Speech synthesis method

Abstract

In a synthesis unit generator, a plurality of synthesis speech segments are generated by synthesizing training speech segments labeled with phonetic contexts and input speech segments while altering the pitch/duration of the input speech segments in accordance with the pitch/duration of the training speech segments. Typical speech segments are selected from the input speech segments on the basis of a distance between the synthesis speech segments and the training speech segments, and are stored in a storage. In addition, a plurality of phonetic context clusters corresponding to the synthesis units are generated on the basis of the distance, and are stored in a storage. A synthesis speech signal is generated by reading out, from the storage, those of the synthesis units, which correspond to the phonetic context clusters including phonetic contexts of input phonemes, and connecting the selected synthesis units in a speech synthesizer.