European Conference on Speech Technology Edinburgh, Scotland, UK September 1987

A Text-to-Speech System for British English, and Issues of Dialect and Style

Anthony Bladon (1,2), Rolf Carlson (3), Björn Granström (3), Sheri Hunnicutt (3), Inger Karlsson (3)

(1) Infovox AB, Solna, Sweden
(2) Phonetics Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
(3) Department of Speech Communication and Music Acoustics Royal, Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Although the concept of a multi-lingual text-to-speech system is a familiar one, rather little attention has been given to the question of the variety of each language that is synthesized. This question can be asked not only of national or dialectal varieties but of style differences within those varieties. We present a demonstration and discussion of a British English text-to-speech system. The issue of relatedness across dialects has been addressed in this system which incorporates British Received Pronunciation, in conjunction with a sister system which offers a General American pronunciation.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Bladon, Anthony / Carlson, Rolf / Granström, Björn / Hunnicutt, Sheri / Karlsson, Inger (1987): "A text-to-speech system for british English, and issues of dialect and style", In ECST-1987, 1055-1058.