Patent ID: 7987093

Claim:
A speech synthesizing device, the device comprising: a text accepting unit to accept text data; an extracting unit to extract a special character including a pictographic character, a face mark or a symbol from text data accepted by the text accepting unit; a dictionary database to register as phonetic expressions information on both a phonetic expression to read aloud a meaning of each special character and another phonetic expression; a selecting unit to select a phonetic expression of an extracted special character from the dictionary database when the extracting unit extracts the special character; a judging unit to judge whether a special character extracted by the extracting unit is used for the purpose of substitution for a character or for another purpose; a converting unit to convert the text data accepted by the accepting unit to a phonogram in accordance with a phonetic expression selected by the selecting unit in association with the extracted special character; and a speech synthesizing unit to synthesize a voice from a phonogram obtained by the converting unit, wherein the selecting unit selects a phonetic expression to read aloud a corresponding meaning from the dictionary database when the judging unit judges that a special character extracted by the extracting unit is used for the purpose of substitution for a character and then the selecting unit selects another corresponding phonetic expression from the dictionary database when the judging unit judges that a special character extracted by the extracting unit is used for another purpose.