Sample Tupuri-Bango_TTS-Dataset (male voice)

Language

Tupuri (also referred to as Toupouri or Tupure) is a Chadic language belonging to the Afro-Asiatic phylum. It is spoken primarily in the Kaele and Mayo-Danay Divisions of the Far-North Region of Cameroon and in adjacent areas of southern Chad. Despite its regional significance, Tupuri remains substantially underrepresented in language technology resources.

Variants

The dialectal situation of Tupuri is likely not fully documented. Two of its most salient varieties are:

• Tupuri-Bango (represented by the present dataset)

• Tupuri-Banwere

Writing System

The writing system used for the transcription of Tupuri-Bango in this dataset is the General Alphabet of Cameroon's Languages (AGLC). The AGLC provides a phonologically motivated orthographic standard for Cameroonian national languages and serves as the reference framework for Tupuri literacy materials.

1. Vowels

The vowel system attested in the dataset includes the following oral vowels:

a, e, i, o, u, ɛ, ɔ

Where:

• ɛ (epsilon): open-mid front unrounded vowel

• ɔ (open-o): open-mid back rounded vowel

Nasalized vowels are represented by the tilde diacritic placed directly on the vowel:

ã, ẽ, ũ, õ

Long vowels are represented by vowel doubling (e.g., aa, oo, ɛɛ, ɔɔ, ãã).

2. Consonants

The consonant inventory reflected in the dataset includes simple and digraph consonants:

b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t, w, y

Implosive consonants (AGLC hooked letters):

• ɓ: bilabial implosive (b with hook)

• ɗ: alveolar implosive (d with hook)

Special symbols:

• ŋ (eng): velar nasal consonant

• ' or ' (apostrophe): glottal stop or glottalization marker

3. Tone system

Tupuri-Bango is a tonal language. The dataset employs systematic tone marking on vowels in accordance with the AGLC convention. The following diacritics are attested in the dataset:

Level tones:

• High tone (H): acute accent — á, é, í, ú

• Low tone (L): grave accent — à, è, ì, ù

Contour tones:

• Rising tone (LH): caron — ě, ǐ, ǔ

Vowels without a tone diacritic are contextually interpreted in accordance with the AGLC convention for Tupuri.

Source

The dataset was compiled from scripted speech prompt lists read by a native speaker. Sentences were selected to provide broad phonological coverage of Tupuri-Bango and were transcribed in accordance with the AGLC orthographic standard.

Domain

The dataset represents scripted speech in Tupuri-Bango, covering a broad range of everyday sentence types drawn from a general-purpose TTS/ASR prompt list. All utterances are scripted rather than spontaneous.

Size

Total audio duration: 3,949 seconds (01h 05m 49s), distributed across 983 MP3 audio clips in 10 recording sessions.

Structure

The dataset is organised into 10 recording sessions:

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_01: 100 clips (6m 22s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_02: 98 clips (5m 37s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_03: 100 clips (6m 02s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_04: 100 clips (6m 19s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_05: 100 clips (6m 34s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_06: 100 clips (7m 41s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_07: 100 clips (6m 45s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_08: 100 clips (7m 00s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_09: 100 clips (6m 54s)

• Session tts_dataset_tui-bango_10: 85 clips (6m 30s)

Each session folder contains:

1. MP3 audio clips

2. One per-session sentence-to-audio mapping file (mapping.tsv), with 4 columns

Description of columns (mapping.tsv)

• audio_filename: filename of the audio clip (MP3)

• key: unique hash identifier of the recording

• sentence: sentence text as read by the speaker, transcribed in AGLC orthography

• attempts: number of recording attempts before acceptance

Sample