Computer Text-to-speech Synthesis of African Languages: Modern Tools, Techniques and Technologies

In recent times, computer-mediated communication technologies are becoming more important in the areas of conflict resolution, mass education, commerce and other communication critical to human interaction. Two major communication technologies have huge penetration in most African countries: the internet and the mobile phone. At the moment, substantial part of the textual communication via these technologies is done using the English and French languages. The reason for this is that the modern information and communication technologies, including those for typesetting scripts, are either not adapted and/or are difficult to adapt for indigenous African languages. It is now a common knowledge that many African languages will likely go into extinction as they are becoming less frequently used by native speakers. The need to develop speech and language technologies for indigenous African languages thus emerges in the context of the potentials of computer-mediated communication technologies in modern society; hence this book.