The UOP text-to-speech system for Greek speech synthesis

A Text-to-Speech system for synthesising the Greek language has been developed in Computer laboratory of the University of Patras (UOP). The system is composed of a core and different interfaces so that is compatible for Windows applications using Microsoft SAPI. The Greek TTS synthesizer uses waveform unit concatenation technology working with a sophisticated speech database and produces good quality speech synthesis of the Greek language. The system performs a text-to-speech conversion of any input text introduced to the computer and written according to ordinary Greek orthography. The paper reviewing the system, makes emphasis on the one hand to the speech synthesis methodology, which is language dependent, on the other hand to its advantages. A careful linguistic study of the Greek language led to the construction of a speech database composed of a minimum set speech units, with well-defined properties. Finally in the paper are presented the first experimental measures for the evaluation of the system the results of which are very encouraging.