Pronunciation dictionary development in resource-scarce environments

Abstract

The deployment of speech technology systems in the developing world is often hampered by the lack of appropriate linguistic resources. A suitable pronunciation dictionary is one such resource that can be difficult to obtain for lesser-resourced languages. Researchers design a process for the development of pronunciation dictionaries in resource-scarce environments, and apply this to the development of pronunciation dictionaries for ten of the official languages of South Africa. The paper defines the semiautomated development and verification process in detail and discusses practicalities, outcomes and lessons learnt. It further analyse the accuracy of the developed dictionaries and demonstrate how the distribution of rules generated from the dictionaries provides insight into the inherent predictability of the languages studied.