SPEECH RECOGNITION APPARATUS, SPEECH RECOGNITION METHOD, AND RECORDING MEDIUM STORING SPEECH RECOGNITION PROGRAM

A speech recognition apparatus for recognizing a plurality of sequential words contained in a speech includes an acoustic model reading part for reading an acoustic model, a dictionary management part for reading required data from dictionary data, and a recognition part for successively recognizing the sequential words by matching a group of words represented by the dictionary data with the inputted speech, using the acoustic model, wherein the dictionary data contains a beginning part dictionary representing beginning parts of words, and a group of ending part dictionaries storing data representing ending parts, the ending part dictionary and/or the beginning part dictionary are read in accordance with the word recognized by the recognition part, and the recognition part matches a subsequent speech with the beginning parts of words contained in the beginning part dictionary while the dictionary management part is reading the ending part dictionary and/or the beginning part dictionary. Because of this, the speech recognition apparatus can delete a delay in speech recognition processing caused by the read of a word dictionary from an auxiliary storage in an apparatus having a constraint for a memory.