COMPARING UZBEK GRAPHEME-TO-PHONEME CONVERTERS: EPITRAN, ESPEAK NG, AND UZG2P ON SHARED EVALUATION CRITERIA

We compare stock Epitran uzb-Latn, eSpeak NG’s uz voice, and uzg2p, a patched Epitran wrapper, on robustness, phoneme inventory, digraphs, apostrophe canonicalization, and stress. All three complete a 356-item vocabulary without crashes or empty outputs, but their inventories differ substantially. uzg2p offers normalization, configurable oʻ→/ɵ/, and stress control; eSpeak supplies a synthesis baseline. Inventory harmonization is essential for phoneme error rate (PER) comparisons. Without independently annotated pronunciations, these findings establish implementation differences, not universal phonological superiority.