1. A method for electronically recognizing spoken words which comprises: transducing acoustic speech waveforms to obtain a corresponding electric signal; obtaining from said signal a sequence of digital values characterizing the waveforms, said digital signals representing, at a given sample time, a frame of speech information; generating a representative list of standard frames represented by encoded indices; precomputing and storing a table of difference values representing the distances between each standard frame in said list and all other standard frames in said list; for each token word which is to be recognized, generating and storing in a first local memory a sequence of standard frame indices which represent that token word; recognizing sample speech by, as each sample frame is generated, finding a representative standard frame which best represents the sample frame, extracting from the table those difference values which pertain to said representative standard frame and storing those extracted values in a second local memory, for each token word in sequence obtaining from said second local memory the corresponding difference values which represent the token word relative to the representative sample frame and incrementing a respective accumulating value by a value which is a function of the respective difference value whereby token words can be matched to the sample speech on the basis of the relative magnitudes of the respective accumulating values.