Unfortunately, it is not quite that straightforward. What I would like to cover here are the limitations of current speech recognition technology, and explain what might be required for it to have usefulness to individuals who are interested in using it for access to the spoken word, and not as the hands-free dictation system for which it is being developed. ASR and Hands-free Dictation First, it is very exciting that ASR has moved beyond discrete speech and into continuous speech. There are a variety of models and techniques that must be incorporated to ensure accurate results. To help clarify what an accomplishment this is, let s examine our speech.
Spoken words are like snowflakes.
No one person ever says a given word exactly the same way twice. This is not solely the result of inflection, emphasis, emotion, or being congested. When words come at the beginning of a sentence or at the end of a sentence, they are pronounced differently. Looking at spectrograms of words, the length of time spent on a vowel is different when we are emphasizing that word than when we are not. In fact, consonants are pronounced differently depending upon the vowel that follows it.