System and method for pronunciation modeling

A system comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations comprising:
• receiving user speech;
• identifying a user dialect in the user speech;
• selecting a set of phoneme alternatives representing the user dialect from a library of alternative pronunciation models, each alternative generated by the process of:
• (i) identifying a generic model of speech composed of phonemes;
• (ii) identifying a family of interchangeable phonemic alternatives for a phoneme in the generic model of speech;
• (iii) labeling each interchangeable phonemic alternative in the family as referring to the phoneme;
• and
• (iv) generating a pronunciation model which substitutes the family of interchangeable phonemic alternatives for the phoneme;
• and
• recognizing the user speech using the selected set of phoneme alternatives in the pronunciation model.

A computer-readable storage device having instructions stored which, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

• receiving user speech;
• identifying a user dialect in the user speech;
• selecting a set of phoneme alternatives representing the user dialect from a library of alternative pronunciation models, each alternative generated by the process of:
• (i) identifying a generic model of speech composed of phonemes;
• (ii) identifying a family of interchangeable phonemic alternatives for a phoneme in the generic model of speech;
• (iii) labeling each interchangeable phonemic alternative in the family as referring to the phoneme;
• and
• (iv) generating a pronunciation model which substitutes the family of interchangeable phonemic alternatives for the phoneme;
• and
• recognizing the user speech using the selected set of phoneme alternatives in the pronunciation model.