A device may determine a representation of text that includes a first linguistic term associated with a first set of speech sounds and a second linguistic term associated with a second set of speech sounds. The device may determine a plurality of joins between the first set and the second set. A given join may be indicative of concatenating a first speech sound from the first set with a second speech sound from the second set. A given local cost of the given join may correspond to a weighted sum of individual cost. A given individual cost may be weighted based on a variability of the given individual cost in the plurality of joins. The device may provide a sequence of speech sounds indicative of a pronunciation of the text based on a minimization of a sum of local costs of adjacent speech sounds in the sequence.