Phonetic decoding and concatentive speech synthesis

A method of processing speech, the method comprising:

• receiving speech data based on speech from a speaker during a conversation turn in a conversation session;
• converting the received speech data to an input string of acoustic data using at least one processor;
• changing at least one item of acoustic data in said input string according to one or more rules to form at least one output string of acoustic data, wherein the one or more rules comprise a user rule associated with a user in the conversation session, and wherein the user is selected from the group consisting of the speaker and at least one listener;
• and
• converting each formed output string of acoustic data to output speech data for output to the at least one listener.

A computer usable non-transitory storage medium storing computer usable program code that, when executed by a processor, performs a method comprising:

• receiving speech data based on speech from a speaker during a conversation turn in a conversation session;
• converting the received speech data to an input string of acoustic data;
• changing at least one item of acoustic data in said input string according to one or more rules to form at least one output string of acoustic data, wherein the one or more rules comprise a user rule associated with a user in the conversation session, and wherein the user is selected from the group consisting of the speaker and at least one listener;
• and
• converting each formed output string of acoustic data to output speech data for output to the at least one listener.