Patent ID: 8600753

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a text message for conversion to speech, the text message having a tagged portion and a non-tagged portion; identifying a topic domain associated with the text message; selecting, via a text-to-speech device, first phonemes from a phoneme database for the non-tagged portion based on first speech-related characteristics, wherein the phoneme database is specific to the topic domain and comprises phonemes labeled by database tags; generating first speech synthesis rules for the non-tagged portion based on the first speech-related characteristics; selecting second phonemes from the phoneme database based on second speech-related characteristics as indicated by message tags in the tagged portion of the text message, wherein the selecting is based on a matching of the message tags and the database tags, wherein the first phonemes and the second phonemes do not represent pre-recorded speech; retrieving second speech synthesis rules for the tagged portion based on the second speech-related characteristics; and synthesizing, via the text-to-speech device, speech by combining the first phonemes and the second phonemes using the first speech synthesis rules and the second speech synthesis rules.