Date of Award
5-2026
Culminating Project Type
Plan C Paper
Styleguide
ieee
Degree Name
Computer Science: M.S.
Department
Computer Science and Information Technology
College
School of Science and Engineering
First Advisor
Mark C. Petzold
Second Advisor
Koffi N. Ettien
Third Advisor
Jie H. Meichsner
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
Text-to-Speech Synthesis for Mooré Language, Technology Revolution for Burkina Faso Languages, TTS Implementation Using Python, Text-to-Speech Synthesis, Tonal Language Processing, African Language Technology
Abstract
The purpose of this project is to implement a Text-To-Speech program in the Moore language. Moore is a language spoken primarily in Burkina Faso by the Mossi ethnic group. Moore is predominantly an oral language. The language is spoken by approximately 5 million people in Burkina Faso and about 3 million in Côte d'Ivoire, as well as by around 850,000 speakers in Benin, Ghana, Mali, and Togo. Despite being a widely spoken language, I realized that there is no existing program to convert text to speech in it. I decided to address this issue by implementing text-to-speech software in Python. By using NLP (Natural Language Processing) techniques in Python, the project develops solutions to address the lack of TTS systems for the Moore Language. The development of the system requires a comprehensive linguistic assessment and the acquisition of both audio and textual data. These data are then aligned at the syllable level to form the foundation for machine-learning-based speech synthesis. This technology aims to make information more accessible to non-literate individuals, thereby contributing to efforts to reduce low literacy rates in Burkina Faso. According to the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning [1], the adult literacy rate (ages 15+) in Burkina Faso stands at 41.2% overall, with a significant gender gap: 50.1% for males and 32.7% for females.
Recommended Citation
Bambara, Naomie Dalhia Johanne, "A Text-to-Speech Software in Moore Language" (2026). Culminating Projects in Computer Science and Information Technology. 71.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/csit_etds/71
Comments/Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Koffi for his help and dedication to this project. He was my mentor guiding me throughout this project and being present to support me, coming to school for meetings despite being on sabbatical leave for a year. I would also like to thank Dr. Petzold and Dr. Meichsner for their time and feedback.
I want to express my gratitude to Madam Salimata Zongo, professor of Moore and French who helped me a lot achieve this project by giving the dataset necessary for this work. She recorded the 100 proverbs we used during the software implementation. Madam Zongo also guided me and explained a lot of concepts in the Moore language, which was really impactful for the work.
I also want to thank the evaluation participants who helped me improve the application by providing sincere feedback on the project.
I want to say thank you to my uncle August Bambara, who found for me the studio where Madam Salimata Zongo recorded the proverbs. Thank you also to Mr. Kader Yago, who provided us with a clean, sterile, and noise-free environment with the best tools necessary for the recording.
Finally, I will never stop expressing my deepest gratitude and love to my entire family, especially my parents, Lise Ouedraogo Bambara and Constant Desire Bambara, who never stop encouraging me and blessing me.