1. Method for recognizing speech, wherein at least keywords (Kj) in a received speech phrase (SP) are recognized employing a keyword spotting based recognition process ( 12 ) and a given language model (LM), wherein a combination of at least one first language or keyword model (KM) containing and/or describing possible in-vocabulary or keywords or phrases (Kj) and one second language or out-of-vocabulary model (OOVM) describing at least in part out-of-vocabulary words or phrases (Gj) is used as said language model (LM), and wherein a global penalty (Pglob) is associated to and/or introduced or inserted into said language model (LM) so as to increase the recognition of keywords (Kj), characterized in that at least one variable penalty value (Ptrans, P 1,..., P 6 ) is associated with and/or used to define the global penalty (Pglob).