1. In a digital processing system, a method for creating phonemic data from text, comprising the steps of: receiving input text; providing a plurality of rule sets, one rule set for processing one portion of the input text and different rule sets for processing respective different portions of the input text, each rule set having one or more rules for processing a respective portion of the input text; for each rule set, iteratively applying the rules of the rule set to the input text by comparing the input text with at least one of the rules of the rule set to produce respective phonemic data portions corresponding to portions of the input text, different rule sets producing different phonemic data portions; and combining the produced phonemic data portions to form a phonemic data sequence corresponding to the input text.