New Turkish intelligibility test for assessing speech communication systems

This article describes a Turkish Intelligibility Test (TIT) in order to evaluate Quality of Service (QoS) of some speech communication systems (SCSs) based on Turkish phonetic properties. Since widely used speech communication systems are generally developed considering one language, the need of broadening linguistic coverage in designing next generation SCSs requires assessment methods in many broadly used languages including Turkish as well. In this article, selection of TIT material considering Turkish phonetic characteristics is discussed and the conduct of TIT including recording, preparing and presentation of test material is detailed. Experimental results, which present subjective intelligibility assessment outcomes of three well-known speech coders, are given in comparison with the results of the Diagnostic Rhyme Test (DRT) in North American English. Intelligibility assessment via TIT is expected to be a leading and critical concept in improving the intelligibility performance of Turkish processed by SCSs under varying acoustic environments.