 when I was in LA. There's a highway file roadnrEnglishUS.rex (note the "rex") that appears to renumber highways in American vernacular. eg: 405 = "Four-oh-five".

I think the o=west is firing after that messing everything up.

__________________
Current Tomtoms:

GO 740 app 9.054 (weekdays)
Map North America 2GB 855 + full POI + map subscription
+ LIVE services

GO 930 app 8.302 (weekends)
Map North America 855 + map subscription
Map WCE_2GB 825
+ PLUS traffic + Fuel prices + free safety cameras

HOME 2.7.4.1962 - WinXPproSP3

Prior Tomtoms:
Go 720, Go 510, One Limited Edition, One 2nd edition (all sold)

 

Getting the USB plug in was difficult when holding the device. Never tried it mounted. I am sure it would have fallen off the window mount with that pressure anyway with the click-in nature of the mount. The cable just didn't want to nest in. I had others try it, and they experienced the same problem. The port is recessed pretty far in there and it just was a struggle - no one ever did on a first try. Mostly, to avoid the frustration, I just kept the thing plugged in.

The on-off button should be in the back, away from the points where you would logically grab to adjust the horizontal orientation. Or if it is going to be on a grab point (top right corner), it should be some sort of slide switch, and not a push button.

Admittedly, I am a late adopter, not willing to deal with the quirks others might. Probably expecting too much out of the software, but these little annoyances with the design seem like something that would have been caught in testing.

Anyway, thanks for the posts.