7. The system of claim 1 wherein said dictionary is represented with an optimized phone set that is implemented with a phonetic technique to separately provide consonantal phones and vocalic phones, said optimized phone set being implemented in a compact manner to include only a minimum required number of said consonantal phones and said vocalic phones.
1. A system for performing a speech recognition procedure, comprising: a sound transducer device that captures and converts a spoken utterance into input speech data for performing said speech recognition procedure; a recognizer configured to compare said input speech data to dictionary entries from a dictionary that is implemented by utilizing a mixed-language technique that incorporates multiple different languages into said dictionary entries, said dictionary being implemented to include dictionary entries that represent phone strings of a Cantonese language without utilizing corresponding tonal information as part of said phone strings; and a processor configured to control said recognizer to thereby perform said speech recognition procedure to generate and output one or more recognized words as a speech recognition result.