Weerasinghe, A.R.Wasala, R.A.Gamage, K.N.2014-11-132014-11-132007http://repository.kln.ac.lk/handle/123456789/2879This paper brings together the development of the first Text-to-Speech (TTS) system for Sinhala using the Festival framework and practical applications of it. Construction of a diphone database and implementation of the natural language processing modules are described. The paper also presents the development methodology of direct Sinhala Unicode text input by rewriting Letter-to-Sound rules in Festival's context sensitive rule format and the implementation of Sinhala syllabification algorithm. A Modified Rhyme Test (MRT) was conducted to evaluate the intelligibility of the synthesized speech and yielded a score of 71.5% for the TTS system described.AlgorithmsSyllabicationSinhalese language, Sri LankaArticleLinguistics