Many people around the world have known about Roger Ebert’s unfortunate bout with thyroid cancer that took away his ability to speak. Since 2006, he has been using the built-in text-to-speech capabilities of Mac OS X, so that he can communicate out loud to his family, and also to his audience.

But living a life through some one else’s voice (and in this case, a robot’s voice!) is slightly disorientating and means that your accent, inflection, and other vocal modes of expression are completely lost.

Tech Crunch recently published an article about Ebert’s attempt to get his voice back. Scottish company CereProc specializes in creating lifelike voice reproductions of famous people. (Ever want Bill Murray to personally wish you a happy birthday? That’s where these folks would come in.) Roger Ebert was able to send them DVD commentary tracks from several films he discussed at length, and using bits and pieces of different words and sounds, they were able to recreate his voice for a text-to-speech module. Ebert recently went on Oprah to discuss the developments, and you can also read about his blog.

It’s a remarkable story about the power of technology, and the possibilities for using the building blocks of language to give the gift of speech back.