Patent ID: 7266495

Claim:
A computerized pronunciation system configured to generate pronunciations for words that are represented by waveforms and text, such that the pronunciations are spelled by phones in a phonetic alphabet for storage in a pronunciation dictionary, the system comprising: a word list including at least one word; transcribed acoustic data including at least one waveform for the word and transcribed text associated with the waveform; a pronunciation-learning module configured to accept as input the word list and the transcribed acoustic data, the pronunciation-learning module including: sets of initial pronunciations of the word, a scoring module configured score pronunciations and to generate phone probabilities, and a set of alternate pronunciations of the word, wherein the set of alternate pronunciations include a highest-scoring set of initial pronunciations with a highest-scoring substitute phone substituted for a lowest-probability phone; and a pronunciation dictionary configured to receive the highest-scoring set of initial pronunciations and the set of alternate pronunciations.