1. A portable speech processing device incorporated within a personal digital assistant or cellphone for use in a distributed speech recognition system for processing a speech utterance comprising: a first signal processing circuit adapted to generate a first set of speech data values from speech utterance signals associated with the speech utterance, wherein said first set of speech data values have a limited data content and are compressed; a transmission circuit that formats the first set of speech data values by removing NULL data in the first set of speech data values and inserting a single NULL character to denote end of speech and transmits the first set of speech data values over a communications channel to a second signal processing circuit; said transmission circuit being adapted to transmit said speech data values over said communications channel in response to a designated button for speech queries being pressed on the portable speech processing device; wherein the portable speech processing device is configured so that said first set of speech data values can be sent in a data stream over said channel, during periods when silence is not detected, to a server system which includes a second signal processing circuit which can perform a full recognition of text words in the speech utterance as well as a natural language engine for performing a recognition of a meaning of a sentence presented in said text words; said full recognition being performed subject to a confidence level provided to said server system by the portable speech processing device.