SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PREPARING A PRONUNCIATION DICTIONARY FOR A TEXT-TO-SPEECH VOICE

Disclosed are various elements of a toolkit used for generating a TTS voice for use in a spoken dialog system. The embodiments in each case may be in the form of the system, a computer-readable medium or a method for generating the TTS voice. One embodiment of the invention relates to a method of generating a database for a TTS voice. The method comprises matching every spoken word associated with a TTS voice database with a smallest set of possible pronunciations for each word. The smallest set is generated by automatically determining a dialect and linguistic context using linguistic rules, empirically determining idiosyncratic speaker characteristics and determining a subject domain. The method further comprises dynamically generating a pronunciation dictionary on a word-by-word basis using the smallest set.