1. A rejection grammar process for use in speech recognition of an utterance comprising the steps of: selecting a digitized sub-list of phoneme models from a digitized list of phoneme models in a language, presenting a digitized sequential representation of the utterance to the rejection grammar process, and calculating a first set of probabilities indicating how well the digitized sequential representation of the utterance matches sequential combinations, or paths, of the digitized sub-list of phoneme models.