1. A semi-automated method for generating a phonetic decision tree with limited phonetic exceptions for a text-to-speech system comprising: selecting an initial subset of a set of input data; creating an initial phonetic decision tree from the selected subset; incorporating a predetermined set of terms from the input data to the selected subset; testing the phonetic decision tree with the increased subset, wherein each term of the subset is phonetized using the phonetic decision tree; categorizing a result of the testing step into a set of correctly phonetized terms and a set of incorrectly phonetized terms; generating an exception-limited phonetic decision tree with the set of correctly phonetized terms; determining if one or more termination conditions are satisfied; and when the one or more termination conditions are unsatisfactorily met, automatically repeating the incorporating, testing, categorizing, generating, and determining steps.