A speech discrimination testing system , configured for testing the ability of a person to hear speech sounds in a language-neutral manner comprising: a data processor ; a memory in data communication with the data processor configured to store an inventory of speech sounds for presentation to a subject; and at least one transducer for presentation of speech sounds to a subject wherein the speech discrimination testing system is configured to: select speech sounds from the stored inventory of speech sounds to be presented to the subject in a sequence; present selected speech sounds via the at least one transducer to the subject in a sequence such that each speech sound in the sequence is presented to the subject more than once, apart from one lone speech sound which is presented to the subject only once; input the subject's identification of the lone speech sound into the speech discrimination testing system ; characterized in that speech sounds stored in the inventory of speech sounds are used in a majority of the most commonly spoken languages including Mandarin, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi-urdu, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Javanese, Korean, French, Turkish, Vietnamese, Telugu, Cantonese, Italian, Polish, Ukranian, Thai, Gujarati, Malay, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, Burmese, Romanian, Pashto, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Indonesian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Croatian, Danish, Hungarian, Swedish, and Serbian. a data processor ; a memory in data communication with the data processor configured to store an inventory of speech sounds for presentation to a subject; and at least one transducer for presentation of speech sounds to a subject wherein the speech discrimination testing system is configured to: select speech sounds from the stored inventory of speech sounds to be presented to the subject in a sequence; present selected speech sounds via the at least one transducer to the subject in a sequence such that each speech sound in the sequence is presented to the subject more than once, apart from one lone speech sound which is presented to the subject only once; input the subject's identification of the lone speech sound into the speech discrimination testing system ; characterized in that speech sounds stored in the inventory of speech sounds are used in a majority of the most commonly spoken languages including Mandarin, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi-urdu, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Javanese, Korean, French, Turkish, Vietnamese, Telugu, Cantonese, Italian, Polish, Ukranian, Thai, Gujarati, Malay, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, Burmese, Romanian, Pashto, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Indonesian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Croatian, Danish, Hungarian, Swedish, and Serbian. select speech sounds from the stored inventory of speech sounds to be presented to the subject in a sequence; present selected speech sounds via the at least one transducer to the subject in a sequence such that each speech sound in the sequence is presented to the subject more than once, apart from one lone speech sound which is presented to the subject only once; input the subject's identification of the lone speech sound into the speech discrimination testing system ; characterized in that speech sounds stored in the inventory of speech sounds are used in a majority of the most commonly spoken languages including Mandarin, English, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi-urdu, Bengali, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Javanese, Korean, French, Turkish, Vietnamese, Telugu, Cantonese, Italian, Polish, Ukranian, Thai, Gujarati, Malay, Malayalam, Tamil, Marathi, Burmese, Romanian, Pashto, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Indonesian, Norwegian, Hebrew, Croatian, Danish, Hungarian, Swedish, and Serbian. <EOS>