Malayalam was already included in eSpeak when Mahiti got involved to modify or add languages in it. Being involved otherwise, in developing solutions for community oriented projects, this was quite a challenge, an interesting one too. It was to put my mothertongue for the ears of numerous others to listen to the perfectness, purity and beauty of it.

The Beginning Alphabets were fine in eSpeak, and the pronunciations of those were also, to an acceptable level. Acceptable because eSpeak has its limitation of producing sound equivalent to native speaker. We sure will overcome that hurdle someday. It was not correct, not at all. The pronunciation changes for Malayali numbers when they are added to hundred. The example as it is briefly mentioned on the headline itself, the One hundred is 'Nooru' and one is 'Onnu'. Simple mathematics will join and pronounce them as 'Nooruonnu' or may be shorten it  to 'Nooronnu' but in Malayalam it is pronounced as 'Nootionnu' it applies for all the numbers. It also happens with thousand ('Ayiram' becomes 'Ayirati'). Modification- Successfully The rule that defines the pronunciation of numbers beyond hundred thousand, million and so on are written on the list file (eSpeakedit/dictsource/ma_list). It was modified and brought to the near accurate pronunciation. Valuable inputs were received from a number of language experts. Technical people from SCERT, Trivandrum, the support from CIS (Centre for Internet and Society) and organisations working with visually impaired people. Challenges The proper Malayalam pronunciation has a nasal intonation, which could be implemented with certain combinations, though still remains a challenge. The suggestion from the experts is to modify the phoneme sounds. Incorporating or modifying the ponunciation of certainindic languages like Malayalm, Manipuri with that of some non indic languages. It could adopt pronunciation from French, Italian or some Neo Latin or branches of other Indo European languges. We are hopeful to reach the day when a person from every corner of the world who reads Malayalam with his ears, would listen to eSpeak speaking Malayalam with the same distinct pronunciation and the sweetness of a mountain spring.