System and method for Mandarin Chinese speech recognition using an optimized phone set

A method for performing a Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure with an electronic device, comprising the steps of:

• configuring a recognizer to compare input speech data to phone strings from a vocabulary dictionary to thereby generate and output one or more recognized words from said vocabulary dictionary, said vocabulary dictionary being implemented according to an optimized phone set, said optimized phone set being implemented with a phonetic technique to separately provide consonantal phones and vocalic phones, one or more of said phone strings including more than two phones from said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones, said optimized phone set being implemented in a compact manner to include only a minimum required number of said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones, said optimized phone set representing sounds of a Mandarin Chinese language without utilizing corresponding tonal information as part of different phones in said optimized phone set, said recognizer thus performing said Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure without utilizing any type of tone data to thereby output said one or more recognized words as a final speech recognition result;
• and
• controlling said recognizer with a processor to thereby perform said Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure.

A computer-readable medium encoded with a computer program for performing a Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure, by performing the steps of:

• configuring a recognizer to compare input speech data to phone strings from a vocabulary dictionary to thereby generate and output one or more recognized words from said vocabulary dictionary, said vocabulary dictionary being implemented according to an optimized phone set, said optimized phone set being implemented with a phonetic technique to separately provide consonantal phones and vocalic phones, one or more of said phone strings including more than two phones from said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones, said optimized phone set being implemented in a compact manner to include only a minimum required number of said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones, said optimized phone set representing sounds of a Mandarin Chinese language without utilizing corresponding tonal information as part of different phones in said optimized phone set, said recognizer thus performing said Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure without utilizing any type of tone data to thereby output said one or more recognized words as a final speech recognition result;
• and
• controlling said recognizer with a processor to thereby perform said Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure.

A system for performing a Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure with an electronic device, comprising:

• means for comparing input speech data to phone strings from a vocabulary dictionary to thereby generate and output one or more recognized words from said vocabulary dictionary, said vocabulary dictionary being implemented according to an optimized phone set, said optimized phone set being implemented with a phonetic technique to separately provide consonantal phones and vocalic phones, one or more of said phone strings including more than two phones from said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones, said optimized phone set being implemented in a compact manner to include only a minimum required number of said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones, said optimized phone set representing sounds of a Mandarin Chinese language without utilizing corresponding tonal information as part of different phones in said optimized phone set, said means for comparing thus performing said Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure without utilizing any type of tone data to thereby output said one or more recognized words as a final speech recognition result;
• and
• means for controlling said means for comparing to thereby perform said Mandarin Chinese speech recognition procedure.