BHASHINI and IISc Bengaluru develop Text-to-Speech models for Sourashtra, a minority language of Tamil Nadu
On 16 October 2026, MeitY announced that the Digital India BHASHINI Division and IISc Bengaluru have developed Text-to-Speech models for Sourashtra, a minority Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly by the Sourashtra community in Tamil Nadu.
Summary
The Digital India BHASHINI Division under MeitY, with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, has developed Text-to-Speech (TTS) models for Sourashtra, a minority Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in Tamil Nadu. The four models give male and female voices for text in both Tamil script and Sourashtra script and were trained on a 28+ hour speech corpus built at IISc’s SPIRE Lab. The SPICOR TTS 3.0 Sourashtra Corpus is available on BHASHINI’s AIKOSH platform. Sourashtra is spoken by about 2.48 lakh people as per Census 2011.
Key facts
- Language
- Sourashtra – minority Indo-Aryan language, mainly in Tamil Nadu
- Developed by
- Digital India BHASHINI Division (MeitY) with IISc Bengaluru
- Models
- 4 TTS models – male and female voices, Tamil and Sourashtra scripts
- Architecture
- VITS
- Training data
- 28+ hours speech corpus from SPIRE Lab, IISc
- Data platform
- AIKOSH (SPICOR TTS 3.0 Sourashtra Corpus)
- Speakers
- About 2.48 lakh (Census 2011)
Practice MCQs 2 questions
In October 2026, BHASHINI and IISc Bengaluru developed Text-to-Speech models for which minority language spoken mainly in Tamil Nadu?
Show answer
Correct answer: B — Sourashtra
The Sourashtra speech corpus (SPICOR TTS 3.0) used for the new TTS models is available on which BHASHINI platform?
Show answer
Correct answer: C — AIKOSH