On deriving a phoneme model for a new language

Abstract

We present a method for building an initial phoneme model for training an HMM in a new language using an already trained recognition system in a base language. HMM based phoneme recognition systems are used to model the phonemes in most large vocabulary speech recognition tasks. Mappings between the phonetic spaces of the two languages are generated and are used to populate the phonetic space of the new language. The best possible alignment of the new language data is obtained and initial phone models are built on this labeled data. A classification experiment is performed in the new language to illustrate the goodness of initial phone models. Experiments are carried out with Hindi as the new language using an English language recognition system to derive the initial phone models for Hindi language.