Voice recording tool for creating database used in text to speech synthesis system

A method for recording verbal expressions of a person implemented in a concatenative speech synthesis system for use in a vehicle navigation system having a database including a map and text describing street names and points of interest of the map, the method comprising the following steps of:

• designing a system with syllable-in-context constructs where all syllables of a language are represented, and if a syllable is bounded by vowel on either side, a phonetic context of the vowel is encoded;
• creating a database of text phrases in which each text phrase is represented as a sequence of syllable-in-context constructs;
• using a proprietary method to sort all of the text phrases based on numbers of new syllable-in-context constructs that each of the text phrases contains;
• displaying selected phrases one at a time through a proprietary speech recording software program for a voice talent in order to produce speech data of the selected phrases;
• and
• recording the verbal expression one text phrase at a time while checking a speech signal to be within a predetermined normal range so that it is not clipped or distorted at either side;
• wherein the syllable includes a regular syllable having exactly one vowel preceded and/or followed by any number of consonants, and a super-syllable having two or more syllables with a vowel hiatus across a syllable boundary.