1. A method for operating a speech recognition system, the method comprising: (a) receiving voice input at a speech recognition engine; (b) receiving an acoustic model at the speech recognition engine; (c) providing a layered grammar and dictionary library to the speech recognition engine, the layered grammar and dictionary library generated before receipt of the voice input at the speech recognition engine, the layered grammar and dictionary library including, (i) a language and non-grammar layer that supplies types of rules a grammar definition layer can use and defines non-grammar the speech recognition system should ignore; (ii) a dictionary layer that defines phonetic transcriptions for word groups the speech recognition system is to recognize; (iii) a grammar definition layer that applies rules from the language and non-grammar layer to define combinations of word groups the speech recognition system is to recognize; (d) using the acoustic model and the layered grammar and dictionary library to process the voice input.