Grapheme to Phoneme (G2P) conversion for Bangla

Abstract

The automatic conversion of text to phoneme is a necessary step in all-current approaches to Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis and Automatic Speech Recognition System. This paper presents a methodology for Grapheme to Phoneme (G2P) conversion for Bangla based on orthographic rules. In Bangla G2P conversion sometimes depends not only on orthographic information but also on Parts of Speech (POS) information and semantics. This paper also addresses these issues along with their implementation methodology. The G2P conversion system of Bangla is tested on 1000 different types of Bangla sentences containing 9294 words. The percentage of correct conversion is 91.58% without considering the semantics and contextual POS with the exception table size of 333 words. If those errors which occur due to lack of exceptional words are considered, then the percentage of correct conversion will increase to 98%.