Patent ID: 6961701

Claim:
A speech recognition apparatus, comprising: an input device for receiving a speech input; a processing device for digitally extracting data from the speech input a control device, said control device forming a phoneme string from said digitally extracted data, and wherein said phoneme string comprises of one or more phonemes; a preliminary processing device, wherein said preliminary processing device searches words stored in a database to determine which words have one or more phonemes equal to or similar to those of the phoneme string, and generates a preliminary score for each determined word, said preliminary processing device further identifying preliminary scores to identify phoneme strings meeting or exceeding a first threshold; an extended processing device, wherein said extended processing device searches pseudo-words stored in a database to determine which pseudo-words have one or more phonemes equal or similar to those of the phoneme strings that were determined to have a preliminary score that met or exceeded said first threshold, and generating a secondary score to identify phoneme strings meeting or exceeding a second threshold; a searching device, coupled to said extended processing device, wherein said searching device searches words stored in a database to determine which words have one or more phonemes equal or similar to those of the phoneme strings that were determined to have a secondary score that met or exceeded said second threshold; and a storage area, wherein the words having one or more phonemes equal or similar to the phoneme strings that were determined to have a secondary score that met or exceeded said second threshold are stored in said storage area.