Patent ID: 7155391

Claim:
A system for transcribing spoken words to text, the system comprising: at least one data structure containing word data correlating words to speech signals, wherein the at least one data structure includes dialect parameter data that is different than the word data and that can be used to recognize user dialects; and a processor configured to receive speech signals and to produce text representations corresponding to spoken words, wherein the processor initially sends signals to a user asking the user at least one question indicative of the user's dialect to thereby induce the user to provide non-verbal answer signals to the processor that are indicative of dialect parameters, wherein the dialect parameters comprise at least one of an age of the user, a gender of the user, an educational level of the user, a native language of the user, a geographic origin of the user, and a current geographic residence of the user, and wherein the processor compares the dialect parameters from the user to the dialect parameter data in the at least one data structure to determine at least one dialect that the user is likely to have prior to comparing the speech signals to the word data.